Terraform: 0.7.1 regression: template_file: unknown variable accessed: ulimit

[jasonf20]

Today I tried to upgrade from the latest 0.6 release to 0.7.1 and there seems to be a bug I can't get around.

I am using a template_file resource (now change to data instead of resource) in this file I have the following line:

  - echo "* soft nofile ${ulimit}" >> /etc/security/limits.conf

And of-course I pass the argument to the template file:

vars {
      ulimit = "40000"
    }

When I run an apply I get the following error:

 data.template_file.cloud-init: failed to render : 98:28: unknown variable accessed: ulimit

This all works perfectly fine in 0.6 but not in 0.7.1

Here is a link to my debug output: https://gist.github.com/jasonf20/d836763cec4e194458534e7f6c6d1148

EDIT: See my update below the issue is resolved for me but I have no idea why. Feel free to close this issue or use it to chat about the cause of this error message.

[jasonf20]

Update: This does not fail when trying to create a small template file example. It only fails when this is part of a more complicated system. In my case the template file is inside a module and I'm using this module from another tf file. I'm not sure exactly what the conditions to duplicate are :(

[pdecat]

Hi @jasonf20, I had a similar issue yesterday, but the cause was that I had an error like the following:

variable foo {
  default = "${bar}" # should be ${var.bar}
}

vars {
      foo = "${var.foo}"
}

Yet, terraform was complaining about unknown variable accessed: foo instead of unknown variable accessed: bar.

The difference with your issue is that you have no interpolation when defining ulimit.
Is that really the case?

[jasonf20]

@pdecat Thanks for the comment. I don't think that is really the issue for me since:

1. It works for me in 0.6.16
2. I don't have interpolation in the definition of ulimit (I did, but I removed it to be sure it's not the issue)

[jasonf20]

Update: The issue seemed to resolve itself for me. Perhaps something completely unrelated that I changed fixed this. However, even if this is the case, the error message I got is really bad and did not lead me to the issue at hand. Therefore there is still something that needs fixing here.

[mluedke]

I hit a similar problem when using "count" interpolation. For example when I try to reference ${myvar} from a rendered template like so:

data "template_file" "kube-apiserver" {
  count = "${var.nodes}"
  template = "${file("mytemplate.tpl")}"
  vars {
    myvar = "value"
  }
}

mytemplate.tpl:

value: ${myvar}

My workaround was to slightly re-factor so that I could remove the count interpolation.

[denis-kalinin]

I confirm that template_file in module with count interpolation throws this exception.

[svperfecta]

I'm getting errors too. Specifically when I have one interpolated string, which is used inside another.

[mitchellh]

This is fixed in 0.8!

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