file resource's inspect_existing_fs_entry prevents managing permissions on char/dev files

[jaymzh]

Description

It is desired to use the file resource to manage permissions on files we are not creating, ala:

file '/dev/foo' do
  mode '0644'
end

The inspect_existing_fs_entry check in the file provider prevents this saying that it's the wrong type and can't manage it. This makes sense if we're trying to write contents, but otherwise, it doesn't.

Chef Version

12.6.0

Platform Version

CentOS 6 and CentOS7

Replication Case

file '/dev/vcs1' do  # pick any char device here
  mode '0640'
end

Client Output

Chef::Exceptions::FileTypeMismatch: file[/dev/vcs] ((irb#1) line 1) had an error: Chef::Exceptions::FileTypeMismatch: File /dev/vcs exists, but is a char device, set force_unlink to true to remove

[jaymzh]

Ping?

[jaymzh]

piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing?

[coderanger]

@jaymzh Please don't do that.

[jaymzh]

@coderanger or @lamont-granquist - what would you like to be the solution here... this continues to bite us and depending on how you think it should be fixed I may be able to allocate resources to fix it.

[coderanger]

@jaymzh I just meant to not ping on tickets, fixing the issue is cool but I have no input on that :)

[lamont-granquist]

Well the thing I'm vaguely worried about is if you start managing file perms on non-files with the file resource its a slippery slope to wanting to create them with mknod and extend the file resource with flags for device and character special files and that makes me lean towards wanting a different resource for it.

[lamont-granquist]

so can you fix the logic in a generic way so it literally read in the code like you explained it -- where those checks get bypassed when we don't have content and aren't creating a tempfile?

that does make sense to me and then i can just go 'lalalalalalalalala i can't hear you' about char devices and not worry about it...

[jaymzh]

@lamont-granquist if there's no content, then what's the problem? I think the check should only come into play if someone specified content

[jaymzh]

this is related to #6704 I believe... and unless it was fixed recently, I think it's still broken.