Jira (PUP-4647) Yum provider uses rpm -e to uninstall packages

Moreover, this is needed because (1) it's expected behavior, and (2) otherwise the puppet-coder must build in cyclical dependencies in his package list.

Consider:

package { 'npm' : ensure => installed }

This will translate to:

yum install npm

will install npm and nodejs. Now consider the coder needs to specify both:

package { 'npm' : ensure => $ensure }

package { nodejs': ensure => $ensure }

What's the proper dependency here? For installation, npm requires nodejs, but for deinstallation, rpm -e will refuse to remove nodejs as long as npm still exists. And vice-versa! nodejs depends by npm: packages can have circular dependencies, but puppet by design disallows that.

Other than redesigning puppet to handle circular dependencies, better to let the package managers act as they are designed to.

(Note: if puppet could detect a circular dependency, then with the example of rpm and yum, it could try to remove both at the same time. But I think I chose a poor example.)

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Trevor Vaughan (JIRA)

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Jul 20, 2019, 6:35:02 PM7/20/19

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Trevor Vaughan commented on

This is still an issue. Discovered when attempting to remove `yp-tools` and `ypbind`

Trevor Vaughan (JIRA)

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Jul 25, 2019, 10:08:03 PM7/25/19

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Trevor Vaughan commented on

Josh Cooper Looks like this may actually be a regression: https://tickets.puppetlabs.com/browse/PUP-1198

Josh Cooper (JIRA)

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Oct 1, 2019, 1:08:05 AM10/1/19

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Josh Cooper updated an issue

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Change By:	Josh Cooper
Team:	Night's Watch

Austin Boyd (Jira)

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Sep 22, 2020, 7:04:04 AM9/22/20

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Change By:	Austin Boyd
Zendesk Ticket Count:	1
Zendesk Ticket IDs:	27935

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Bogdan Irimie (Jira)

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Nov 5, 2020, 3:51:05 AM11/5/20

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Bogdan Irimie (Jira)

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Nov 5, 2020, 3:52:04 AM11/5/20

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Ciprian Badescu (Jira)

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Oct 7, 2021, 5:25:02 AM10/7/21

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Ciprian Badescu updated an issue

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Change By:	Ciprian Badescu
Labels:	needs_repro package type_and_provider

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Sean Millichamp (Jira)

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Oct 8, 2021, 8:17:04 AM10/8/21

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Sean Millichamp commented on

I just came across this ticket and I wanted to add the the documentation specific to the yum provider documents (and has for years) that ensure => absent will not remove dependent packages. For better or for worse, this is a behavior that I have come to rely on as a default for safety reasons, opting to use ensure => purged only when I have done more extensive testing to validate that it is safe and necessary for a particular package.

Latest yum provider docs: https://puppet.com/docs/puppet/7/types/package.html#package-provider-yum
All the way back to 5.5: https://puppet.com/docs/puppet/5.5/types/package.html

I would very much like if Puppet was able to batch up a series of packages and run an "rpm -e" with the whole set, but I realize the current resource/provider design makes that challenging.

When I need to remove a cyclical dependency then I opt into ensure => purged or, if I don't want to risk unknown/unexpected dependencies from being also removed, I'll use an exec. Not the most elegant, but it suffices.

If this behavior does change, I'm not exactly opposed, but it definitely would need to be on a major version as I'd have to reassess every package resource in my environment where I might use absent so I could explicitly specify the rpm provider.

Ciprian Badescu (Jira)

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Oct 20, 2021, 5:19:02 AM10/20/21

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Ciprian Badescu commented on

Since as a user there is an option to use yum to uninstall packages (with ensure => purged), this should satisfy most of use cases.

Ciprian Badescu (Jira)

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Oct 20, 2021, 5:20:02 AM10/20/21

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Change By:	Ciprian Badescu
Labels:	needs_repro package type_and_provider

Ciprian Badescu (Jira)

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Oct 26, 2021, 6:46:01 AM10/26/21

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Josh Cooper (Jira)

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Nov 11, 2021, 1:39:02 PM11/11/21

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Josh Cooper commented on

Given the yp-tools and ypbind example, purged does remove the dependencies of the package as well. So we can install both:

# rpm -q yp-tools ypbind

package yp-tools is not installed

package ypbind is not installed

# puppet apply -e "package { 'yp-tools' : ensure => installed }"

Notice: Compiled catalog for XXX in environment production in 0.29 seconds

Notice: /Stage[main]/Main/Package[yp-tools]/ensure: created

Notice: Applied catalog in 1.33 seconds

# rpm -q yp-tools ypbind

yp-tools-2.14-5.el7.x86_64

ypbind-1.37.1-9.el7.x86_64

And erase/purge them them:

# puppet apply -e "package { 'yp-tools' : ensure => purged }" --debug

...

Debug: Executing: '/usr/bin/yum -y erase yp-tools'

Notice: /Stage[main]/Main/Package[yp-tools]/ensure: purged

...

# rpm -q yp-tools ypbind

package yp-tools is not installed

package ypbind is not installed

So I'm going to close this. Please reopen if I'm missing something.

otheus (Jira)

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Jun 6, 2022, 11:39:02 AM6/6/22

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otheus commented on

josh Hi. I think this issue should be re-opened. (1) purged is doing something other than documented by the type, (2) I thought there was a dependency problem as well, but currently forgetting and unable to reproduce, and (3) it depends on the site-configuration of yum. For instance, if in yum.conf either option is set:

clean_requirements_on_remove=no

remove_leaf_only=yes

You won't see your expected behavior.

For this reason, I created a new provider (for backwards compatibility) to do it this way:

Puppet::Type.type(:package).provide :yumx, :parent => :yum do

  desc "Support via `yum` with better removal support.

...

  def uninstall

    cmd = :rpm

    opts = []

    query if get(:arch) == :absent

    nvr = "#\{get(:name)}-#\{get(:version)}-#\{get(:release)}"

    arch = ".#\{get(:arch)}"

    # If they specified an arch in the manifest, erase that Otherwise,

    # erase the arch we got back from the query. If multiple arches are

    # installed and only the package name is specified (without the

    # arch), this will uninstall all of them on successive runs of the

    # client, one after the other

    # version of RPM prior to 4.2.1 can't accept the architecture as

    # part of the package name.

    unless Puppet::Util::Package.versioncmp(self.class.current_version, '4.2.1') < 0

      if @resource[:name][-arch.size, arch.size] == arch

        nvr += arch

      else

        nvr += ".#\{get(:arch)}"

end

end

    if scan_options(resource[:uninstall_options], 'purge')

      do_purge=true

end

    if do_purge

      opts << "-y"

      opts << "erase"

      opts << "--setopt=clean_requirements_on_remove=yes"

      opts << "--setopt=remove_leaf_only=no"

      yumx opts, nvr

      # The output of this command could be parse to, for instance

      # set the :absent state on dependencies which were marked for

      # removal in the catalog.

      # If they were marked 'present', then print out a warning

    else

      if ! rpm '-q',nvr

        Puppet.warning("#\{self.class}: #\{@resouce[:name]} had already been removed.")

        true

      else

        rpm '-e', nvr

end

end

  end  private  # See  yum's scan_options

  def scan_options(options, key)

    return [] if options.nil?

    options.inject([]) do |repos, opt|

      if opt.is_a? Hash and opt[key]

        repos << opt[key]

end

      repos

end

end

end

Example:

  package { dont_want:  ensure => absent, uninstall_options => 'purge', provider => yumx }