I have no idea what peice, puppet automation, vlaues, nor yaml mean, and there is no puppet() function in this awk script??? The awk variable value is not defined in this script and comparing the number in field 3 of a line to the entire line as a string (containing something like:

Code:

kernel.sem = 250   32000   32      128250

which is what $undefined_variable will expand to in your awk script with your sample input file) is not what you want. If you want to parameterize the threshold value for changes instead of hard coding it to 300, you need something like:

Code:

value=300
awk -v val="$value" '
/^kernel.sem/ {
	if(($3 + 0) < val)
		sub($3, val "")
	else	exit(1)
}
1' sysctl.conf > sysctl.conf.mod && \
	mv sysctl.conf.mod sysctl.conf || \
	rm sysctl.conf.mod

Please DO NOT use the name sysctl.conf.bkp in this script. It is not a backup file; it is a temp file used as a work area for this script. And, if the number found in the 3rd field on the "kernel.sem" line is greater than or equal to your value variable, it will only contain a subset of your file (since this awk script returns an error status and stops processing input if it is not going to change that line. This file will NEVER contain the original contents of your input file unless your input file does not contain a line that contains the string "kernel.sem"! This leaves the current sysctl.conf in place (instead of replacing it with a copy of itself) if no changes are being made, and runs faster than processing the rest of the file and replacing an unmodified file.

Note that I added an anchor to the ERE selecting the line to be changed in case your configuration file might contain a comment that explains why kernel.conf is being set.