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This guide contains common configuration options used when setting up a new Chef Workstation installation. If you do not have Chef Workstation installed, see its installation guide before proceeding further.

Configure Ruby Environment

For many users of Chef, the version of Ruby that is included in Chef Workstation should be configured as the default version of Ruby on your system.

1. Open a terminal and enter the following:

   which ruby
   

   which will return something like /usr/bin/ruby.

2. To use Chef Workstation-provided Ruby as the default Ruby on your system, edit the $PATH and GEM environment variables to include paths to Chef Workstation. For example, on a machine that runs Bash, run:

   echo 'eval "$(chef shell-init bash)"' >> ~/.bash_profile
   

   where bash and ~/.bash_profile represents the name of the shell.

   If zsh is your preferred shell then run the following:

   echo 'eval "$(chef shell-init zsh)"' >> ~/.zshrc
   

3. Run which ruby again. It should return /opt/chef-workstation/embedded/bin/ruby.

Add Ruby to $PATH

Chef Infra Client includes a stable version of Ruby as part of its installer. The path to this version of Ruby must be added to the $PATH environment variable and saved in the configuration file for the command shell (Bash, csh, and so on) that is used on the machine running Chef Workstation. In a command window, type the following:

echo 'export PATH="/opt/chef-workstation/embedded/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.configuration_file && source ~/.configuration_file

where configuration_file is the name of the configuration file for the specific command shell. For example, if Bash were the command shell and the configuration file were named bash_profile, the command would look something like the following:

echo 'export PATH="/opt/chef-workstation/embedded/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile && source ~/.bash_profile

Create the Chef repository

Use the chef generate repo to create the Chef repository. For example, to create a repository called chef-repo:

chef generate repo chef-repo

Create .chef Directory

The .chef directory is used to store three files:

• config.rb
• ORGANIZATION-validator.pem
• USER.pem

Where ORGANIZATION and USER represent strings that are unique to each organization. These files must be present in the .chef directory in order for Chef Workstation to be able to connect to a Chef Infra Server.

To create the .chef directory:

1. In a command window, enter the following:

   mkdir -p ~/chef-repo/.chef
   

   Note that you’ll need to replace chef-repo with the name of the repository you created previously.

2. After the .chef directory has been created, the following folder structure will be present on the local machine:

   chef-repo/
      .chef/        << the hidden directory
      certificates/
      config/
      cookbooks/
      data_bags
      environments/
      roles/
   

3. Add .chef to the .gitignore file to prevent uploading the contents of the .chef folder to GitHub. For example:

   echo '.chef' >> ~/chef-repo/.gitignore
   

Install a Code Editor

A good visual code editor is not a requirement for working with Chef Infra, but a good code editor can save you time. A code editor should support the following: themes, plugins, snippets, syntax Ruby code coloring/highlighting, multiple cursors, a tree view of the entire folder/repository you are working with, and a Git integration.

These are a few common editors:

• Visual Studio Code (free/open source)
• GitHub Atom - (free/open source)

Chef Infra support in editors:

• VSCode Chef Infra Extension
• Chef on Atom

Starter Kit

If you have access to Chef Infra Server through Automate or Chef Manage, you can download the starter kit. The starter kit will create the necessary configuration files: the .chef directory, config.rb, ORGANIZATION-validator.pem, and USER.pem. Simply download the starter kit and then move it to the desired location on your Chef Workstation machine.

Configure the Chef Repository

With WebUI

Use the following steps to manually set up the chef-repo and to use the Chef management console to get the .pem and config.rb files.

Get Config Files

For a Chef Workstation installation that will interact with the Chef Infra Server (including the hosted Chef Infra Server), log on and download the following files:

• config.rb. This configuration file can be downloaded from the Organizations page.
• ORGANIZATION-validator.pem. This private key can be downloaded from the Organizations page.
• USER.pem. This private key can be downloaded from the Change Password section of the Account Management page.

Move Config Files

The config.rb, ORGANIZATION-validator.pem, and USER.pem files must be moved to the .chef directory after they are downloaded from the Chef Infra Server.

To move files to the .chef directory:

1. In a command window, enter each of the following:

   cp /path/to/config.rb ~/chef-repo/.chef
   

   and:

   cp /path/to/ORGANIZATION-validator.pem ~/chef-repo/.chef
   

   and:

   cp /path/to/USERNAME.pem ~/chef-repo/.chef
   

   where /path/to/ represents the path to the location in which these three files were placed after they were downloaded.

2. Verify that the files are in the .chef folder.

Without WebUI

Use the following steps to manually set up the Chef repository: On your Chef Infra Server, create the ORGANIZATION-validator.pem and USER.pem files with the chef-server-ctl command line tool. Then, on your workstation create the config.rb file with the knife tool.

Create an Organization

On the Chef Infra Server machine create the ORGANIZATION-validator.pem from the command line using chef-server-ctl. Run the following command:

chef-server-ctl org-create ORG_NAME ORG_FULL_NAME -f FILE_NAME

where

• The name must begin with a lower-case letter or digit, may only contain lower-case letters, digits, hyphens, and underscores, and must be between 1 and 255 characters. For example: chef
• The full name must begin with a non-white space character and must be between 1 and 1023 characters. For example: "Chef Software, Inc."
• -f FILE_NAME: Write the ORGANIZATION-validator.pem to FILE_NAME instead of printing it to STDOUT. For example: /tmp/chef.key.

For example, an organization named chef, with a full name of Chef Software, Inc., and with the ORGANIZATION-validator.pem file saved to /tmp/chef.key:

chef-server-ctl org-create chef "Chef Software, Inc." -f /tmp/chef.key

Create a User

On the Chef Infra Server machine create the USER.pem from the command line using chef-server-ctl. Run the following command:

chef-server-ctl user-create USER_NAME FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME EMAIL PASSWORD -f FILE_NAME

where

• -f FILE_NAME writes the USER.pem to a file instead of STDOUT. For example: /tmp/grantmc.key.

For example: a user named grantmc, with a first and last name of Grant McLennan, an email address of grantmc@chef.io, a poorly-chosen password, and a USER.pem file saved to /tmp/grantmc.key:

chef-server-ctl user-create grantmc Grant McLennan grantmc@chef.io p@s5w0rD! -f /tmp/grantmc.key

Move .pem Files

Download the ORGANIZATION-validator.pem and USER.pem files from the Chef Infra Server and move them to the .chef directory.

To move files to the .chef directory:

1. In a command window, enter each of the following:

   cp /path/to/ORGANIZATION-validator.pem ~/chef-repo/.chef
   

   and:

   cp /path/to/USERNAME.pem ~/chef-repo/.chef
   

   where /path/to/ represents the path to the location in which these three files were placed after they were downloaded.

2. Verify that the files are in the .chef folder.

Create the config.rb File

Navigate to the ~/chef-repo/.chef directory and create the config.rb using the knife configure tool. The file must be created in the .chef folder. It should look similar to:

current_dir = File.dirname(__FILE__)
log_level                :info
log_location             STDOUT
node_name                'node_name'
client_key               "#{current_dir}/USER.pem"
validation_client_name   'ORG_NAME-validator'
validation_key           "#{current_dir}/ORGANIZATION-validator.pem"
chef_server_url          'https://api.chef.io/organizations/ORG_NAME'
cache_type               'BasicFile'
cache_options( :path => "#{ENV['HOME']}/.chef/checksums" )
cookbook_path            ["#{current_dir}/../cookbooks"]

At a minimum, you must update the following settings with the appropriate values:

• client_key should point to the location of the Chef Infra Server user’s .pem file on your Chef Workstation machine.
• validation_client_name should be updated with the name of the desired organization that was created on the Chef Infra Server.
• validation_key should point to the location of your organization’s .pem file on your Chef Workstation machine.
• chef_server_url must be updated with the domain or IP address used to access the Chef Infra Server.

See the knife config.rb documentation for more details.

Get SSL Certificates

Chef Server 12 and later enables SSL verification by default for all requests made to the server, such as those made by knife and Chef Infra Client. The certificate that is generated during the installation of the Chef Infra Server is self-signed, which means there isn’t a signing certificate authority (CA) to verify. In addition, this certificate must be downloaded to any machine from which knife and/or Chef Infra Client will make requests to the Chef Infra Server.

Use the knife ssl fetch subcommand to pull the SSL certificate down from the Chef Infra Server:

knife ssl fetch

See SSL Certificates for more information about how knife and Chef Infra Client use SSL certificates generated by the Chef Infra Server.

Verify Server Communication

To verify that Chef Workstation can connect to the Chef Infra Server:

1. In a command window, navigate to the Chef repository:

   cd ~/chef-repo
   

2. In a command window, enter the following:

   knife client list
   

   to return a list of clients (registered nodes and Chef Workstation installations) that have access to the Chef Infra Server. For example:

   chefdk_machine
   registered_node
   

Ad-hoc remote execution with chef-run

The chef-run utility allows you to execute ad-hoc configuration updates on the systems you manage without setting up a Chef server. With chef-run, you connect to servers over SSH or WinRM, and you can apply single resources, recipes, or even entire cookbooks directly from the command line.

Example: Installing NTP Server

Chef Workstation combines the power of InSpec and chef-run, giving you the ability to easily detect and correct issues on any target instance. One common task that administrators perform in their environments is installing the Network Time Protocol (NTP), which keeps the clocks in sync between servers. InSpec allows us to check if the package is installed with a query, using the InSpec package resource:

describe package('ntp') do
  it { should be_installed }
end

Chef also provides a single-resource solution to install the Network Time Protocol package:

package 'ntp' do
  action :install
end

With chef-run, you can run the resource directly from the command-line, converging your targets with a single resource, without creating a cookbook or recipe:

chef-run myhost package ntp action=install

Combined with executing an InSpec scan to validate successful package installation, we have everything we need to define our requirements, and make sure they’re met with two simple commands, either locally or remotely.

inspec exec ntp-check -t ssh://myuser@myhost -i ~/.ssh/mykey

chef-run -i ~/.ssh/mykey myuser@myhost package ntp action=install

Recipe and Multi-Node Convergence

Use chef-run to execute Chef recipes and cookbooks as well, and run it against multiple targets in parallel. Here are a few examples of chef-run in action:

Example: Recipe execution on multiple targets

Run the default recipe from the defined cookbook against two resources: myhost1 & myhost2.

chef-run myhost1,myhost2 /path/to/my/cookbook

Example: Alternate Recipe syntax and targets defined by a range

Run the my_cookbook::my_recipe cookbook against twenty resources: myhost1 through myhost20

chef-run myhost[1:20] my_cookbook::my_recipe

Further Reading

• Chef Run CLI Reference
• Introducing Chef Workstation
• Chef Workstation - How We Made that Demo