infochimps-labs/ironfan — Issue #112: Modifying users and running processes
Author: dhruvbansal
Created: 2012-03-05 18:27:00+00:00
State: open

The following trouble can occur:

1) `daemon_user` definition sets up a user 'foo' with home directory `node[:foo][:data_dir]`
2) `volumes` recipes haven't run yet so `node[:foo][:data_dir]` is empty; 'foo' user's home directory gets set to /var/run/foo or similar
3) chef client completes, resulting in several running processes owned by the 'foo' user
4) next chef-client run, `node[:foo][:data_dir]` is non-empty as volumes ran on the last chef-client run
5) an attempt is now made to modify the 'foo' user's home directory but fails horribly b/c 'foo' user has running processes.

What's the fix?