Re: Problem with passing arguments to methods

[Stephen Fromm]

On Thu, 2005-04-14 at 23:35 +0200, Grzegorz Marszałek wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> I'm trying do write a method, which will then proceed differently based
> on parameter passed to it. The problem is that I cannot define class
> based on string in variable, BUT, which is funny but confusing, I CAN
> use this variable in editfiles section without problems! It seems, that
> arguments passed to methods are created AFTER classes section was
> evaluated. Any ideas, what to do about that? Passing class to method
> possibly would solve my problem of course, but then whole idea of using
> methods in my system (I'd like to use them, because they could very
> clearly isolate some components - ie.: to play with Kerberos you have
> one method, and you can play with it only via parameters defined by
> desiger of module). Of course I can use few methods as well, but still
> this strange behaviour of cfengine is at best confusing...

I'm encountering a similar problem with methods.  In my case, I'm
passing 6 arguments to the method Simple:

      Simple("/var/adm","messages","root","root","0640","14")
                  action=cf.simple
                  server=localhost
                  returnvars=alpha
                  returnclasses=null

The method is pretty simple for testing purposes:

        groups:
           doit = ( any )
        
        control:
           MethodName = ( Simple )
           MethodParameters = ( dir file owner group mode age )
           actionsequence = ( shellcommands )
        
        shellcommands:
           "/bin/echo vars: $(dir) $(file) $(owner) $(group) $(mode) $(age)"
        
        files:
           $(dir)/$(file) owner=$(owner) group=$(group) mode=$(mode) 
action=touch
        
        alerts:
           doit::
              "Testing received vars: ${dir} ${file} ${owner} ${group} ${mode} 
${age}"
              ReturnVariables( ${dir} ${file} ${owner} ${group} ${mode} ${age}" 
)
              ReturnClasses( success )

When cfagent is evoked, parsing of cf.simple fails with the following
errors:

cfengine::Simple: cf:cfengine::/var/cfengine/modules/cf.simple:19: Invalid mode 
string ($(mode))
cfengine::Simple: cfengine::/var/cfengine/modules/cf.simple:19: Warning: mode 
string is incomplete

If I comment out the files section, the file is parsed successfully and
everything works as expected.  Likewise, I can include the same files
section in cfagent.conf with $(mode) defined in control and cfagent.conf
will parse successfully.  Alternatively, I can define $(mode) in
cf.simple's control block and the file will parse successfully.
However, in the last case I don't get the value I passed to the method
for that variable.  

shellcommands does what you would expect and echo's the values to all 6
variables.  All of the variables are returned to the calling process.

Any ideas on what's going on?  :-)

Thanks,

.sf