[chef] Re: Question - only if your configuration files are changed

[Spike Grobstein < >]

Interesting.

So how do the internals of this work? Does chef generate a new output file in 
a temp folder, compare the new file to the old file, then if they differ, 
update and notify?

I was always under the impression that this would notify every single time, 
so I was incredibly apprehensive about doing this on our postgres and redis 
production servers.

Thanks for the info. You've seriously just simplified my life.



...spike

On Feb 7, 2013, at 9:06 AM, Mike wrote:

> +1 to Thom.
> 
> Spike - Since Chef keeps some backups around of previous version in
> /var/cache/chef typically (you can also see the filename in a chef run
> with debug where something changes), there's no need to timestamp your
> file.
> Also, leveraging filesytem mtime to see when a file was changed is useful.
> 
> If you were statically entering a date/time of an Operator change -
> say, add "2013-02-07 Mike added a new gadget" to your file as a
> changelog, that might be useful, but also might be more effort than
> it's worth - that stuff typically lives in our source control history
> anyways.
> 
> -M
> 
> On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 9:03 AM, Thom May 
> <
 >
>  wrote:
>> note that if you put a timestamp in the template, you'll get a notification
>> every time, since chef will update the timestamp every time it runs.
>> 
>> 
>> On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 1:33 PM, Spike Grobstein 
>> <
 >
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I've often wondered this myself. I currently keep one backup of the config
>>> and restart only if the current and the backup differ, but its incredibly
>>> hacky and doesn't work if you put a "configured by chef" time stamp at the
>>> top.
>>> 
>>> It doesn't appear that that recipe only restarts if the file is changed.
>>> Or am I missing something?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ...spike
>>> (Sent via handheld, please pardon spelling errors)
>>> 
>>> On Feb 7, 2013, at 8:18 AM, Mike 
>>> <
 >
>>>  wrote:
>>> 
>>>> See here, from the opsocde ntp cookbook:
>>>> 
>>>> https://github.com/opscode-cookbooks/ntp/blob/master/recipes/default.rb#L44-L50
>>>> 
>>>> On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 6:50 AM, Alex Vitola 
>>>> <
 >
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> How do I restarting a service only if your configuration files are
>>>>> changed
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Example: ntp service
>> 
>>