Template_file bash not executing

Terraform
1

Hello guys, i have a weird problem with my terraform template_file.

i am trying to automate a mongo replicaset, and i have a bash command script to execute this automation during the aws spin up instance, but for some weird reason, it appears that my bash file does not execute, and if i ssh inside my mongo instance, and input manually the code, it runs just fine.

this is the structure of my folder:

.
├── dev.terraform
├── dev.tf
├── output.tf
├── provider.tf
├── scripts
│   ├── init.cfg
│   └── volumes.sh
├── ssh
│   ├── aws
│   ├── aws.pub
│   ├── awssingle
│   ├── awssingle.pub
│   ├── hamza-elaouane-elkkey.pem
│   └── winetricks
├── template
│   ├── db
│   │   ├── init1.sh.tpl
│   │   └── init2.sh.tpl
│   ├── init1.sh.tpl
│   ├── init2.sh.tpl
│   └── init.sh.tpl
├── terraform.tfstate
├── terraform.tfstate.backup
├── variable.tf
└── versions.tf

4 directories, 21 files

and my bash command looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
exec &> /var/mylog
sleep 120;
sudo systemctl enable mongod
sudo systemctl start mongod



mongo --host mongodb://ip-10-0-1-100 --port 27017 --eval 'rs.initiate({_id: "rs0", members: [{_id: 0, host: "ip-10-0-1-100:27017", priority: 2}, {_id: 1, host: "ip-10-0-2-100:27017"}, {_id: 2, host: "ip-10-0-3-100:27017"}]})'
mongo --host mongodb://ip-10-0-1-100 --port 27017 --eval "db.isMaster().primary"
mongo --host mongodb://ip-10-0-1-100 --port 27017 --eval "rs.slaveOk()"


sleep 60; sudo systemctl restart metricbeat
sudo systemctl restart filebeat

sleep 180; sudo filebeat setup -e \
  -E output.logstash.enabled=false \
  -E output.elasticsearch.hosts=['10.0.105.100:9200'] \
  -E setup.kibana.host=10.0.105.101:5601 && sudo metricbeat setup

from my dev.tf in a template_file data i am calling the bash script:

data "template_file" "initdb1" {
  template = "./template/db/init1.sh.tpl"
}

data "template_file" "initdb2" {
  template = "./template/db/init2.sh.tpl"
}

in bash command i tried to exec the output to a mylog file so to try if its working, but nothing has been created and my code is not running.

I dont undersrtand what i am doing wrong as i dont have any error logs to troubleshoot. Any suggestin please?

If you need more info just please let me know, thank you very much

2

Hi @ElAouane,

I’m not sure I fully understand what you’re intending here. :confounded: I don’t see anything in what you’ve shared that would be attempting to execute the script. template_file just constructs a string by substituting some values into it, but your template doesn’t seem to include any template directives. :thinking:

Can you say a little more about your end goal here? For example, do you intend for this to be run on some virtual machine you’ve declared elsewhere in your Terraform configuration?

3

Hi, yeah you are right. What i was trying to do was totally wrong.

My attempt was to run a .sh file in a aws instance, but my template was pointing to a template instead of a “file”

so i had to change my:

data "template_file" "initdb2" {
  template = "./template/db/init2.sh.tpl"
}

to:

data "template_file" "initdb2" {
  template = file("./template/db/init2.sh.tpl")
}

Doing this i was able to run all the command inside my sh file.

4

Great! I’m glad you got it working.

By the way, using template_file without any vars is a bit redundant: it doesn’t do anything useful unless your file contains template directives, and I expect it may even make your life harder here because bash interpolation syntax like ${FOO} matches the Terraform template interpolation syntax, and so you’d end up needing to do extra escaping.

If you just need the literal contents of a file without any template processing, you can just use the file function directly where you need that data. That is, you can replace your data.template_file.initdb2 reference elsewhere in the configuration with file("${path.module}/template/db/init2.sh.pl") instead and get the same result without the data "template_file" block.

1 Like
5

unfortunatly if i change my user data to:

user_data = file("../dev/template/db/init2.sh.tpl")

and spin up my mongodb for the replicaset, it does not work. but if i run it as a template_file it works.

May i ask you a question. In one of my template_file. it looks like this:

#!/bin/bash

sleep 120

cd /home/ubuntu/AppFolder/app

export DB_HOST=mongodb://ip-10-0-1-100:27017,ip-10-0-2-100:27017,ip-10-0-3-100:27017?replicaSet=rs0


node seeds/seed.js

node app.js &

sudo filebeat modules enable nginx

this sh file, its a template_file linked to my app instance, after the spin up, if i ssh in my app instance and type:

printenv

i cant see:

export DB_HOST=mongodb://ip-10-0-1-100:27017,ip-10-0-2-100:27017,ip-10-0-3-100:27017?replicaSet=rs0

is this due to the fact that i am not exporting it as a env variable with $?