07-vagrant-provisioning-vs-local-chef-zero.md

Running Vagrant provisioning vs a local chef run

With a working chef converge, this is a good time to talk about using local Chef and running Chef outside via Vagrant. As I am developing/testing a cookbook I personally prefer the local Chef install. It allows for a faster iterations which is great. But when you get your cookbook where you want it to be,vagrant provision is the way to go. For fun let's convert the base cookbook we wrote to the Vagrant file method.

Luckily Vagrant has mounted the /vagrant directory where you did the vagrant up from. Go ahead and do something like the following:

root@chef-book:~/core# cp -r cookbooks/ /vagrant/
root@chef-book:~/core#

This will copy the cookbooks directory from your ~/core working directory into the host file system. Go ahead and drop out of the vm now.

root@chef-book:~/core# exit
logout
vagrant@chef-book:~$ exit
logout
Connection to 127.0.0.1 closed.
[~/vagrant/chef-book] % ls
Vagrantfile cookbooks

As you can see your cookbooks directory is there.

Vagrant Chef Zero

Chef Zero is new, and therefore we need to install a custom provisioner for Vagrant:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-chef-zero

It'll give you a message like this:

Installing the 'vagrant-chef-zero' plugin. This can take a few minutes...
Installed the plugin 'vagrant-chef-zero (0.7.1)'!

Lord it over your friends. They will respect you.

Vagrant File

Next you'll need to open up the Vagrantfile and add the run_list to it so chef-solo can do its magic.

# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# vi: set ft=ruby :
$script = <<SCRIPT
apt-get update
DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get upgrade -y
apt-get install git-core curl build-essential zlib1g-dev libssl-dev libreadline6-dev libyaml-dev -y

echo "America/Chicago" > /etc/timezone # because this is the timezone where I live ;)
dpkg-reconfigure -f noninteractive tzdata
if ! [ -a /etc/chef/client.pem ]; then
  curl -L https://www.opscode.com/chef/install.sh | sudo bash
fi
ntpdate tick.uh.edu
SCRIPT

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "chef-book"
  config.vm.box_url = "http://files.vagrantup.com/precise64.box"
  config.vm.host_name = 'chef-book'
  #config.vm.provision :shell, :inline => $script
  config.vm.provision "chef_solo" do |chef|
    chef.add_recipe "base"
  end
end

Notice I commented out the :shell provisioning and added the chef_solo provisioner. Save this, exit the editor, and run vagrant halt then vagrant up and if needed vagrant provision and you should see something like this:

[~/vagrant/chef-book] % vagrant up
Bringing machine 'default' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
[default] Clearing any previously set forwarded ports...
[default] Creating shared folders metadata...
[default] Clearing any previously set network interfaces...
[default] Preparing network interfaces based on configuration...
[default] Forwarding ports...
[default] -- 22 => 2222 (adapter 1)
[default] Booting VM...
[default] Waiting for machine to boot. This may take a few minutes...
[default] Machine booted and ready!
[default] Setting hostname...
[default] Mounting shared folders...
[default] -- /vagrant
[default] -- /tmp/vagrant-chef-1/chef-solo-1/cookbooks
[~/vagrant/chef-book] % vagrant provision
[default] Running provisioner: chef_solo...
Generating chef JSON and uploading...
Running chef-solo...
stdin: is not a tty
[2013-10-22T15:17:25-05:00] INFO: Forking chef instance to converge...
[2013-10-22T15:17:25-05:00] INFO: *** Chef 11.6.2 ***
[2013-10-22T15:17:26-05:00] INFO: Setting the run_list to ["recipe[base::default]"] from JSON
[2013-10-22T15:17:26-05:00] INFO: Run List is [recipe[base::default]]
[2013-10-22T15:17:26-05:00] INFO: Run List expands to [base::default]
[2013-10-22T15:17:26-05:00] INFO: Starting Chef Run for chef-book
[2013-10-22T15:17:26-05:00] INFO: Running start handlers
[2013-10-22T15:17:26-05:00] INFO: Start handlers complete.
[2013-10-22T15:17:26-05:00] INFO: Chef Run complete in 0.48791292 seconds
[2013-10-22T15:17:26-05:00] INFO: Running report handlers
[2013-10-22T15:17:26-05:00] INFO: Report handlers complete
[~/vagrant/chef-book] %

Hopefully you get the beauty of the built in provisioner. You can select the cookbooks that you'd like to test out, edit the run_list and run the provisioning to get the box how you want. Don't get me wrong there's much more to it, the docs have a ton more, but this is just a basic example.

Now let's move on to your most important tool as a chef; knife.