[[!meta title="In puppet, $name is not always what you expect"]]

## Situation

I've tried to create a smart file definition for two files that belong into one
directory using this code snippet:

    file { ["check-disk-shell-net-snmp", "check_icinga_config.sh"]:
        ensure => present,
        path => "${check_base}/${name}",
        source => "puppet:///modules/icinga2/${name}",
        owner => icinga,
        group => icinga,
        mode => 775,
        require => File["${check_base}"];
    }   

As described in the
[puppet documentation](http://docs.puppetlabs.com/references/2.7.0/type.html),
the path is usually constructed by using **namevar**, which I interpret as
"the variable named **name**".

## The problem

What happens is actually something totally different:

    err: Failed to apply catalog: Cannot alias File[check-disk-shell-net-snmp] to
    ["/opt/local.ch/sys/icinga/checks/icinga2::serverchecks"] at
    /etc/puppet/modules/icinga2/manifests/serverchecks.pp:25; resource
    ["File", "/opt/local.ch/sys/icinga/checks/icinga2::serverchecks"] already defined at
    /etc/puppet/modules/icinga2/manifests/serverchecks.pp:25

The internal alias message is a bit confusing 
(I did not intentionally create an alias), but that puppet is using the classname
instead of the name supplied to file is surprising.

## The solution

Well, there are two solutions:

 * rewrite to two file entries (simple, code redundancy, ugly)
 * switch over to using [[cdist|software/cdist]] (more initial effort, biased author)

It is very good from time to time being remembered, which motivations I had
when starting the cdist project. In this case, it had been:

 * Supply understandable, good error messages to the user
 * Do what the user expects
 * Consistent behaviour

<spam>
If you are interested, there is 
[commercial support available](http://firma.schottelius.org/english/infrastructure/) for
puppet to cdist migrations.
</spam>

[[!tag config sysadmin localch unix]]