[chef] newbie question: errors in cookbooks

[Raphael Bauduin < >]

Hi,

I'm just starting with Chef, and am using the cookbooks from github,
but encounter some problems.
I have checked out all cookbooks and created my own recipe that is
run, and it is this recipe that requires the recipes I need from the
repository.
The first problem I get is in the tomcat6 recipe:
  undefined method [] for nil:NilClass: stderr
it comes from the cookbook's attribute file line 45:
https://github.com/opscode/cookbooks/blob/master/tomcat6/attributes/default.rb#L45

I think it occurs because it needs a specific config set to run, and I
didn't set it. Does that mean it is a bad idea to checkout all recipes
and only require those I need in my own recipe?

Second, the mysql::server recipe causes errors.
The first time it runs, I get an error uninitialised constant Mysql.
When I run it again, I get an undefined method 'updated_by_last_action'
when I run it a third time, it passes.

Does anyone have the same behaviour? Any hint of the cause of this
strange behaviour?

I'm also wondering if it's a good idea to use the cookbooks directly
from the git repo. Are these considered as stable enough to be used or
is it the development version? (I saw only a beta branch in addition
to the master branch, and no tag defined).

thanks in advance for your help!

Raphaël

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