05-chef-zero.md

chef-zero

So we have a working disposable vm with with Vagrant now?

Great, let's actually start playing with Chef.

We're going to start with chef-zero (or chef-client that uses a local server), which, believe it or not, can cover 75-85% of the use cases of Chef. Keep this in mind as you go through this book, because if it fits there may be no need to go farther.

Since we installed the chef-dk during our vm-setup, we already have the chef-client with chef-zero.

Restart your Vagrant box with vagrant up if you have stopped or destroyed it. Type these following commands in to confirm we are set up correctly.

Let's run chef-zero:

[~/vagrant/chef-book] % vagrant ssh
Welcome to Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.2.0-23-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com/
Welcome to your Vagrant-built virtual machine.
Last login: Sat Jun 28 10:35:10 2014 from 10.0.2.2
vagrant@chef-book:~$ sudo su -
root@chef-book:~# chef-client -z
[2014-06-28T12:42:31-07:00] WARN: No config file found or specified on command line, using command line options.
[2014-06-28T12:42:31-07:00] WARN: No cookbooks directory found at or above current directory.  Assuming /root.
[2014-06-28T12:42:31-07:00] WARN:
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
SSL validation of HTTPS requests is disabled. HTTPS connections are still
encrypted, but chef is not able to detect forged replies or man in the middle
attacks.

To fix this issue add an entry like this to your configuration file:

  # Verify all HTTPS connections (recommended)
  ssl_verify_mode :verify_peer

  # OR, Verify only connections to chef-server
  verify_api_cert true

To check your SSL configuration, or troubleshoot errors, you can use the
`knife ssl check` command like so:

  knife ssl check -c


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Starting Chef Client, version 11.14.0.alpha.1
resolving cookbooks for run list: []
Synchronizing Cookbooks:
Compiling Cookbooks...
[2014-06-28T12:42:33-07:00] WARN: Node chef-book has an empty run list.
Converging 0 resources

Running handlers:
Running handlers complete

Chef Client finished, 0/0 resources updated in 1.523881501 seconds
root@chef-book:~#

A few complaints about SSL, but other than that... nothing really happened. Chef, uses a compiled top down set of instructions, or recipes, to build a machine how you want it to be. You can see that this process starts with the Compiling Cookbooks... line. But there's nothing to compile.

Let's take a minute to silence those SSL warnings. Since we're working locally with throwaway VMs, we can tell Chef to only use SSL when communicating with their hosted API. We do this by creating a configuration file used by chef-zero:

root@chef-book:~# mkdir -p ~/.chef
root@chef-book:~# vim ~/.chef/knife.rb

and add the following line:

verify_api_cert true

Re-run chef-client and the SSL warnings should be gone.

root@chef-book:~# chef-client -z
[2014-06-28T12:42:31-07:00] WARN: No cookbooks directory found at or above current directory.  Assuming /root.
Starting Chef Client, version 11.14.0.alpha.1
resolving cookbooks for run list: []
Synchronizing Cookbooks:
Compiling Cookbooks...
[2014-06-28T12:42:33-07:00] WARN: Node chef-book has an empty run list.
Converging 0 resources

Running handlers:
Running handlers complete

Chef Client finished, 0/0 resources updated in 1.523881501 seconds
root@chef-book:~#

Now let's go on to actually making Chef do something!

Move on to A simple cookbook