[chef] search returns for nodes sometimes reduced or empty

[Dan Adams < >]

Hi

I use search quite heavily in my Chef recipes, mainly to return a list 
of nodes based on a provided environment and role. I then assign 
attributes to the results of these searches, which are then references 
in configuration files on other nodes. An example might be, a web host 
might need to know which app hosts it can pass work off to, and the app 
hosts might be an occasionally shifting number. So, great, dynamic 
assignment of values in the config based on search.

However, I have hit two areas where the search really isn't working for 
us as intended/expected. And I don't know if this is my fauly 
expectations, my faulty implementation , or something wrong in Chef.

1) Scenario 1 - Nodes vanish from search when I update chef via knife.
I make updates to files in the git repo and then import them to chef 
couch/solr using:
"knife cookbook upload", "knife environment from file", "knife node 
from file, "knife role from file"
It appears as though running at least some of these commands 
*re-creates* the nodes as new objects with no roles (rather than updates 
the existing objects) so that the nodes have no roles until the 
chef-client is successfully run on the client host.

2) Scenario 2 - Nodes vanish from search results intermittently.
It appears as though intermittently search will not return a node in 
the search results for a role that I know it has. I can manually 
re-populate the roles by running the chef-client executable on the host 
in question.

Both these together mean that at times, a node will not be returned as 
the result of a search, meaning the config value used elsewhere is null, 
which can cause massive problems for our environments.

Can someone advise if I am doing something wrong in my use of search, 
if the above can be explained by any known bugs, or how I can resolve 
these issues please. I am unclear on what determines whether a host has 
a role - in my mind it should be whether a host has a role assigned in 
the config, but sometimes nodes are not returned in the search when they 
*are* assigned in the config, and appear in search only after a 
successul client run is performed manually.

Cheers

Dan