[chef] Re: apt-get update strategy

[Bryan McLellan < >]

On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 2:45 AM, Luke Biddell 
<
 >
 wrote:
> So what I'd ideally like is to be able to trigger an apt-get update on
> the first package which requires installing. If no packages require
> installing, no apt-get update is performed. The fact an update has
> been performed needs to be recorded as we don't want to do it for
> every package that's installed as it will kill performance. Once is
> enough per chef run unless we add/remove a sources.list.d entry (which
> I already handle using :notifies).

There are a number of strategies. Here's another I used to do.

Only trigger an apt-get update when a repo or key is added, otherwise
rely on Ubuntu to run a daily apt-get update but run it ourselves if
we need to. Note that I was silently rescuing failures as well.

# Run apt-get update to create the stamp file
execute "apt-get-update" do
  ignore_failure true
  epic_fail true
  command "apt-get update"
  not_if do File.exists?('/var/lib/apt/periodic/update-success-stamp') end
end

# provides /var/lib/apt/periodic/update-success-stamp on apt-get update
package "update-notifier-common" do
  ignore_failure true
  notifies :run, resources(:execute => "apt-get-update"), :immediately
end

execute "apt-get-update-periodic" do
  ignore_failure true
  epic_fail true
  command "apt-get update"
  only_if do
    File.exists?('/var/lib/apt/periodic/update-success-stamp') &&
    File.mtime('/var/lib/apt/periodic/update-success-stamp') < Time.now - 
86400
  end
end