Chef conditional execute in recipe

It should be running in sequence. If you're getting that error, I think you may be having an issue in the bash block.

In any case, you can do a "only_if" in the template. Something like:

template "<config dir>/inspircd.conf" do
  source "inspircd.conf.erb"
  ....
  only_if "test -d <config dir>" 
end

http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Resources#Resources-ConditionalExecution

I assume you've set up roles for web server, database server, etc.

Something like this in the app server recipe:

dbservers = Array.new

search(:node, "role:database_server") do |n|
  n["network"]["interfaces"]["eth0"]["addresses"].each_pair do |address,value|
    dbservers << address if value.has_key?("broadcast")
  end if n["network"]["interfaces"]["eth1"]
end

template "/path/to/app/config/appserver.conf" do
  source 'appserver.conf.erb'
  owner 'foo'
  group 'bar'
  mode 0644
  variables :dbservers => dbservers
end

Then your template will have something like:

<% @dbservers.each do |s| -%>
  connect_to_mysql_at_ip <%= s %>
<% end -%>

There might be a nicer way to get the IP address with Chef 0.10. I think the above code may have Chef 0.9 legacy in it, but it does work.