rpm and Yum don't believe a package is installed after Chef installs

Question

Running chef-solo (Installing Chef Omnibus (12.3)) on centos6.6

My recipe has the following simple code:

package 'cloud-init' do
    action :install
end 
log 'rpm-qi' do
    message `rpm -qi cloud-init`
    level :warn
end
log 'yum list' do
    message `yum list cloud-init`
    level :warn
end

But it outputs the following:

       - install version 0.7.5-10.el6.centos.2 of package cloud-init

     * log[rpm-qi] action write[2015-07-16T16:46:35+00:00] WARN: package cloud-init is not installed

[2015-07-16T16:46:35+00:00] WARN: Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, presto
   Available Packages
   cloud-init.x86_64                  0.7.5-10.el6.centos.2                 extras

I am at a loss as to why rpm/yum and actually rpmquery don't see the package as installed.

EDIT: To clarify I am specifically looking for the following string post package install to then apply a change to the file (I understand this is not a very chef way to do something I am happy to accept suggestions):

rpmquery -l cloud-init | grep 'distros/__init__.py$'

I have found that by using the following:

install_report =  shell_out('yum install -y cloud-init').stdout 
cloudinit_source = shell_out("rpmquery -l cloud-init | grep 'distros/__init__.py$'").stdout

I can then get the file I am looking for and perform

Chef::Util::FileEdit.new(cloudinit_source.chomp(''))

The file moves based on the distribution but I need to edit that file specifically with in place changes.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 17 '15 at 15:57

1

Untested code, just to give the idea:

package 'cloud-init' do
    action :install
    notifies :run,"ruby_block[update_cloud_init]"
end 

ruby_block 'update_cloud_init' do
  block do
    cloudinit_source = shell_out("rpmquery -l cloud-init | grep 'distros/__init__.py$'").stdout
    rc = Chef::Util::FileEdit.new(cloudinit_source.chomp(''))
    rc.search_file_replace_line(/^what to find$/,
   "replacement datas for the line")
    rc.write_file
  end
end

ruby_block example taken and adapted from here

I would better go using a template to manage the whole file, what I don't understand is why you don't know where it will be at first...

Previous answer

I assume it's a compile vs converge problem. at the time the message is stored (and so your command is executed) the package is not already installed.

Chef run in two phase, compile then converge.

At compile time it build a collection of resources and at converge time it execute code for the resource to get them in the described state.

When your log resource is compiled, the ugly back-ticks are evaluated, at this time there's a package resource in the collection but the resource has not been executed, so the output is correct.

I don't understand what you want to achieve with those log resources at all. If you want to test your node state after chef-run use a handler maybe calling ServerSpec as in Test-Kitchen.

edited Jul 17 '15 at 15:57

ModulusJoe

1,416
10
17

answered Jul 17 '15 at 14:46

Tensibai

15,557
1
37
57

Apologies for the back-ticks, I am new to both Chef and Ruby. The log messages are to debug only, I haven't worked out yet how to set the debug level of chef-solo via kitchen-ec2 yet... – ModulusJoe Jul 17 '15 at 14:58
if that works you are awesome. The reason I don't know where it is as it is based on distribution and python version. I want this to work across centos7, centos6, amazon linux and others. – ModulusJoe Jul 17 '15 at 15:12
It should be handled as an attribute based on python version package (got from ohai) and the distribution (got from ohai too), see some community cookbooks for example on how it could be done. But I'm pretty sure the path is guessable from this data. – Tensibai Jul 17 '15 at 15:14
understood by why would guessing the location be better than querying what the package actually installed? Also I did not know that Ohai knew the version of python installed, very helpful! – ModulusJoe Jul 17 '15 at 15:17
@AcyclicTau the full list of ohai default plugins is [here](https://github.com/chef/ohai/tree/master/lib/ohai/plugins) and you can find on google some custom plugins for specific cases too – Tensibai Jul 17 '15 at 15:31
worked perfectly, I have taken the liberty of updating your answer to remove the reference to '/etc/hosts'. – ModulusJoe Jul 17 '15 at 15:57
@AcyclicTau edit approved :) Forgot to replace it after copy/paste from documentation site – Tensibai Jul 17 '15 at 15:58

rpm and Yum don't believe a package is installed after Chef installs

1 Answers1