Recently, the issue of copying file modes from remote sources was discussed on the puppet-users mailing list[1], although it equally applies to owner and group.
One issue is what permissions to apply to newly created files when none are specified? Historically, Puppet has always copied the permissions from the file source to the newly created one. However, this causes problems on Windows[2] agents due to the way that Puppet emulates POSIX permissions. We break NTFS access control inheritance to ensure the effective permissions are not greater than what Puppet has granted. It also causes problems on *nix agents, when the files' source is remote and uid/gids are not synchronized. A second, but related issue, is that Puppet applies the same copy-permissions logic to files that already exist. This goes against what jcbollinger said, "unmanaged resources and resource properties should not be modified by Puppet"[3], and what Nigel said, "A core principle of Puppet is that you can choose to only manage the attributes of a resource that you care about, and can leave the rest unmanaged."[4] However, this "bug" has been around so long, at least 0.24.8, that we can't change behaviors in a minor release.[5] Patrick and I talked about this and would like to propose adding a file parameter, something like `use_source_permissions`. If true and permissions are unspecified, Puppet would continue copying source permissions as it does today, for both newly created and existing files. This would be the default. If false and permission are unspecified, Puppet would never copy them from the source. Instead the permission defaults for newly created files would be based on the user that Puppet is running as. And the permissions for existing files would be unmodified. Doing so would provide a mechanism for resolving both #5240 and #18931. Comments and feedback welcome. Josh [1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/puppet-users/CI7pEUHknm4/x-hCGJn6Ms8J [2] https://projects.puppetlabs.com/issues/18931 [3] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/puppet-users/CI7pEUHknm4/VtCl9YmeIS0J [4] http://projects.puppetlabs.com/issues/5240#note-16 [5] https://projects.puppetlabs.com/issues/5240 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Puppet Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/puppet-users?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
