[chef] RE: Re: Need cfengine like copy to achieve Self Healing

["Steve Caissie" < >]

I can apply the same mode to all of the files in a directory with 
remote_directory, but I don't see any way to preserve the source directory's 
permissions.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to copy from a local or remote source and 
preserve permissions. Cfengine offers this with the copy action.

Steve


-----Original Message-----
From: 

 
 
[mailto:
 
 On Behalf Of Daniel DeLeo
Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2011 1:24 PM
To: 

 
Subject: [chef] Re: Need cfengine like copy to achieve Self Healing

On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 9:59 AM, Steve Caissie 
<
 >
 wrote:
> I'm trying to make my systems self healing with chef. I've been doing this
> for many years with cfengine. I think chef needs a cfengine like copy
> resource to make it easier to maintain a self healing environment.
>
>
>
> In cfengine 2, the copy action has a recursive option that lets you preserve
> permissions and create classes if files were changed.  There doesn't appear
> to be any resource to do this in chef.  You could use a tar file to preserve
> permissions, but then the copy isn't idempotent.  There would be no easy way
> to tell if files on the destination system have changed.  You could put the
> files into a package like an rpm, but those packages are more difficult to
> maintain.  I have a lot of directories that I need to copy and maintain.  I
> don't want to create an rpm for every directory.
>
>
>
> It would also be nice if chef didn't have to import all of the files you
> want to copy.  I'd like to be able to change a directory tree without having
> to tell Chef about the change.
>
>
>
> To get around this limitation, I'm going to try to create an "rsync" LWRP in
> chef.

Can you explain a bit more about how what you're looking for differs
from the existing remote directory[1] resource? Do you just want a
remote directory that uses a local (i.e., already exists elsewhere on
the filesystem) source? Do you need permissions that are more varied
than remote directory provides?


>
> Steve Caissie
> Director of Operations
>
> Vlingo
>
>

Thanks,
Dan DeLeo