Overview

Chef repo template ready to use with knife-zero.

Read tutorial - Provisioning remote server accessible by SSH with Chef and knife-zero.

Directory structure:

• berks-cookbooks — Chef cookbooks managed by Berkshelf
• site-cookbooks - custom cookbooks
• data_bags — Chef Data Bags
• nodes — Chef nodes (folder with roles for each machine)
• roles — Chef roles (role is a group of recipes and additional attributes)
• environments— Chef environments

Quick start

• edit Berfkshelf include external cookbooks

• install external cookbooks using Berkshelf

berks install

• add roles for your servers

example roles/myrole.json:

{
  "name": "myrole",
  "description": "my sample role",
  "json_class": "Chef::Role",

  "default_attributes": {
    "var1": "some-value-1"
  },

  "run_list": [
    "recipe[chef-cookbook-example-1]",
    "recipe[temp1]"
  ]
}

specify the list of recipes to run and default attributes.

• bootstrap the server (one time)

knife zero bootstrap 11.22.33.44 --ssh-user ubuntu --ssh-password mypass --node-name mynode1

it will create file nodes/mynode1.json with server attributes.

• server attributes

if you have additional attributes for this server - use attributes file (see example servers/myserver.json).

• run provision with attributes

knife zero converge  "name:mynode1"  --ssh-user root --ssh-password root --json-attributes servers/myserver.json --override-runlist "role[myrole]"

it will run all recipes specified in role file 'roles/myrole.json'. Attributes in file servers/myserver.json will override default attributes specified in role.

see more options for knife zero converge here.

Cookbooks

• add custom cookbook

cd site-cookbooks
chef generate cookbook example1

it will create a new folder site-cookbooks/example1 with cookbook.

Roles

• add roles to roles/ folder

Attributes

• attributes for servers

• place in folder /servers