[Pdns-users] CM (Chef) and automatic downloading of packages

[Nick Douma]

Hi,

In December Bert tweeted the thing about the huge amount of packages
downloaded by users.

https://twitter.com/PowerDNS_Bert/status/810468178950320129

It seems that my servers were responsible for at least part of the
traffic. I'm using Chef 12 with the remote_file resource to
automatically check if a new package is available, and if so, download
and install it:

```
remote_file "#{Chef::Config[:file_cache_path]}/#{pkg}" do
    source "#{package_base}/#{pkg}"
    action :create
end
```

Chef is by default configured to use ETag and Last-Modified headers to
determine if a file needs to be downloaded based on the file that is
already present on the system.

The Last-Modified header mechanism doesn't seem to work properly. I
wasn't able to determine if this is something on my end (Chef) or your
end (nginx). Regardless, the following addition disables the
Last-Modified checking and just uses the ETag:

```
remote_file "#{Chef::Config[:file_cache_path]}/#{pkg}" do
    source "#{package_base}/#{pkg}"
    use_last_modified false
    action :create
end
```

This may be of use to other users of Chef and similar systems.

Kind regards,

Nick Douma

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 836 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://mailman.powerdns.com/pipermail/pdns-users/attachments/20170105/b6b9d4c9/attachment.sig>