Re: cfengine 2.0.3 and cfexecd output problem

[J . K . Wight]

I wrote:
> I have just started converting from 2.0.1 under RedHat 7.1 to 2.0.3
> under RedHat 7.3, and am getting cfexecd output like this mailed to
> root (by cron):
> 
>     Unknown host: Make sure that fully qualified names can be 
>     looked up at your site!
>     Make sure that fully qualified names can be looked up at your site!
>     i.e. www.gnu.org, not just www. If you use NIS or /etc/hosts
>     make sure that the full form is registered too as an alias!

It turns out that the problem was caused by a variable defined in
update.conf being re-used in cfagent.conf; in my case one naming the
server machine. This worked with no problem at 2.0.1, so I had no
reason to consider changing my ways come 2.0.3. Now, something is
going wrong in cfagent when the variable is referenced, causing it to
generate abnormal output that cfexecd is not expecting, but it,
cfexecd, ploughs on regardless, assigning error messages to variables,
eventually leading to the above.

If I re-define the variable in cfagent.conf, though, I get this form
of warning mailed by cfexecd:

<host>:/var/cfengine/inputs/cfagent.conf:32: Warning: Redefinition of macro 
server=<server>

from which I infer that defining a variable in update.conf and
(re-)using it in cfagent.conf is intended to be OK, otherwise there
would be no point in issuing a warning.

Until Mark sorts out what the intended behaviour is supposed to be, my
pragmatic solution is to use differently-named variables for the same
purpose in the two files.

Jim