a bytes-like object is required, not 'AnsibleUnsafeText'

[FiloSottile]

OS / Environment

Local: macOS Sierra

Remote: Debian Jessie

Ansible version

ansible 2.2.0.0
  config file = /Users/filippo/build/algo/ansible.cfg
  configured module search path = Default w/o overrides

Version of components from requirements.txt

ansible (2.2.0.0)
apache-libcloud (1.5.0)
asn1crypto (0.22.0)
azure (2.0.0rc5)
azure-batch (0.30.0rc5)
azure-common (1.1.4)
azure-graphrbac (0.30.0rc5)
azure-mgmt (0.30.0rc5)
azure-mgmt-authorization (0.30.0rc5)
azure-mgmt-batch (0.30.0rc5)
azure-mgmt-cdn (0.30.0rc5)
azure-mgmt-cognitiveservices (0.30.0rc5)
azure-mgmt-commerce (0.30.0rc5)
azure-mgmt-compute (0.30.0rc5)
azure-mgmt-keyvault (0.30.0rc5)
azure-mgmt-logic (0.30.0rc5)
azure-mgmt-network (0.30.0rc5)
azure-mgmt-notificationhubs (0.30.0rc5)
azure-mgmt-nspkg (1.0.0)
azure-mgmt-powerbiembedded (0.30.0rc5)
azure-mgmt-redis (0.30.0rc5)
azure-mgmt-resource (0.30.0rc5)
azure-mgmt-scheduler (0.30.0rc5)
azure-mgmt-storage (0.30.0rc5)
azure-mgmt-web (0.30.0rc5)
azure-nspkg (1.0.0)
azure-servicebus (0.20.2)
azure-servicemanagement-legacy (0.20.3)
azure-storage (0.32.0)
boto (2.46.1)
boto3 (1.4.4)
botocore (1.5.29)
certifi (2017.1.23)
cffi (1.10.0)
chardet (2.3.0)
cryptography (1.8.1)
docutils (0.13.1)
dopy (0.3.5)
enum34 (1.1.6)
idna (2.5)
isodate (0.5.4)
Jinja2 (2.8)
jmespath (0.9.2)
keyring (10.3.1)
MarkupSafe (1.0)
msrest (0.4.1)
oauthlib (2.0.2)
packaging (16.8)
paramiko (2.1.2)
pip (7.1.2)
pyasn1 (0.2.3)
pycparser (2.17)
pycrypto (2.6.1)
pyOpenSSL (16.2.0)
pyparsing (2.2.0)
python-dateutil (2.6.0)
PyYAML (3.12)
requests (2.13.0)
requests-oauthlib (0.8.0)
s3transfer (0.1.10)
setuptools (18.2)
six (1.10.0)
wheel (0.24.0)

Summary of the problem

TASK [vpn : Set facts for mobileconfigs] ***************************************
fatal: [X.X.X.X]: FAILED! => {"failed": true, "msg": "Unexpected templating type error occurred on ({{ lookup('file' , 'configs/{{ IP_subject_alt_name }}/pki/cacert.pem')|b64encode }}): a bytes-like object is required, not 'AnsibleUnsafeText'"}

Steps to reproduce the behavior

Happens every time I run ./algo

The way of deployment (cloud or local)

Cloud - 5. existing Ubuntu

[FiloSottile]

ansible/ansible#20290

[vytis]

I had the same issue and forcing Python2.7 solved it - https://github.com/trailofbits/algo/blob/master/docs/TROUBLESHOOTING.md#6-error-typeerror-must-be-str-not-bytes

[dguido]

Thanks for the note, that makes sense.