[chef] rerunnable and idempotent?

[Mike Bailey < >]

Re-running bootstrap::server fails if rabbitmq-server was already started by previous installation.

Should we expect chef recipes to be re-runnable and idempotent? I would suggest a call to start a service should not error out if the service is already running.

thanks,

Mike 

:~# cat solo.rb 

file_cache_path "/tmp/chef-solo"

cookbook_path "/tmp/chef-solo/cookbooks"

recipe_url "http://s3.amazonaws.com/chef-solo/bootstrap-latest.tar.gz"

:~# cat chef.json 

{

  "bootstrap": {

    "chef": {

      "url_type": "http",

      "init_style": "runit",

      "path": "/srv/chef",

      "serve_path": "/srv/chef",

      "server_fqdn": "chef.failmode.com",

      "webui_enabled": true

    }

  },

  "run_list": [ "recipe[bootstrap::server]" ]

:~# chef-solo -c ~/solo.rb -j ~/chef.json

[Sat, 03 Apr 2010 14:30:50 +0000] INFO: Starting Chef Solo Run

[Sat, 03 Apr 2010 14:31:12 +0000] ERROR: service[rabbitmq-server] (/tmp/chef-solo/cookbooks/rabbitmq_chef/recipes/default.rb line 45) had an error:

/etc/init.d/rabbitmq-server start returned 1, expected 0

/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/chef-0.8.10/bin/../lib/chef/mixin/command.rb:179:in `handle_command_failures'

/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/chef-0.8.10/bin/../lib/chef/mixin/command.rb:122:in `run_command'

/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/chef-0.8.10/bin/../lib/chef/provider/service/init.rb:37:in `start_service'

/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/chef-0.8.10/bin/../lib/chef/provider/service.rb:62:in `action_start'