Question

In puppet, you can chown/chmod a single file by doing:

file {
    '/var/log/mylog/test.log':
    ensure  => 'present',
    mode    => '0644',
    owner    => 'me';
}

Two questions on this:

1. ensure=>’present’ is gonna make sure ‘/var/log/mylog/test.log’ exists, if it doesn’t it creates it. Is there any way I can make it do actions if file exists, if file doesn’t exist, don’t bother to create/delete it, just ignore it and carry on.

2. Let’s say I have 3 files under /var/log/mylog/, I want to chown/chmod against them all in a batch instead of having 3 file resource sections in my puppet code. Can I do something like below(of coz, the code below doesn’t exist, it’s in my dream now ^_^ ):

   files {
       '/var/log/mylog/*.log':
       ensure  => 'present',
       mode    => '0644',
       owner    => 'me';
   }
   

Answer 1

1. If you want to specify to take a given action if file exists, if file doesn’t exist etc. you have no choice (to my knownledge) currently than to use the exec resource with creates + onlyif or unless directives.
   You could use for instance (see reference doc)

    exec { "touch /var/log/mylog/test.log":
       path    => "/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/bin",
       user    => "${yourmodule::params::user}",
       group   => "${yourmodule::params::group}",
       creates => "/var/log/mylog/test.log", 
       unless  => "test -f /var/log/mylog/test.log"
    }
   
    file { '/var/log/mylog/test.log':
       ensure  => 'present',
       mode    => "${${yourmodule::params::mode}",
       owner   => "${yourmodule::params::user}",
       group   => "${yourmodule::params::group}",
       require => Exec["touch /var/log/mylog/test.log"]    
    }
   

2. No. Again, you’ll have to use an execresource.