ansible-connection Python3 fix (#26441)

* Fix a number of unicode <-> bytes mismatches

* Return socket_path as text, not bytes

* Docstring run()

2 files changed, 10 insertions, 4 deletions

diff --git a/bin/ansible-connection b/bin/ansible-connection
index 1f46a9e116..8e9114817c 100755
--- a/bin/ansible-connection
+++ b/bin/ansible-connection
@@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ import datetime
 import errno
 
 from ansible import constants as C
-from ansible.module_utils._text import to_bytes, to_native
+from ansible.module_utils._text import to_bytes, to_native, to_text
 from ansible.module_utils.six import PY3
 from ansible.module_utils.six.moves import cPickle
 from ansible.module_utils.connection import send_data, recv_data
@@ -141,7 +141,7 @@ class Server():
                     signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, self.command_timeout)
                     signal.alarm(self.play_context.timeout)
 
-                    op = data.split(':')[0]
+                    op = to_text(data.split(b':')[0])
                     display.display('socket operation is %s' % op, log_only=True)
 
                     method = getattr(self, 'do_%s' % op, None)
diff --git a/lib/ansible/plugins/connection/persistent.py b/lib/ansible/plugins/connection/persistent.py
index 6b3adff3c1..9b0df90cbb 100644
--- a/lib/ansible/plugins/connection/persistent.py
+++ b/lib/ansible/plugins/connection/persistent.py
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ import pty
 import subprocess
 import sys
 
-from ansible.module_utils._text import to_bytes
+from ansible.module_utils._text import to_bytes, to_text
 from ansible.module_utils.six.moves import cPickle
 from ansible.plugins.connection import ConnectionBase
 
@@ -84,5 +84,11 @@ class Connection(ConnectionBase):
         self._connected = False
 
     def run(self):
+        """Returns the path of the persistent connection socket.
+
+        Attempts to ensure (within playcontext.timeout seconds) that the
+        socket path exists. If the path exists (or the timeout has expired),
+        returns the socket path.
+        """
         rc, out, err = self._do_it('RUN:')
-        return out
+        return to_text(out, errors='surrogate_or_strict')