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Resource-based Guard Interpreters for Chef

The guard interpreter is a feature of Chef resources that allows authors to specify their choice of Chef resource classes to evaluate a guard expression (i.e. only_if or not_if block). The goal of this capability is to reduce the complexity in both number of languages and boilerplate code found within a Chef recipe.

Guard interpreter customization makes the Chef DSL Delightful(tm).

Document status

This Request for Comments (RFC) document's proposals are accepted as an active implementation in Chef Client 11.12.0 and subsequent releases of Chef Client.

Specifically, the document specifies the behavior and records the reasoning for the guard_interpreter and convert_boolean_return attributes of Chef resources as implemented in Chef 11.12.0 and later versions of the Chef Client. See https://docs.opscode.com for authoritative, updated documentation on these features.

Motivation

The original impetus for guard interpreters involved a common user expectation that when guard expressions were present in a script resource, the same interpreter used to evaluate the script resource (e.g. bash, csh, powershell) would be used to evaluate the guard expression. It turns out this is not the case (more on this later) and thus user expectations were not being met.

An open source ticket for the Chef project describes a typical instance of this problem at CHEF-4553. In particular, that ticket posits that Windows users of the powershell_script resource expect that guards (i.e. the only_if and not_if conditionals) evaluated in the context of a powershell_script block use the powershell_script interpreter, not the cmd.exe (batch file) interpreter. This is a change from the current state of affairs, since in general there is no link between the interpreter used by a script resource. This is an issue that affects both Windows and *nix users.

Further detail and motivation for adding these features are given in sections at the end of the document.

Problems addressed through guard interpreters

The guard interpreter and related improvements discussed in the document address the following use cases:

  • CHEF-4553: Users of the powershell_script resource are forced to execute script guards with CMD's batch language instead of the PowerShell language already in use in the powershell_script resource.
  • Users of the bash resource who want to use bash in script guards must explicitly invoke bash with properly quoted command arguments in the guard
  • Windows users of the powershell_script resource do not have a way to use PowerShell in script guards in a concise, intuitive, quasi-Boolean fashion, while users of the script, csh, bash, and other resources have this
  • On Windows, script guards are always executed with the 32-bit process architecture and will be affected by the absence of system state exposed only to 64-bit processes

Definitions

This document assumes familiarity with the Chef resource DSL, which is documented at http://docs.opscode.com/chef/resources.html.

These definitions are used throughout the discussion:

  • Chef resource or resource: an element of the Chef DSL that represents configuration, system components, or any other aspect of system state to be managed by Chef. The resource contains attributes that define the desired state, and an action that can be taken by a provider evaluating the resource such as one that changes the actual state of the system the desired state. State such as files, scripts, and software packages are examples of system that that can be modeled as a Chef resource.
  • guard: An expression given as an attribute of a Chef resource in the form of a string to be executed by a shell or a Ruby block. Such an expression is evaluated before running the resource's action, and depending on whether it results in a true or false value, will control whether or not the resource's action is executed or skipped.
  • script guard: A guard expression that is given as a string to be evaluated by a shell command interpreter. When the interpreter's execution of the script results in a successful (i.e. non-zero) process exit code, the guard's value is true. Otherwise, it is false.
  • block guard: A guard to which a Ruby block is passed rather than a string.
  • guard parameter: Any Ruby expression passed as additional information to the shell interpreter used to modify execution context such as the current working directory, environment variables, user identity, etc.
  • guard interpreter resource: A Chef resource that is not part of a Chef run context and is expressed within a block guard's block. The guard interpreter resource is simply used to assess a true or false value (e.g. whether a script that tests system state in a relevant way returns a success or failure process status) inside of a block guard.

Overview

Guard expressions for all resources have been extended to include an attribute named guard_interpreter that takes the short name symbol of a Chef resource to be used to evaluate script guards. This is useful for testing conditions to ensure idempotence for non-idempotent resources such as script resources. The goals in doing this are:

  • To address CHEF-4553 -- simplify convoluted expressions such as that below for Windows users
not_if 'powershell -noninteractive -noprofile -command "exit [int32]((Get-ExecutionPolicy -scope localmachine) -eq 'RemoteSigned')"'
  • For guard expressions, to allow Unix and Windows users to make use of familiar modern shells such as bash and PowerShell rather than ancient interpreters like sh or cmd.exe with limited or obscure syntax
  • To make Chef interactions with OS interfaces such as shells as natural for users of the OS as possible

Behavioral impact on Chef resources

At a high level, here are the changes proposed and now accepted to simplify conditional execution of resource actions:

  • Add a guard_interpreter attribute to the Chef::Resource class that can take a symbol that corresponds to the name of a Chef resource derived from Chef::Resource::Script. This guard interpreter resource will be used to evaluate the script command passed to the guard.
  • Truth or falsehood of such a guard is determined by whether the resource evaluating the script guard is updated, i.e. runs the script without raising an exception and without the script returning a non-success code (0 is the default expected success exit code of the script interpreter).
  • Parameters passed in hash format after the guard command string are interpreted as attributes to be set for the guard interpreter resource instance.
  • The guard interpreter resource is executed outside of the containing resource's run context.
  • Enable inheritance of attributes from a given resource A for any resource B executed as part of a block passed to a guard attribute of resource
  • Add a convert_boolean_return attribute to the powershell_script resource so that Chef interprets PowerShell boolean expressions for PowerShell code executed by the powershell_script resource such that it returns boolean values the same way that Unix shells like bash do when they evaluate "Boolean-like" statements through commands such as the test command
  • Make convert_boolean_return default to false to provide for behavior identical to versions of Chef that did not have this feature, but make it default to true when used to evaluate a guard via the guard_interpreter attribute to make guard expressions more concise and natural.

Guard interpreter code examples

The following examples demonstrate the intended use cases around guard interpreters. Concepts such as inheritance are introduced in the examples which are explained in subsequent sections.

Custom interpreter for script resources

# This resource will run without errors because the guard uses
# the bash interpreter; if we had passed the same string
# directly to the only_if, this would have failed the
# Chef run since that string is not valid for /bin/sh
bash "Use bash for only_if" do 
  guard_interpreter :bash
  code "echo I am $SHELL"
  only_if '[[ 1 == 1 ]]' # won't work outside of bash
end

Inheritance is your friend

# This resource will run because the cwd of the guard
# is the same as that of the parent resource
bash "My cwd gets inherited" do
  guard_interpreter :bash
  code 'echo inherit me'
  cwd '/opt'
  only_if '[[ $PWD == "/opt" ]]' # Glad I didn't have to add cwd
end

Setting guard parameters

# The normal command string syntax for guards lets you
# specify parameters like cwd, etc. -- you can do the same
# here by specifying those parameters in the guard expression
bash "Override my guard attributes" do
  guard_interpreter :bash
  code 'echo override me'
  cwd '/var'
  only_if '[[ $PWD == "/opt" ]]', :cwd => '/opt' # Don't try to put me in my place
end

powershell_script default behavior examples

The examples below are changes to the powershell_script resource that take advantage of guard interpreter resource support.

powershell_script guard interpeter default example

# Here is the fix for CHEF-4553 -- use guard_interpreter to
# execute the script with powershell, not cmd
powershell_script "defaultguard" do
  guard_interpreter :powershell_script
  code 'new-smbshare systemshare $env:systemdrive\'
  not_if 'get-smbshare systemshare' # This uses powershell, not cmd
end

powershell_script Boolean behavior

# What if guards evaluated powershell script code that powershell
# evaluates as a boolean type as the actual boolean value of the guard
# itself? You can avoid extra script code to translate the boolean into
# a process exit code that results in the right true / false behavior 
# for the guard. Guards already work this way on Linux systems...
powershell_script "set execution policy" do
  guard_interpreter :powershell_script
  code "set-executionpolicy remotesigned"
  not_if "(get-executionpolicy -scope localmachine) -eq 'remotesigned'" # Like I barely left Ruby -- wow!
end

powershell_script architecture inheritance

do
# And look, the not_if will run as an :i386 process because of the
# architecture attribute for the parent resource which powershell_script
# guard interpreter resources will inherit from the enclosing resource
powershell_script "set i386 execution policy" do
  guard_interpteter :powershell_script
  architecture :i386
  code "set-executionpolicy remotesigned"
  not_if "(get-executionpolicy -scope localmachine) -eq 'remotesigned'"
end

Guard interpreter formal specification

The documented behavior for guards can be found at http://docs.opscode.com/resource_common.html. Guards are expressed via the optional not_if and only_if attributes -- the expression following the attribute may be either a block or a string.

Guard conditional semantics overview

Guards allow for conditional execution of a resource. Before executing the action for the resource, Chef will evaluate the expression to produce a Ruby true or false value that is utilized in determining whether to execute the resource's action or to skip it:

  1. If the guard_interpreter resource is not specified for the resource, when a string is passed to a guard, the existing implementation executes the /bin/sh interpreter on Unix or cmd.exe on Windows with that string to be evaluated as a script by the interpreter. Chef will execute the interpreter with the code supplied to the string; if the interpreter exits with a 0 (success) code, this is interpreted as a Ruby true value, otherwise it is false.
  2. When a block is passed to a guard, the code in the block will be executed, and the value of the last line of code executed by the block will be the Boolean value of the block, converted to a Boolean value in a manner consistent with the Ruby !! operator, resulting in either the value true or false.
  3. If the aforementioned string or block expression was supplied to an only_if attribute, the action of the resource containing the attribute will be skipped if the expression evaluated to false and executed if it evaluated to true.
  4. If the expression was supplied to a not_if attribute, the behavior of the resource is the inverse of that for only_if; the resource action is executed if the expression evaluated to false and skipped if it evaluated to true.

This specification of guard behavior is accurate without the inclusion of guard_interpreter features described in this document. The guard_interpreter attribute allows for the interpreter to be something other than /bin/sh or cmd.exe and is described below.

Conditional semantics with the guard_interpreter attribute

In Chef Client versions 11.12.0 and later, the guard_interpreter attribute was introduced which provides the following behavior:

  1. When the guard_interpreter attribute is specified in the resource as a value other than :default, a guard interpreter resource of the type specified in the guard_interpreter attribute is created with its code attribute set to the value of the string passed to the guard attribute. The guard interpreter resource's action will be executed to produce a truth value.
  2. If the resource action updates the resource, the value is true. Resources can only be updated if the interpreter used by the resource specified in the guard_interpreter attribute returns a success code, 0 by default, though this can be overridden in attributes specified to the resource as guard arguments. Anything other than a success code results in the guard evaluating as false.

script resource conditional semantics

To enable the usage as guard resources of resources derived from Chef::Resource::Script, known colloquially as script resources, all such resources when executed as guard resources will handle the exception Mixlib::Shellout::ShellCommandFailed.

By doing this, usage of script resources has the same conditional and exception behavior as the case described earlier when a string is passed to a not_if or only_if guard attribute since this exception is raised precisely in the case where a string passed as a guard would have been evaluated by /bin/sh or cmd.exe as exiting with a failure status code.

This gives any script resource, for example bash, the ability to behave like the string argument usage for guards except that an alternative interpreter to /bin/sh is used to execute the command. This extends the range of shell script languages that may be used in guard expressions.

powershell_script guard_interpreter example

Use of guard_interpreter for the powershell_script resource addresses CHEF-4553. Without guard_interpreter, a user of the powershell_script resource who would like to use the same PowerShell language in the expression passed to the guard resource to the following cumbersome solution:

# Yuk. Let me look up all the right cli args to powershell.exe.
# Oh, do I have to quote my cmd -- what kind of quotes again?
# So much fun for me. This is CHEF-4553.
powershell_script "oldguard" do
  code 'new-smbshare systemshare $env:systemdrive'
  not_if 'powershell.exe -inputformat none -noprofile -nologo -noninteractive -command get-smbshare systemshare'
end

With the guard_interpreter attribute, we have the following more concise, less cumbersome, and less error-prone expression for the same powershell_script use case given above:

# So PowerShell. Such short.
powershell_script "newguard" do
  guard_interpreter :powershell_script
  code 'new-smbshare systemshare $env:systemdrive'
  not_if 'get-smbshare systemshare'
end

Guard attribute inheritance

A new change is that a resource used within the context of a guard may inherit some attributes from the resource that contains the guard.

Inheritance follows these rules:

  • An attribute in a guard interpreter resource is inherited from the parent resource only if the attribute is in a set of inheritable attributes defined by the type of the guard resource

  • To be inherited from the parent, the attribute must not have been specified as a parameter to the guard command -- whatever is passed to the guard command will override any parent specification of the attribute.

  • The Chef script resource, i.e. Chef::Resource::Script, and all resources derived from it, including bash, python, and powershell_script, inherit the following attributes from the parent resource:

    :cwd :environment :group :path :user :umask

  • Resource types may define additional rules for inheritance -- the powershell_script resource has additional behaviors described in a subsequent section.

In general, the utility of inheritance derives from a common case where setting system configuration through a Chef resource requires some external state such as an environment variable, alternate user identity, or current directory, and testing the current state to ensure idempotence through a guard requires the same state. Inheritance allows that state to be expressed no more than once through the Chef DSL.

Simplification through attribute inheritance

Consider the following example:

script "javatooling" do
  environment {"JAVA_HOME" => '/usr/lib/java/jdk1.7/home'}
  code 'java-based-daemon-ctl.sh -start'
  not_if 'java-based-daemon-ctl.sh -test-started', :environment =>
    {"JAVA_HOME" => '/usr/lib/java/jdk1.7/home'}
end

In the not_if attribute, the same hash of environment variables specified for the resource must also be specified for the guard, both of which use a shell script to that relies on the JAVA_HOME environment variable. With inheritance, the second environment variable specification (along with the possibility of an incorrect specification) can be eliminated with this simplified version:

script "javatooling" do
  guard_interpreter :csh
  environment {"JAVA_HOME" => '/usr/lib/java/jdk1.7/home'}
  code 'java-based-daemon-ctl.sh -start'
  not_if 'java-based-daemon-ctl.sh -test-started'
end

powershell_script inheritance rules

  • For the powershell_script resource, an additional attribute is inherited when this resource is used as a guard resource:

    :architecture

  • When a guard attribute of powershell_script is given a string rather than a block, unlike other resources, inheritance of attributes occurs. The behavior of the PowerShell interpreter when executing that string is the same as if a powershell_script resource has been passed instead with the code attribute set to the value of the string.

  • Inherited attributes in this case may be overridden by specifying those same attributes as guard parameters using the existing guard parameter syntax

This results in a more concise expression of the resource compared to the situation without inheritance for string arguments. For example, without allowing the architecture attribute to be inherited with a string guard, here is the recipe fragment we'd need to set the PowerShell execution policy for the x86 PowerShell interpreter:

# This is what we'd write if we couldn't inherit the architecture
# attribute when a string is passed to a guard -- we'd repeat
# the architecture attribute twice.
powershell_script "set i386 execution policy" do
  guard_interpreter :powershell_script
  architecture :i386
  code "set-executionpolicy remotesigned"
  not_if "(get-executionpolicy -scope localmachine) -eq 'remotesigned'", :architecture => :i386
end

By allowing inheritance, the expression is more compact, requires less up-front consideration of options, and provides the least surprising behavior:

# Much more concise -- architecture attribute is inherited by the guard
powershell_script "set i386 execution policy" do
  guard_interpreter :powershell_script
  architecture :i386
  code "set-executionpolicy remotesigned"
  not_if "(get-executionpolicy -scope localmachine) -eq 'remotesigned'"
end

powershell_script Boolean result code interpretation

Boolean result code interpretation allows guards that make use of the powershell_script resource to treat PowerShell Boolean expressions as if they were Ruby boolean expressions as in the code below:

powershell_script "backup-dc" do
  guard_interpreter :powershell_script
  code "backup-domain-controller.ps1"
  only_if "[Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent().IsSystem()"
end

More formally, the value of guard conditionals for powershell_script gets the following modification:

  • The process exit code for a PowerShell script fragment executed by the powershell_script resource will support passing the value of a Boolean expression from the script through the interpreter's exit code.
  • The attribute convert_boolean_return is introduced for the powershell_script resource to control this behavior -- it may have the value true or false.
  • The default value of convert_boolean_return is false for powershell_script resource instances that are not being evaluated as a guard interpreter resource -- this means that recipes using powershell_script prior to this change will behave identically after it.
  • However, if the powershell_script instance exists as the result of evaluating a guard expression because the guard_interpreter attribute was set to :powershell_script, the value of convert_boolean_return is set to true. There is no backward compatibility issue for this default because the guard_interpreter resource was not available prior to versions of Chef with the boolean interpolation feature.
  • Boolean interpolation only occurs if the script fragment could have been executed as the definition of a PowerShell function with a return type of bool, a PowerShell type analogous to a typical Boolean data type AND if the convert_boolean_return attribute of the resource executing the script is set to true.
  • In this case, if the function return value is the PowerShell value $true, the exit code is 0 (overloaded with 'success'), otherwise the function return value is $false and the exit code is 1.
  • In cases where the hypothetical PowerShell function raises an exception or returns a type other than PowerShell's bool type, preexisting exit code rules hold.

This behavior for powershell_script when convert_boolean_return is set to true is functionally equivalent to the behavior of the bash shell when it evaluates quasi-boolean commands such as the test command and related commands.

Detailed motivation on guard improvements

Particularly for PowerShell users on Windows, the behavior of guards before Chef 11.12.0 was not delightful. Prior to Chef 11.12.0, when a string was supplied to a guard, on Unix it was always evaluated with /bin/sh, even if the guard was being executed in the context of a script resource that executes code using something other than sh, like the bash resource. On Windows, there is no /bin/sh, so cmd.exe was always used for guards.

Both Unix and Windows experiences could have been better in multiple respects. For Windows, cmd.exe is guaranteed to exist on the system, but that's about as much good as you can say for it. It's a vestigial component that still shows signs of its 1970's CP/M heritage even in 2014, and as Windows admins turned to PowerShell or were nudged toward it (often by Microsoft itself), it was asking a lot for Chef users to know how to use legacy cmd.exe to accomplish tasks. Most likely, users of powershell_script would choose to run powershell.exe in the not_if and only_if blocks. Since that was the common case for powersell_script users, the guards should have had some way to allow that, or to provide guard execution via PowerShell in a more natural fashion.

Even for Unix users, however, there was still room to be delightful since /bin/sh, while not the antediluvian relic that is cmd.exe on Windows, is certainly not a modern shell. Thus guards require users of, say, the bash resource, to use two different shell dialects. The bash dialect is a modern and familiar one for the code to be executed by the script resource, and sh is a more limited one for the guards. It's confusing behavior for new users. And even for those who are experienced, it requires awkward workarounds like explicitly running bash with some set of switches and/or researching workarounds for missing features in sh. Overall, it decreases the efficiency of using resources like bash -- one might just as well use the generic script or execute resources if knowledge of the best way to a given interpreter cannot be contained in the resource.

So the addition of the guard_interpreter attribute as adopted via this RFC lets users choose to adopt a more natural way of expressing idempotence that lets you embed shell-specific expressions in the clean Chef DSL without all of the awkwardness and corner cases described earlier. The result is an uncluttered description of infrastructure that doesn't sacrifice on the shell or underlying platform's native descriptive and functional capabilities.

Boolean result code interpolation details

Consider the Chef DSL fragment below where a string passed to an only_if guard performs a Boolean test using the sh "[" command:

bash "systemrestart" do
  code '~/rebootnow.sh'
  only_if '[ "$USER" == "root" ]'
end

This results in the bash script 'rebootnow.sh' being executed only when this code is executed with chef-client running as root. The Boolean-like expression in the sh script passed to the guard is treated as a Boolean result for the guard, resulting in a natural way of using the sh interpreter from within Chef and Ruby.

A similar mapping between Boolean results for strings passed to guards on the Windows platform does not exist. This partially due to guards always being executed with cmd.exe. However, the behavior shown on Unix guards that interpret script strings is actually present in the script resources themselves when the same Boolean-like code is executed as part of the code attribute. Here's an example:

bash "myfail" do
  code '[ "$USER" == "root" ]'
end

If this resource is run as the root user, it will succeed and subsequent resources in the recipe can be executed. If the user is not root, this will result in /bin/sh returning a non-zero exit code, and the execution will fail, terminating any chef-client run.

While the utility of translating Boolean values to interpreter exit codes is debatable within a resource executed at recipe scope, it is consistent with the much more useful guard behavior described in the previous example.

Contrast this to the existing powershell_script resource, which does not interpolate Boolean results of scripts to exit codes consistent with truth or falsehood in any context. The added interpolation for powershell_script rectifies the deficiency in this resource compared to bash and the other Unix shell-based resources.

PowerShell Boolean symmetry with Unix shells

This boolean interpolation behavior is similar to the bash or sh interpreters' behavior in certain contexts, where the Boolean-like result of the test command causes the interpreter process to exit with 0 if the test command resulted in a true result, 1 otherwise, assuming the test command was the last line of the script.

This enables cases where a test that can be expressed very cleanly with the PowerShell language can be used directly within a guard expression with no need to try to generate a process exit code that Chef will interpret as a true or false value. For example, the true or false value of a PowerShell expression like

([Security.Principal.WindowsPrincipal][Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent()).
  IsInRole([Security.Principal.WindowsBuiltInRole] "Administrator")

or

(gi WSMan:\localhost\Shell\MaxMemoryPerShellMB).value -ge 300

can be passed directly to Ruby and evaluated as true or false by the guard without specifying any additional PowerShell code. This interpolation of Boolean return values also happens when a string of code is passed to a guard in a powershell_script resource, a scenario that builds on top of the previously described switch to the PowerShell language as the script interpreter of strings passed to guards in the powershell_script resource.

Future guard improvements

In the future, some of the features around guard_interpreter may have different defaults. For example, the powershell_script and bash resources may default to setting this attribute to :powershell_script and :bash respectively rather than :default. The initial implementation introduced in Chef 11.12.0 does not make this change to avoid compatibility issues with guard expressions in use in existing cookbooks used with earlier versions of Chef Client.

References and further reading