Create random file and assign to a variable in recipe

Chef Infra (archive)
1

Good Day

In my recipe I want to create a filename with a random name in say either a
ruby block or a bash block. I then want to assign that created filename to
a variable and use that variable in the rest of my recipe.

How do I go about doing that?

Regards

2

This one is tricky...

You'll need to calculate your string(s) during the compilation phase or
your recipe, and pass then use them in your resources. Something like this.

my_string = 'ABC123etcetc'

directory "/stuff/#{my_string}" do
action :create
end

file "/stuff/#{my_string}/file_1" do
action :create
end

file "/stuff/#{my_string}/file_2" do
action :create
end

However, you need need to be careful how you generate my_string.
You'll be tempted to make them actually random

require 'securerandom'
my_string = SecureRandom.hex

This won't work, because my_string will* change on subsequent chef-client
runs. *

You'll need to use something like:

require 'digest'

seed = "constant"
my_string = Digest::SHA1.hexdigest(seed)[0,8]

Hope that helps.

-s

On Thu, Jul 23, 2015 at 5:27 AM, Jacobus van Heerden jacobus@konga.com
wrote:

Good Day

In my recipe I want to create a filename with a random name in say either
a ruby block or a bash block. I then want to assign that created filename
to a variable and use that variable in the rest of my recipe.

How do I go about doing that?

Regards