/yum_package_hack

Demonstrate the yum packaging issue

Primary LanguageRuby

yum_package_hack

This cookbook recreates the issue reported in https://getchef.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/8421:

  • a system has libXtxt installed as 1.2.2-2.1.el6 x86_64
  • the customer uses an internal package repository
  • for whatever reason, the output from yum-dump.py is not sorted newest to oldest
  • a cookbook uses yum_package 'libXtst >= 1.0.99.2-3.el6'
  • when the above runs, and the yum-dump.py output is ordered as below then the chef-client fails.
libXtst 0 1.2.1 2.el6 x86_64 [] a rhel6-x86_64-660
libXtst 0 1.2.2 2.1.el6 i686 [] a rhel6-x86_64-660
libXtst 0 1.0.99.2 3.el6 x86_64 [] a rhel6-x86_64-660
libXtst 0 1.2.1 2.el6 i686 [] a rhel6-x86_64-660
libXtst 0 1.0.99.2 3.el6 i686 [] a rhel6-x86_64-660
libXtst 0 1.2.2 2.1.el6 x86_64 [] r rhel6-x86_64-660

To recreate

kitchen converge
kitchen login

Then:

sudo chef-apply -e "yum_package 'libXtst >= 1.0.99.2-3.el6'"

Possible resolutions

  • Update yum-dump.py to return correctly sorted packages
  • Update the yum_package provider to sort the package list returned by yum-dump
  • Others approaches....