Questions tagged [chef]
Chef is an open source configuration management framework for infrastructure automation.
635
questions
83
votes
7
answers
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views
Why use Chef/Puppet over shell scripts?
New to Puppet and Chef tools. Seems like the job that they are doing can be done with shell scripting. Maybe it was done in shell scripts until these came along.
I would agree they are more readable. ...
- 1,059
57
votes
4
answers
20k
views
Relationship between Vagrant, Docker, Chef and OpenStack (or similar products)?
I am a web developer, but I am also interested in a few administrative tasks. Hence, the new move from pure administration to dev-ops comes handy for me.
Anyway, I have some problems to put a few ...
- 781
55
votes
6
answers
14k
views
Puppet vs Chef, pro and contra from users and use cases [closed]
I already googled and read the "to-puppet-or-to-chef-that-is-the-question" article.
I'm interested in use cases, real world implementations in which people had choosen one or the other on real ...
- 11k
48
votes
1
answer
17k
views
Chef best Practices/Questions
I use and love Puppet. I moved to a new company and they are adopting Chef. So I'm trying to learn Chef but am having a hard time piecing it all together because I still think in Puppet =)
These ...
- 503
40
votes
0
answers
6k
views
What advantages/features does Puppet or Chef offer over Salt (or vice versa)? [closed]
I am looking at rolling out a new configuration management tool to replace our home-grown solution. The defacto standards are Chef and Puppet, both of which are Ruby-centric (though can be used to ...
- 3,437
32
votes
3
answers
14k
views
What are the benefits of running chef-server instead of chef-solo?
I am looking at automated deployment solutions for my team and have been playing with Chef for the past few days. I've been able to get a simple web app up an running from a base Red Hat VM using chef-...
- 625
32
votes
7
answers
31k
views
Do chef and puppet cost money?
I intend to use chef or puppet to do administration (I'm thinking more of chef as it's younger and I get a better feeling about it).
In both home pages I saw there is an "enterprise edition" that ...
- 711
31
votes
2
answers
38k
views
How to find the Chef environment in a recipe?
I want to run a cookbook_file resource only if the current environment is "dev". How can this be expressed?
The documentation suggests this:
In a recipe, a code block like this would be useful:
...
- 5,910
30
votes
2
answers
27k
views
How to automate changed config files during apt-get upgrade in Ubuntu 12
I like to use "knife cloudstack server create ..." to build a new VM. My bootstrap template starts off with an "apt-get update" and "apt-get -y upgrade".
The upgrade then halts with:
10.190.113.11 ...
- 965
29
votes
10
answers
14k
views
Are configuration management tools (Puppet, Chef) capable of keeping installed packages up to date?
This is probably a simple question for those of you already running configuration management tools. Are configuration management tools such as Puppet or Chef the right approach for keeping installed ...
- 4,869
24
votes
3
answers
21k
views
Configuration management: push versus pull based topology
The more established configuration management (CM) systems like Puppet and Chef use a pull-based approach: clients poll a centralized master periodically for updates. Some of them offer a masterless ...
- 2,922
21
votes
6
answers
39k
views
Is there a more elegant way to remotely run chef-client?
This is the way recommended in the Chef Fast Start tutorial:
knife ssh name:mynode -a ipaddress -x ubuntu -i mycredentials.pem "sudo chef-client"
This is really clumsy. Is there really not a better ...
- 5,910
21
votes
2
answers
20k
views
What are the pros and cons of AWS Elastic Beanstalk compared with other deployment strategies?
I'm pretty new to the whole Netflix OSS stack and deployments in general. As a background for my current level of knowledge ops-wise, my main role is as a front-end application engineer. However, I ...
18
votes
5
answers
9k
views
Best practice for testing chef recipes?
My team has created a large number of chef cookbooks. I was wondering what methods and frameworks I should look into so we can start creating tests to assure that our nodes are configured properly?
- 625
18
votes
9
answers
44k
views
How to set ulimits for a service starting at boot?
I need, for mysql to use large-pages, to set a ulimit - I've done this in limits.conf. However, limits.conf (pam_limits.so), doesn't get read in for init, only for "real" shells. I solved this before ...
- 191
17
votes
5
answers
2k
views
When is it appropriate to use a configuration manager (eg Puppet / Chef / Ansible)?
At my current workplace, I look after two VMware host machines, an OpenBSD physical machine, three Debian VM's, and six Windows Server VM's (2008/2012).
I'm considering implementing a configuration ...
- 183
17
votes
2
answers
30k
views
Chef: create a directory for a template if it doesn't already exist
If I have a template being created, how can I ensure that the directory exists? For instance:
template "#{node[:app][:deploy_to]}/#{node[:app][:name]}/shared/config/database.yml" do
source '...
- 1,927
17
votes
5
answers
5k
views
What's the strengths and weaknesses of existing configuration management systems? [closed]
I was looking up here for some comparisons between CFEngine, Puppet, Chef, bcfg2, AutomateIt and whatever other configuration management systems might be out there, and was very surprised I could find ...
16
votes
7
answers
2k
views
What are the right questions to ask when deciding whether to use Chef or Puppet?
I am about to start a new project which will, in part, require deploying many identical nodes of approximately three different classes:
Data nodes, which will run sharded instances of MongoDB.
...
- 1,328
15
votes
2
answers
7k
views
How do I get started with Chef?
The chef documentation is pretty bad. And Google isn't helping me.
Can anyone point me at a decent article or something that would help me get started?
My specific issues are:
How do I get a client ...
- 261
13
votes
4
answers
5k
views
Manage chef cookbooks in a team environment
I'm learning chef and having problems structuring everything to work with my team.
For starters, it seems that you should create a chef-repo folder, where you will store and modify the cookbooks used ...
- 441
13
votes
5
answers
13k
views
Knife SSH doesn't find my nodes
knife ssh isn't finding my nodes. I know it should be able to because when I can search for them I find them
# knife search node name:*
2 items found
Node Name: web_01
...
Node Name: admin
...
...
- 439
13
votes
2
answers
8k
views
chef-solo vs chef-client --local-mode
According to the document I should replace chef-solo by chef-client --local-mode.
Local mode was added to the chef-client in the 11.8 release. If you
are running that version of the chef-client (...
- 707
13
votes
2
answers
8k
views
In chef, how do I access attributes within role files?
I'm able to set attributes in role files as documented but I'm not able to access attributes already set by cookbooks that I'm using.
For example within /roles/appserver.rb:
name "appserver"
...
- 343
12
votes
3
answers
9k
views
Chef bash resource not executing as specified user
I'm writing a Chef cookbook to install Hubot. In the recipe, I do the following:
bash "install hubot" do
user hubot_user
group hubot_group
cwd install_dir
code <<-EOH
wget https://...
- 322
11
votes
2
answers
15k
views
Chef: How to run a resource on notification only?
I'd like to declare a resource that I want to run multiple times on notification and only on notification. How can I prevent the resource to run on its own after it is declared?
Is there some way to ...
- 113
11
votes
3
answers
14k
views
Ansible, Chef, Puppet or ____ : Which has the strongest Windows support and smallest init footprint
We do mostly (but not exclusively) win servers.
Preferably, we can start the OS and do little or nothing to it to make it ready to receive commands (we know we may need to create a base image with ...
11
votes
1
answer
5k
views
Shared files/templates between cookbooks
We have multiple cookbooks which reference the same files and templates and were wondering if there is a reasonable way to ensure all of these are the same file to ensure that none go out of date. Is ...
- 879
11
votes
2
answers
10k
views
Chef recipe order of execution redux
Given the following recipe:
ruby_block "block1" do
block do
puts "in block1"
end
action :create
end
remote_file "/tmp/foo" do
puts "in remote_file"
source "https://yahoo....
- 193
11
votes
1
answer
15k
views
How to ensure a service is running, using Chef?
I am in a situation where Chef might start a service (postgres) but it might subsequently be stopped out-of-band. I want a subsequent Chef run to cause the service to be running. I have tried this:
...
- 296
10
votes
2
answers
12k
views
Best strategy to keep chef cookbooks versions under control
I'm looking for ideas about chef cookbooks versions management. I know that you pin specific versions in the environment, but I'm not sure how to go about it.
We use librarian-chef which installs 3rd ...
- 845
10
votes
1
answer
931
views
Configuration Management overkill for 3 node clusters?
I have 2-3 node clusters for our load balancers and various web applications. I'm having to make the change in QA first, then in staging (on 2-3 servers), then in production (on 2-3) servers. Is a ...
- 295
9
votes
2
answers
633
views
Why use chef-solo on a single instance?
I understand the advantages of using Chef and puppet in a multiserver environment. Its fantastic for enforcing and describing configuration across many servers.
But lets say you have a single server, ...
- 1,599
9
votes
3
answers
6k
views
How can I download Maven artifacts in chef?
I want to do something like this in a chef recipe:
maven_artifact "/opt/foo/my.jar" do
source "com.foo:my:0.1:jar"
end
But I can't find a cookbook which provides this. I've written something which ...
- 245
9
votes
3
answers
24k
views
Chef-client not updating a cookbook from the server
I have a chef cookbook (for apache2). It fails to work on one node. So I'm trying to tweak it and update it, but the node doesn't seem to download the new version. I have been able to upload ...
- 32.3k
8
votes
3
answers
7k
views
How do I provide dpkg configuration parameters to aptitude or apt-get?
When installing gitolite I find that:
# aptitude install gitolite
The following NEW packages will be installed:
gitolite
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 29 not upgraded.
...
user67165
8
votes
2
answers
22k
views
What is the correct way to loop in a Chef (solo) recipe?
Can someone please explain to me how chef works? That is a pretty broad question, so to narrow it down I have this very simple recipe that loops over a list of users and creates each one if they do ...
8
votes
1
answer
5k
views
Chef Server vs Chef Solo [duplicate]
I'm putting together a structure to run a Rails application. The application itself runs on Heroku. However, it makes requests to a cluster, which performs the call through a program in C.
To be able ...
- 349
8
votes
3
answers
3k
views
Chef: encrypted data bags, protecting the encryption key
When you are using the encrypted data bag feature for Chef how do you go about deploying the key to many servers? If you put it into a recipe anyone who has access to any of the chef servers or ...
- 1,599
8
votes
3
answers
4k
views
Idiomatic way to invoke chef-solo?
What is the idiomatic way to invoke chef-solo? Most sites do this:
chef-solo -c ~/solo.rb -j ~/node.json -r http://www.example.com/chef-solo.tar.gz
But that's long. There are a few shorter ways to ...
- 179
8
votes
2
answers
4k
views
Simple Windows+Linux server provisioning? Chef/Puppet/Ansible etc [closed]
I'm primarily a developer, part time devops; and manage servers here and there for my projects.
I want to automate provisioning of web/app/database servers going forward for my projects
I manage a ...
- 231
8
votes
1
answer
4k
views
no default value for required attribute
What is the recommended approach for using an attribute in a resource, like a template, when there is no reasonable default for that attribute. The attribute value is expected to be provided at ...
- 303
7
votes
2
answers
5k
views
debugging chef recipes on opsworks instances - access to custom json / data bag attributes
I'd like to use a chef-shell session on an aws opsworks ec2 server so I can test some environment and instance specific code I'd like to include in a custom recipe. For example, I'd like to see the ...
- 973
7
votes
1
answer
459
views
What are compelling use cases for having both Chef/Puppet and RightScale/Scalr?
I was wondering about the differences between cloud computing management tools and server configuration software as there seems to be an overlap between them. I would like to have some feedback from ...
- 71
7
votes
2
answers
6k
views
Chef cookbook dependencies of dependencies
This might be a simple question - I am trying to install a cookbook (gitlab)
I cloned the cookbook into a folder on my local drive and ran
knife cookbook upload gitlab.
Immediately it threw an ...
- 229
7
votes
3
answers
6k
views
Service doesn't start when using chef
I've written a script which I trigger as a service. When I call service myservice start the service starts fine. However, when the same service is triggered using chef, the service doesnt start.
My ...
- 173
7
votes
4
answers
20k
views
What permissions in IAM do i need to start EC2 instances with chef knife?
Q1: I am trying to create user in IAM AWS console that has restricted permissions only to start new instances using knife ec2 method. Currently only full access with policy "Amazon EC2 Full access" ...
- 3,057
7
votes
1
answer
17k
views
Chef - Howto compute attributes from node specific values?
Let say I have a cookbook which configures and installs a magical deamon:
magical-deamon/recipes/default.rb:
template "/etc/magical-deamon/magical.conf" do
source "magical.conf"
mode 0644
...
- 73
7
votes
3
answers
16k
views
Chef bootstrap giving 401 unauthorized
I'm trying to bootstrap a new chef node by running:
knife bootstrap <server ip> -x lewis -N gitlab --sudo
But I get the following output:
[Mon, 03 Sep 2012 14:45:17 +0000] INFO: *** Chef 10.12.0 ...
- 71
7
votes
4
answers
7k
views
bootstrap (add node) localhost in chef
Problem. Following command line
knife bootstrap 127.0.0.1 -r 'recipe[chef-client]' -x user -p password --sudo
returns
Bootstrapping Chef on 127.0.0.1
WARNING: Failed to connect to 127.0.0.1 -- ...
- 171