cdist/docs/man/man7/cdist-troubleshooting.text

cdist-troubleshooting(7)
========================
Nico Schottelius <nico-cdist--@--schottelius.org>


NAME
----
cdist-troubleshooting - common problems and their solutions


ERROR IN MANIFEST IS NOT CONSIDERED AN ERROR BY CDIST
-----------------------------------------------------
Situation: You are executing other scripts from a manifest.
This script fails, but cdist does not recognise the error.
An example script would be something like this:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
% cat ~/.cdist/manifest/init
"$__manifest/special"
% cat ~/.cdist/manifest/special
#!/bin/sh
echo "Here is an unclean exiting script"
somecommandthatdoesnotexist
echo "I continue here although previous command failed"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We can clearly see that **somecommandthatdoesnotexist**
will fail in ~/.cdist/manifest/special. But as the custom
script is not called with the -e flag (exit on failure) of shell, 
it does not lead to an error. And thus cdist sees the exit 0
code of the last echo line instead of the failing command.

All scripts executed by cdist carry the -e flag. 
To prevent the above from happening, there are three solutions available,
two of which can be used in the calling script:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Execute as before, but abort on failure
sh -e "$__manifest/special"

# Source the script in our namespace, runs in a set -e environment:
. "$__manifest/special"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The third solution is to include a shebang header in every script
you write to use the -e flag:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
% cat ~/.cdist/manifest/special
#!/bin/sh -e
...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


SEE ALSO
--------
- cdist(1)
- cdist-tutorial(7)


COPYING
-------
Copyright \(C) 2013 Nico Schottelius. Free use of this software is
granted under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPLv3).