When the settings catalog is compiled it's possible for file resources to back up files to the filebucket, so it'll call into this code. This all really hinges on when Puppet settings receive their default values; do you think it's possible to reliably have those set before 

To make things more complex, if files are backed up during the settings catalog I think it may be possible for md5 to be used for that catalog, and then after the settings are parsed from conf files then it may switch to a different algorithm. Should we worry about that right now?