Problem with failed alternatives

[Frick]

I ran into the issue of "failed" Java alternatives preventing a successful Chef run (failed on line 41 of providers/alternatives.rb) and resolved it per this StackOverflow comment. I wound up adding the following on line 35 of providers/alternatives.rb, but this only pertains to RHEL due to the path. I know the path for Ubuntu is /var/lib/dpkg/alternatives, but not sure for any other platforms. I have my monkeypatch in place, but thought I'd alert you to the issue in case you'd like to solve it properly going forward. I'd submit a pull request, but without knowing the path for any platforms beyond RHEL and Ubuntu leaves a lot to be desired.

      # delete failed alternative if needed
      if !::File.exist?(bin_path) && ::File.exist?("/var/lib/alternatives/#{cmd}")
        Chef::Log.debug "Failed alternative for #{cmd} exists - deleting"
        ::File.unlink("/var/lib/alternatives/#{cmd}")
      end

[carmstrong]

@Frick, how did the machine get in that state? I've heard a few people report this, but haven't come across it myself.

Even though you don't know the fix beyond RHEL and Ubuntu, I would open a pull request with your change anyhow - perhaps we can start a discussion there.

[Frick]

I'm swamped at work, so I'll try to get to providing a pull request over the weekend. I'm not exactly sure what put it in this state, but there was an error (mistyped attribute name on my part) when upgrading the Java cookbook (v 1.16.0 to 1.17.4) that may have caused an attempt to install OpenJDK in place of Oracle's JDK. I'm not even sure how far it got as I killed the chef run as soon as I saw any mention of OpenJDK.

[carmstrong]

I just merged #144 and released cookbook version 1.21.0. Could you update to the latest and see if this is still happening?

[carmstrong]

Closing - please reopen if this is still an issue.

[lock]

This thread has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity after it was closed. Please open a new issue for related bugs.