Testing/Writing Chef Cookbooks

Writing cookbooks

Cookbooks has attributes, recipes, templates etc


Using Community cookbooks

1. Modify Berksfile in the cookbook by adding cookbook name, say, cookbook 'yum-centos', '~> 3.0.0'
2. Modify metadata.rb in cookbook by updating dependencies, say, depends 'yum-centos', '~> 3.0.0'
3. Execute below commands

$ berks install
$ berks upload

Prerequisites

Make sure we have below configs/files

• Chef cookbook
• Chef Environment
• Chef Role

Testing cookbook locally

1. Install vagrant from https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html
2. Install Virtualbox
3. Modify .kitchen.yml file referring to community cookbook recipe to test locally.
4. Goto cookbook directory and execute kitchen commands to build, list, login to new created resource from chef cookbooks.

$ kitchen converge
$ kitchen list
$ kitchen login

Update authentication key
# Connect to chef server 

[pd@ip-disects ~]$ ssh -A -t SSH_SERVER_IP 

# Following commands are executed on chef server 

[pd@ip-disects ~]$ sudo chef-server-ctl user-create praveend Praveen Darshanam praveend@chef.io Myp@ssw0rd -f /tmp/praveend.key 

ERROR: Conflict 

Response: Username or email address already in use. 

[pd@ip-disects ~]$ sudo chef-server-ctl user-delete praveend 

Do you want to delete the user praveend? (Y/N) y 

Checking organization memberships... 

Checking admin group memberships for 1 org(s). 

FATAL: praveend is in the 'admins' group of the following organization(s): 

- disects



Run this command again with the --remove-from-admin-groups option to remove the user from these admin group(s) automatically. 

[pd@ip-disects ~]$ sudo chef-server-ctl user-delete praveend --remove-from-admin-groups 

Do you want to delete the user praveend? (Y/N) y 

Checking organization memberships... 

Checking admin group memberships for 1 org(s). 

Removing praveend from admins group of 'disects' 

Deleting user praveend. 

[pd@ip-disects ~]$ sudo chef-server-ctl user-create praveend Praveen Darshanam praveend@chef.io Myp@ssw0rd -f /tmp/praveend.key 

[pd@ip-disects ~]$ sudo chef-server-ctl org-user-add disects praveend --admin 

User praveend is added to admins and billing-admins group


Upload working cookbook to chef server after local testing. Test the cookbook on a cluster node to make sure everything is working fine, this needs some experience though.

$ knife cookbook upload cookbook_name