[chef] Re: Uniquely identify a node

["John E. Vincent (lusis)" < >]

On Oct 7, 2012 1:10 PM, "Julien Vehent" < "> > wrote:
>
> Hi all,
> I'm working on a cookbook that distributes keys to nodes. It keeps a history of the distributions, by identifying a node based on the fqdn.
> This is not ideal, because if we recreate a node and reuse the fqdn, then my cookbook won't redistribute the key to it (until a timer expires after several hours). So I'm looking for a better way to uniquely identify a node.
>
> I considered using UUIDs stored in node['filesystem'] but their locations are not deterministic (some nodes use LVM, others just have directly attached disks, ...).
>
> Does Chef have a parameter that uniquely identifies a node ?

That's exactly what node name is - the unique id.

Without understanding the implications on your side, it seems it would be safe to add logic to handle nodename reuse somehow.

You can also use some other logic along with the node name such as set_unless and save a uuid or hash of nodename and something else to the node data. That way it should ONLY get created at bootstrap. See how the mysql cookbook generates the random root password.
>
> Thanks,
> Julien