[chef] Re: Re: newbie question: errors in cookbooks

[Raphael Bauduin < >]

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 7:56 PM, Paul Paradise 
<
 >
 wrote:
> Raphael,
> In general, cookbooks should declare their dependencies so including a given
> recipe in your run list (say, recipe[tomcat6]) will pull in all the
> dependent cookbooks. Oftentimes this results in "cookbook bloat" on a given
> node, because the node will download a bunch of cookbooks that might not be
> used - optional dependencies, essentially. You're in the opposite situation
> - tomcat6 needs Java to run, but it isn't a declared dependency.
> Regarding the updated_by_last_action issue you're seeing - this is a
> consequence of having your mysql cookbook out-of-sync with the requisite
> chef-client version. What version of chef are you running, and what version
> of the mysql cookbook are you running? If my memory is correct, the most
> recent version of the mysql cookbook will break in the fashion you describe
> if you're running Chef <= 0.9.8.

That was indeed the cause. Thanks!

Raph

> The cookbooks opscode maintains at github.com/opscode/cookbooks are
> considered "in-development" and only pushed to the cookbooks.opscode.com
> site when they're stable. I used to use the cookbooks from the git repo, but
> switched to using the cookbooks.opscode.com site recently. The ability to
> run "knife cookbook site vendor" to pull down the latest version and merge
> it with local changes won me over. That said, there have been times when
> I've wanted something a bit more bleeding edge and I've manually applied a
> patch from the git repo.
> -Paul
>
> On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 5:15 AM, Raphael Bauduin 
> <
 >
>  wrote:
>>
>> 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
>>
>> --
>> Web database: http://www.myowndb.com
>> Free Software Developers Meeting: http://www.fosdem.org
>
>



-- 
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