Puppet users - Nov 2010 - best way to ensure (yum) package repository freshness ?

Hello,

I have run into problems in the past where a package has been added to 
our yum repository, and a (new) class has been pushed to install that 
package, but puppet fails because the yum db on the target machine is 
too stale, and thus isn''t aware of the existence of the new package.

My question is this : what have other Puppet admins done in order to 
ensure that a target machine has the freshest local dbcache before 
attempting to install a package ?

Thank you.

-- 
Daniel Maher <dma AT witbe DOT net>
"The Internet is completely over." -- Prince

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On 18 Nov 2010, at 12:56 AM, Daniel Maher wrote:
> I have run into problems in the past where a package has been added to our
yum repository, and a (new) class has been pushed to install that package, but
puppet fails because the yum db on the target machine is too stale, and thus
isn''t aware of the existence of the new package.
> 
> My question is this : what have other Puppet admins done in order to ensure
that a target machine has the freshest local dbcache before attempting to
install a package ?
We haven''t run into this problem here, but I imagine something like the
following (untested) code might help:

	exec { ''yum-clean-expire-cache'':
	  user => ''root'',
	  path => ''/usr/bin'',
	  command => ''yum clean expire-cache'',
	}

	Package { require => Exec[''yum-clean-expire-cache''] }

	package { [''foo'',''bar'']: ensure =>
present }

That should make Puppet revalidate all of yum''s caches before
attempting to install either the foo or bar packages (or any packages for which
the above resource default is in scope).  ''yum clean
expire-cache'' is the cheapest way to ensure an updated view of your yum
repos, without deleting too much metadata which may need re-downloading in case
the repos are unchanged.  Note that this clean would happen on every Puppet run,
of course, and that may not be desirable.

-- 
Ian Ward Comfort <icomfort@stanford.edu>
Systems Team Lead, Academic Computing Services, Stanford University

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Perhaps you could adjust one of the /etc/yum.conf parameters like
metadata_expire down from its default of 1.5 hours or keepcache = false
(not entirely sure that this one does what you want it to do). The
metadata_expire one can be set at the repo level so you could set it
only for your own repo.

On 18/11/2010 08:56, Daniel Maher wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have run into problems in the past where a package has been added to
> our yum repository, and a (new) class has been pushed to install that
> package, but puppet fails because the yum db on the target machine is
> too stale, and thus isn''t aware of the existence of the new
package.
>
> My question is this : what have other Puppet admins done in order to
> ensure that a target machine has the freshest local dbcache before
> attempting to install a package ?
>
> Thank you.
>
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On Nov 18, 2010, at 12:56 AM, Daniel Maher wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have run into problems in the past where a package has been added to our
yum repository, and a (new) class has been pushed to install that package, but
puppet fails because the yum db on the target machine is too stale, and thus
isn''t aware of the existence of the new package.
> 
> My question is this : what have other Puppet admins done in order to ensure
that a target machine has the freshest local dbcache before attempting to
install a package ?
> 
> Thank you.
What ever you do, you will probably want to make sure you have a caching proxy
server (or an on site mirror) between your clients and the yum server.

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On Nov 18, 2:56 am, Daniel Maher <d...@witbe.net>
wrote:
> My question is this : what have other Puppet admins done in order to
> ensure that a target machine has the freshest local dbcache before
> attempting to install a package ?
I set up a cron job (via Puppet) that periodically performs a "yum
clean all".  That''s a bit crude, and it allows for a delay before
a
new package is recognized and installed, but it works well enough for
me.


John

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