disks:freespace nightmare, local mounts require nasty workaround.

[Hugo Gayosso]

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cfengine 2.0.0
Red Hat 7.2


Hello Mark!

I am trying to use the option 'freespace' to monitor my disk space as
I tried a few weeks (months ?) ago, and it was a nightmare.

I searched in the newsgroups and it seems that people have been asking
about this since 1999:

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=freespace+group:gnu.cfengine.help&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=XFMail.990113183048.wouter%40pentacom.co.uk&rnum=3

My recent thread about this:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&frame=right&th=694fa4d3fa62f94&seekm=XFMail.20020412083148.basv%40sara.nl#link1

Which, BTW, it also lists a documentation bug (the documentation does
not show that you can us "%" in combination of 'freespace').

Others have asked similar questions:

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=freespace+group:gnu.cfengine.help&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=11B93F7CB824D411B5610050DA09A2F18A341C%40MSU-NTSVR01&rnum=5

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=freespace+group:gnu.cfengine.help&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=E1206dq-00087D-00%40work.dev33.cvf&rnum=6

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=freespace+group:gnu.cfengine.help&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=11B93F7CB824D411B5610050DA09A2F18A342F%40MSU-NTSVR01&rnum=8


I have read about the model you propose in the cfengine reference
document (regarding /$(site)/$(host) ), but I still don't understand
why we can't do something like:

disks:
   /home  freespace=99%    inform=true

but we have to actually say:

disks:
   /home/somedirectory  freespace=99%    inform=true

And that's not all, 'somedirectory' needs to have at least one file
there!

So, my config looks like:

files:
   /home/.cfengine_freespace/.cfengine  owner=root   group=root   mode=0700   
action=create

disks:
   /home/.cfengine-freespace  freespace=99%    inform=true


But if I want to check: /usr, /home, /var, /tmp

Then I thought I could do:

control:

   FStoCheck = ( usr:home:var:tmp )

files:
   /$(FStoCheck)/.cfengine_freespace/.cfengine  owner=root   group=root   
mode=0700   action=create

disks:
   /$(FStoCheck)/.cfengine-freespace  freespace=99%    inform=true



But it doesn't work, because iteration works only for the section
"files:", but not for "disks:", so the directories and files are
created but the disk space can't be checked so I would have to enter
multiple lines in the "disks" section.


Now, I think that doing this:


disks:
   /home  freespace=99%    inform=true

should be all it is needed, and it seems that Bas van der Vlies agrees
with me:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=XFMail.20020412083148.basv%40sara.nl&rnum=8


But I haven't seen any comment regarding this from Mark, which makes
me wonder if Mark has something else in mind about how should we use
'freespace'.

Mark, please answer, I promise to send you a "FAQ/Hint" entry for the
database :-)


Greetings,
- -- 
Hugo Gayosso
Support the Free Software Movement!
GNU Project <http://www.gnu.org>

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