Chef gives fatal error when running killall in bash

Question

Any ideas on why this snippet in Chef fails?

bash "Stopping service" do
  user #{user}
  cwd "~/"
  code <<-EOH
    killall -q java
  EOH
end

Stacktrace below:

================================================================================
Error executing action `run` on resource 'bash[Stopping service]'
================================================================================


Mixlib::ShellOut::ShellCommandFailed
------------------------------------
Expected process to exit with [0], but received '1'
---- Begin output of "bash"  "/tmp/chef-script20140227-3331-1te6gkd-0" ----
STDOUT: 
STDERR: 
---- End output of "bash"  "/tmp/chef-script20140227-3331-1te6gkd-0" ----
Ran "bash"  "/tmp/chef-script20140227-3331-1te6gkd-0" returned 1


Resource Declaration:
---------------------
# In /home/mcamilleri/cookbooks/stuff/recipes/deploy_jar.rb

 13: bash "Stopping service" do
 14:   user #{user}
 15:   cwd "~/"
 16:   code <<-EOH
 17:     killall -q java
 18:   EOH
 19: end
 20: 



Compiled Resource:
------------------
# Declared in /home/mcamilleri/cookbooks/stuff/recipes/deploy_jar.rb:13:in `from_file'

bash("Stopping service") do
  cookbook_name :stuff
  action "run"
  retry_delay 2
  recipe_name "deploy_jar"
  interpreter "bash"
  code "    killall -q java\n"
  backup 5
  retries 0
  command "\"bash\"  \"/tmp/chef-script20140227-3331-1te6gkd-0\""
  cwd "~/"
  returns 0
end




Running handlers:
[2014-02-27T05:16:17-08:00] ERROR: Running exception handlers
Running handlers complete

[2014-02-27T05:16:17-08:00] ERROR: Exception handlers complete
[2014-02-27T05:16:17-08:00] FATAL: Stacktrace dumped to /var/chef/cache/chef-stacktrace.out
Chef Client failed. 0 resources updated in 0.629887 seconds
[2014-02-27T05:16:17-08:00] ERROR: bash[Stopping service] (stuff::deploy_jar line 13) had an error: Mixlib::ShellOut::ShellCommandFailed: Expected process to exit with [0], but received '1'
---- Begin output of "bash"  "/tmp/chef-script20140227-3331-1te6gkd-0" ----
STDOUT: 
STDERR: 
---- End output of "bash"  "/tmp/chef-script20140227-3331-1te6gkd-0" ----
Ran "bash"  "/tmp/chef-script20140227-3331-1te6gkd-0" returned 1
[2014-02-27T05:16:17-08:00] FATAL: Chef::Exceptions::ChildConvergeError: Chef run process exited unsuccessfully (exit code 1)

Answer 1

It probably means that killall didn't find any java processes to kill, and exited with status code 1.

Status code 0 means success, any other code is some sort of failure.

If you omit the -q flag you'll be able to see the output of the command when Chef fails (or you can login to the box and try it manually), probably something like:

java: no process killed

If you absolutely want this not to fail in any circumstance, add a exit 0 to the end of your script:

code <<-EOH
  killall java
  exit 0
EOH

Answer 2

You can define, what return codes are accepted using the returns parameter

bash "Stopping service" do
  user #{user}
  cwd "~/"
  code <<-EOH
    killall -q java
  EOH
  returns [0, 1]
end