Request: parent directory for Apache

[gerapeldoorn]

Hi,

I've got several domains with more than one site on it.

On my disk, I keep them ordered like this:

/var/www/domain.com/site1
/var/www/domain.com/site2
/var/www/domain.com/site3

When I make virtualhosts with the virtualhosts manifest, it doesn't create the documentroot directory because the parent doesn't exist.

I've added this to virtualhost.rb to try and fix it:

---------------%<---------------
# creating/managing docroot parent directory
$documentroot_1up = $documentroot_real.chomp(separator='/').rpartition("/")
file { "$documentroot_1up":
owner => "${apache::params::configfile_owner}",
group => "${apache::params::configfile_group}",
mode => '775',
ensure => directory,
}
---------------%<---------------

... but I cannot mix ruby code in.

I've also found this page:
http://www.puppetlabs.com/blog/ruby-dsl/

It looks promising, but I have RedHat servers that use Puppet 0.25.5 from EPEL. I even tried making it work on Ubuntu (which does have Puppet 2.6), but I haven't got a clue where the different parts fit in.

If the apache-module could also check if the parent-directory exist then that would be great, pointers on how to get the parent directory from a string would also be very much appreciated...

Thanks,
Ger.

[alvagante]

Actually the (automatic) management of parents directory with Puppet has always been a problem.
Generally because you have to define every single directory in the path. This can be fixed in a pure ruby class, but as you've said this won't work on pre 2.6.
In this case a generic virtualhost define that tries to recreate the parent dir, would fail if called twice having a duplicate recource for the parent dir, so I can't fix i upstream.
What I can say is that you should manage this a a custom way, that fits your needs and takes some assumptions.
For example have a custom apache::domain define that just creates the parent directory and is called only once (hand then have all the apache::virtualhosts defines that you need.
ThisiIs not particularly pratical but maybe can be useful to manage, besides the /var/www/domain.com dir, whatever other resource you might manage that is related to the single domain.

So you would end up with nodes (or roles) with something like:
apache::domain { "mydomain1.com": }
apache::virtualhost { "site1": documentroot => "/var/www/mydomain1.com/site1" ... }
apache::virtualhost { "site2": documentroot => "/var/www/mydomain1.com/site2" ... }

apache::domain { "mydomain2.com": }
apache::virtualhost { "site1": documentroot => "/var/www/mydomain2.com/site1" ... }
apache::virtualhost { "site2": documentroot => "/var/www/mydomain2.com/site2" ... }

Not particularly attractive, but it works.

[gerapeldoorn]

Yes, that would work nicely, thanks!!

(I'm keeping you busy agian.. :) )

[saz]

Wouldn't a virtual resource fix the problem? The parent directory (in this case /var/www) is defined as a virtual resource and realized in apache::virtualhost.

[alvagante]

Well, don't know, I suppose we have to try. The point is what happens when you realize the same virtual resource twice (as it would happen when you call the virtualhost deifne more than once). I actually never use virtual resources (only exported resources, when needed) so I don't know exactly how they behaves in these cases.

[saz]

Virtual resources are made for this. Think about users. Maybe you need a specific user in different modules. Puppet deals with it, as soon as it gets realized. If there is another Realize(File...) it won't get realized again.

More about here: http://docs.puppetlabs.com/guides/virtual_resources.html

[alvagante]

Quite useful indeed. I suppose I'll start to use Virtual Resources more often now that I realize their usefulness in these cases (generally I used to place in specific classes resources that could be applied more than once), thanks