Chef: Handling older Amazon AMI instances running sysklogd instead of rsyslog

default.rb

# In the rsyslog/recipe/default.rb, wrap the "package: command:

# We have to hack around yum dependency resolution since Amazon's Linux AMI is already using sysklogd
# and yum doesn't handle the swap out well enough
if platform?("amazon") && node['platform_version'] == "2010.11.2" # <== This is the version we are running. 
  # This was changed in version 2011.02, so any instances launched after that should be fine.
  # No idea about other version numbers
  cookbook_file "/tmp/yum-shell-rsyslog.yum" do
    source "yum-shell-rsyslog.yum"
    owner "root"
    group "root"
    mode 0644
    not_if { Chef::Provider::Package::Yum::YumCache.instance.installed_version("rsyslog") }
  end

  execute "yum shell - replace sysklogd with rsyslog" do
    command "yum -y shell /tmp/yum-shell-rsyslog.yum"
    action :run
    not_if { Chef::Provider::Package::Yum::YumCache.instance.installed_version("rsyslog") }
  end

  # Clean up after yourself, like your mother taught you to
  file "/tmp/yum-shell-rsyslog.yum" do
    action :delete
  end

else
  # All other systems should be unaffected
  package "rsyslog" do
    action :install
  end  
end

yum-shell-rsyslog.yum

# Thanks to http://www.thatsgeeky.com/2011/02/upgrading-sysklog-to-rsyslog/
install rsyslog
remove sysklogd
run