Puppet users - Oct 2014 - resource file with option source or content depending if source does exist

Dear all,

I would like to use the file resource to supply a host specific file. If it 
does exist choose it and if not create a file from a template.
I tried this, but then /mnt/motd needs to be on all server.

  $a = file("/mnt/motd/motd-${::hostname}",'/dev/null')
  if($a != '') {
    file {$config_file:
      ensure => 'file',
      owner  => 'root',
      group  => 'root',
      mode   => '0644',
      source => "puppet:///motd_files/motd/motd-${::hostname}",
    }
  }
  else {
    file { $config_file:
      ensure  => 'file',
      owner   => 'root',
      group   => 'root',
      mode    => '0644',
      content => template($template),
    }
  }

If I try this 
 $a =
file("puppet:///motd_files/motd/motd-${::hostname}",'/dev/null')
I get the error that Files must be fully qualified

Does anybody has a solution for that?

Best regards
Andreas

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