[chef] Re: Re: Re: Re: search returns for nodes sometimes reduced or empty

[Dan Adams < >]

Hi Zac

Thanks for your reply, you've been very helpful.

On 06.06.2012 16:30, Zac Stevens wrote:
> I may have been unclear in my question - sorry if below I repeat
> something you already know.
> When you are searching, what is your search query?  Are you searching
> for "roles:yourrole" or something else?

I have been using something along the lines of this:
search(:node, "chef_environment:#{node['chef_environment']} AND 
role:xyz")

as given here on the manual:
http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Search#Search-FindNodeswithaRoleintheRunList

in my recipes to return a list of nodes with the given environment and 
role. However, I'm guessing that you are telling me that there are two 
ways to search for role, one of which supplies the roles assigned to the 
node in its config as imported, and the other that is dynamically 
updated based on the outcome of the last run? I am very much looking to 
return the former via search - a permanent value that is correct 
regardless of the outcome of the last client run, and that is never null 
or empty.

> Say I have a role called "physical-server".  This search will only
> find nodes that have role[physical-server] on their run_list, and 
> have
> successfully run and saved their state back to the server:
>
>  knife search node "roles:physical-server"
>
> On the other hand, this search will find all nodes with that item on
> their run_list, whether they have had a successful run or not:
>
>  knife search node "run_list:role\[physical-server\]"

Aha! So I should simply change my search from the above listed current 
form to the below? Brilliant!
search(:node, "chef_environment:#{node['chef_environment']} AND 
run_list:role\[xyz\]")

It definitely sounds like you and Ian have both solved one part each of 
the problems I was experiencing - that I was looking at the dynamic 
value when I wanted the permanent one (independent of last run status), 
and that the reason the dynamic one was letting me down so often was due 
to a bug in the shipped value for maxFieldLength in solr.

Thanks very much indeed, I'm pretty confident that the combination of 
Ian's suggested fix, and this config change above will solve the issues 
I was seeing!

Cheers

Dan