[chef] Capture output from a command or read contents from a file

[Harlan Barnes < >]

What's the proper way to read output from a command or contents from a file to use in a variable (to pass to a template for example) in a chef recipe? Or is this bad form in some way?

I couldn't figure out how to do it with a built in resource so I gave up and went to some ruby ... but weird things happen. It seems to execute the ruby code in the wrong place (too early ... before figlet is installed). I'm probably doesn't something wrong, however.

Any suggestions?

# installs the figlet RPM
include_recipe "figlet"

banner = ''
io = IO.popen("/usr/bin/figlet -w 160 #{node.name}")
io.each do |line|
  banner += line
end

template "/etc/motd" do
  source "motd.erb"
  mode 0644
  variables(
    :banner => banner
  )
end