Irritating chef-client zombie lock
Occasionally attempting to run chef-client will result in the message INFO: Chef client is running, will wait for it to finish and then run.. Yet a cursory ps aux | grep chef will show no running chef-client. Recovering from this involves first locating the lock file and then explicitly killing the process associated with it.
$ sudo -i find /var/ -iname "*chef*" -print | grep client /var/chef/cache/cookbooks/chef-client /var/chef/cache/cookbooks/chef-client/templates/default/debian/default/chef-client.erb /var/chef/cache/cookbooks/chef-client/templates/default/debian/init.d/chef-client.erb /var/chef/cache/cookbooks/chef-client-wrapper /var/chef/cache/cookbooks/chef-client-wrapper/templates/default/chef-client.erb
$ sudo -i lsof /var/chef/cache/chef-client-running.pid COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME chef-clie 32098 root 7uW REG 8,17 0 70386635 /var/chef/cache/chef-client-running.pid
$ kill -15 32098
Then re-run chef-client and all should be fine.
