a possible rdist bug

[System Administrator]

To simplify maintenance of a carp firewall cluster, I setup system 
replication with rdist(1), which works rather nicely with one notable 
exception where cmdspecial fires even when there are no updated files. 
It is the only instance of cmdspecial that misfires, it is also the 
only instance that specifies globbing explicitly.

If this is known (or a feature), where is it documented? If this is a 
bug, how do I go about tracking it down?

Relevant parts of Distfile:

(Yes, there is a bunch of pf.conf* files in addition to the main one -- 
each logical function of the firewall is in its own anchor loaded via a 
separate pf.conf.anchor file.)

NOTIFY = ( root ad...@bitwise.net )
SAVED = ( \\.OLD\$ )# previously saved
TRASH = ( \\..*\\.swp\$ ~\$ )   # vim junk

USERS = ( /etc/{master.passwd,passwd,{,s}pwd.db} )
LOCAL = ( myname hostname.* ssh/ssh_host_*key* *.orig
  disklabels dumpdates iked isakmpd rndc.key )

etc:
/etc - ${HOSTS}
install -compare,savetargets,updateperm,younger ;
notify  ( ${NOTIFY} )   ;
except  ( /etc/${LOCAL} ${USERS} )  ;
except_pat ( ${TRASH} ${SAVED} );
cmdspecial ( /etc/pf.conf* )/sbin/pfctl -f /etc/pf.conf ;
special /etc/relayd.conf/usr/sbin/relayctl reload ;
special /etc/syslogd.conf   /etc/rc.d/syslogd reload ;
special /etc/inetd.conf /etc/rc.d/inetd reload ;
special /etc/ntpd.conf  /etc/rc.d/ntpd restart ;
special /etc/ssh/sshd_config/usr/sbin/sshd -qt
 /etc/rc.d/sshd reload
|| mv -f \$FILE.OLD \$FILE ;

Re: a possible rdist bug

[Philip Guenther]

On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 11:46 AM, System Administrator
ad...@bitwise.net wrote:
 To simplify maintenance of a carp firewall cluster, I setup system
 replication with rdist(1), which works rather nicely with one notable
 exception where cmdspecial fires even when there are no updated files.
 It is the only instance of cmdspecial that misfires, it is also the
 only instance that specifies globbing explicitly.

 If this is known (or a feature), where is it documented? If this is a
 bug, how do I go about tracking it down?

My inclination would be to leave the behavior (I can see it as useful,
and actually wonder if I may have used this by accident in a past
life) as is but have your command check the $FILES env variable and do
nothing if it's empty:

 The cmdspecial command is similar to the special command, except it is
 executed only when the entire command is completed instead of after each
 file is updated.  The list of files is placed in the FILES environment
 variable.  Each file name in FILES is separated by a `:' (colon).


Philip Guenther