Puppet users - May 2007 - Reusing definitions - need to pass variable in the title

I recently tidied up a class/definition combo that sets /etc/issue and
/etc/issue.net.  This failed:

define issuefile($path) {
    file { issue:
        owner => root,
        group => root,
        mode => 0644,
        content => template("issue_conf")
   }    
}

class issue {
    issuefile { "issue":
        path => "/etc/issue"
    }
}

class issuenet {
    issuefile { "issue.net":
        path => "/etc/issue.net"
    }
}

class banners {
    include issue
    include issuenet
}

With

err: Could not retrieve configuration: Duplicate definition: File[issue]
is already defined in file /etc/puppet/manifests/classes/banners.pp at
line 22; cannot redefine at /etc/puppet/manifests/classes/banners.pp:22

Changing the issuefile definition to this makes it work perfectly:

define issuefile($path) {
    file { $path:
        owner => root,
        group => root,
        mode => 0644,
        content => template("issue_conf")
   }    
}

Where you explicitly set the title of the definition to something
unique, i.e. $path.

I''m clearly still in the perl-programming mindset, but I thought that
you could get away with the former (drawing on the LanguageTutorial wiki
doc).

What am I missing?

Cheers,
Derek
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Derek.Whayman@barclayscapital.com wrote:
> Where you explicitly set the title of the definition to something
> unique, i.e. $path.
That''s precisely it. Each different resource declaration needs to have
a
unique "name", otherwise puppet gets confused. I think what might be
confusing people on this is that puppet has a flat namespace for
resource names, rather than one derived from the module / component (so
you''d end up with module::issuefile(issue_net)::issue (Very C++).

For me, the current arrangement works reasonably well. Each resource
title uniquely identifies a thing of that class (ie: it''d be the full
pathname of a file, or the name of a yum repository), so if we were to
start introducing a more complex namespace, it''d potentially lead to
non-idempotent behaviour (eg: flip-flopping between two states).

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On Thursday 24 May 2007, Derek.Whayman@barclayscapital.com
wrote:
> I recently tidied up a class/definition combo that sets /etc/issue and
> /etc/issue.net.  This failed:
>
> define issuefile($path) {
>     file { issue:
>         owner => root,
>         group => root,
>         mode => 0644,
>         content => template("issue_conf")
>    }
> }
>
> class issue {
>     issuefile { "issue":
>         path => "/etc/issue"
>     }
> }
>
> class issuenet {
>     issuefile { "issue.net":
>         path => "/etc/issue.net"
>     }
> }
>
> class banners {
>     include issue
>     include issuenet
> }
>
> With
>
> err: Could not retrieve configuration: Duplicate definition: File[issue]
> is already defined in file /etc/puppet/manifests/classes/banners.pp at
> line 22; cannot redefine at /etc/puppet/manifests/classes/banners.pp:22
>
> Changing the issuefile definition to this makes it work perfectly:
>
> define issuefile($path) {
>     file { $path:
>         owner => root,
>         group => root,
>         mode => 0644,
>         content => template("issue_conf")
>    }
> }
>
> Where you explicitly set the title of the definition to something
> unique, i.e. $path.
That''s because the second form is correct, while your first try was
not.
> I''m clearly still in the perl-programming mindset, but I thought
that
> you could get away with the former (drawing on the LanguageTutorial wiki
> doc).
>
> What am I missing?

Two things: 

1) if you don''t specify the path to a file in the title/namevar (the
part
between { and : ), then you need to add path=>$path

2) there cannot be two resources of the same (type,title) in the configuration 
of a node



Regards, David
- -- 
- - hallo... wie gehts heute?
- - *hust* gut *rotz* *keuch*
- - gott sei dank kommunizieren wir über ein septisches medium ;)
 -- Matthias Leeb, Uni f. angewandte Kunst, 2005-02-15
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