[chef] chef-client managing chef-client service

[Andrew Brown < >]

Hello Chefs!

I¹ve come across an interesting issue with Chef 11.12.8 on Ubuntu 12.04.
I¹ve got a chef-client bootstrap that includes the chef-client cookbook,
managing chef-client as an init service (upstart seems to work fine).

It seems that chef-client as a daemon holds a lock, but exits gracefully,
thus resulting in chef-client not running at all on the system post chef
run.

Scenario:
- Vanilla Ubuntu 12.04 install with Chef 11.12.8 debian package installed.
 Note that init scripts are not installed to /etc/init.d or /etc/init
- Chef client #1 manually started with run-list including
"recipe[chef-client]"
- Chef-client recipe starts chef-client as a service (client #2)
- Client #2 waits for Client #1 to finish
- Client #1 updates /etc/init.d/chef-client template, which triggers
chef-client service restart
- Client #2 receives SIGTERM, which waits complete recipe run to shutdown
gracefully
- Chef-client #3 starts, and immediately exits, due to Client #2 already
running
- Finally Client #1 finishes run, and Client #2 starts its run
- Client #2 ensures that service is running, which is correct (i.e. Client
#2 is running)
- Client #2 finishes run, and gracefully stops

Result:
- No chef-clients running.  Client #1 was a one-time run, Client #2 asked
to shutdown gracefully, and Client #3 terminated since Client #2 already
running.

Note that changing DIETIME and SLEEPTIME does not change the results, as
Client #1 waits for the init scripts to complete.

I¹ve filed https://github.com/opscode-cookbooks/chef-client/issues/173
against the chef-client cookbook, but in the meantime I¹ve switched to
upstart as the init_style.  Other than using upstart, is there a
recommended way to start chef-client as a daemon, from a knife bootstrap?

Thanks!
Andrew