Re: strange warning

[Chris Edillon]

On Mon, 3 Feb 2003, Akop Pogosian wrote:

> My editfiles section looks like this:
> 
>   !initial::
>     { /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root
> 
>     AppendIfNoSuchLine "0 * * * * /var/LPFS/cfengine/bin/cfexecd -F"
>     Inform "true"
>     DefineClasses "restart_cron"
>     }
> 
>   initial::
>     { /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root
> 
>     AppendIfNoSuchLine "0 * * * * /var/LPFS/cfengine/bin/cfexecd -F"
>     Inform "true"
>     }
> 
> 
> 
> It works fine. However, when the "initial" class is defined and if
> cfengine is running in verbose mode (which happens only when I run
> "cfagent -q -v -D initial" from command line), it prints the following
> warning at the end:
> 
> *********************************************************************
> Main Tree Sched: editfiles pass 2 @ Mon Feb  3 19:00:56 2003
> *********************************************************************
> cfengine:zig: Too soon for editfile._var_spool_cron_crontabs_root (0/1
> minutes )
> 
  the default IfElapsed time is 1 minute, and this message indicates
that for the particular atomic action cfagent is trying to execute
(editing /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root), has already occured within
the last minute.  do you happen to be running "cfagent -vq -D initial"
just after the normal cfagent run, or after running it by hand without
defining "initial"?  that would cause the behavior you're seeing.  try
waiting at least a minute after the last cfagent run before trying it
from the command line with "-D initial".

> Note that this happens after all editfiles actions are supposed to
> take place and editfiles is mentioned only once in actionsequence. So,
> it is puzzling to me why I get this error. Also, if I rename the
> "!initial" section into something that also isn't supposed to be
> defined on a test host (e.g. class "blah"), then this message goes
> away which again is puzzling me. Is cfengine trying to execute the
> commands for class "initial" and "!initial" despite the fact that
> there is no way this can be true? 
> 
  if you change "!initial" to "blah", and blah isn't defined for the
host in question, then the atomic action of editing root's crontab
never happens.  so, when cfagent tries to see if it has already
occurred within the past minute, it thinks not so performs the edit.

chris