[chef-dev] Re: symlinks (CHEF 2749 2389 2747)

Hi Brad,
Thanks for you answers.

I tend to complicate things a bit. so i'll try to answer with short
simple sentences :)

>> - http://tickets.opscode.com/browse/CHEF-2749
>
> Speaking only for myself, a symlink cannot have ownership and permissions 
> of its own.  That's why it's shown as mode 777 in both of the "before" and 
> "after" blocks.  So, this is a non-issue.  POSIX file semantics may be 
> tripping you up, but that's not a problem with Chef.
>
> Perhaps Chef could be more explicit about testing for symlinks and bombing 
> out if you try to apply operations to them which should be applied only to 
> regular files or directories, but I think the better solution is that you 
> should write your cookbooks and recipes in such a way that this does not 
> become a problem.

since it's not checking for symlinks, cookbook_file can overwrite
files outside of its scope.
if there were less checks this would be a major security issue. (for
instance if chef was using md5sum or no sum check at all)

I guess a cookbook_file_that_also_deals_with_symlinks definition could
be a local workaround.

>> - http://tickets.opscode.com/browse/CHEF-2389
>
> It's hard for a program to know what path should be applied to a command 
> used with a relative path, unless you introduce the concept of an explicit 
> current working directory.  Otherwise, what you think is your current 
> working directory may in fact not match at all, and therefore the behaviour 
> of the program could be very unexpected.
>
> So, I agree with your comment that this needs some fleshing out in the 
> provider.

ok.

>> - http://tickets.opscode.com/browse/CHEF-2747
>
> I've gone over this one a couple of times and I'm still not quite 
> understanding what the problem is or what should be done about it.  But 
> maybe that's just me and I haven't have enough coffee yet this morning.

to make it short: you can't have a symlink in a remote_directory.

it seems remote_directory doesn't know how to deal with symlinks at
all.
And anyway knife just dereferences them while uploading the cookbook.

-- 
Laurent