Problems with cfexecd and parse errors

[Douglas Reitmeier]

This was seen with 2.0.8p1 on Solaris 8.

We had an issue where 19 of approximately 600 hosts failed to transfer a new 
file, stopped with an empty file cf.foo.cfnew, that is imported in 
cfagent.conf. This caused these systems to fail to parse cfagent.conf 
correctly. Running cfagent again clears the issue once the update section runs.

The issues is that we run cfexecd from cron to control cfengine. Cfexed starts 
up by doing a cfagent -z. Since the file is not parse able this fails and 
cfexecd stops. This means that it never runs cfagent, so the update can fix the 
issue. This means that all systems with the parse error must be fixed by hand 
instead of using cfengine to fix the issue.

Is there a way to have cfexecd not need the cfagent -z? One alternative is to 
run cfagent directly from cron instead of using cfexecd, but that loses the 
reporting benefits of cfexecd. Does nay one else have any other ideas on how to 
do this?

Thanks,

Doug Reitmeier



Douglas J. Reitmeier                                                       
United Defense L.P.
Project Manager                                                             M248
douglas.reitmeier@udlp.com                                           4800 East 
River Rd
Phone: 763-572-6644                                                     
Fridley, MN 55421
                                                                                
       F: 763-572-6133

Douglas Reitmeier.vcf
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