ADMIN

Chef
Management
Server
Provides recipes
Client
Collects recipes
and executes scripts
Nodes
you need to concentrate on the installation,
particularly server-side.
Who’s the Chef?
Figure 1: Overview of the Chef landscape with the server, clients, and nodes.
The packages for openSUSE are called
ruby, ruby-devel, wget, opensslcerts,
make, gcc, and g++. The certificates
from ssl-cert will be required
later.
According to the how-to [1], Chef
prefers RubyGems version 1.3.6 or
newer, but not 1.3.7. This version
contains a bug that kills the following
installation mid-way. Because most
distributions have an older version of
RubyGems, your best bet is to head
for the source code archive:
cd /tmp
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/U
download.php/69365/rubygems‐1.3.6.tgz
tar zxf rubygems‐1.3.6.tgz
cd rubygems‐1.3.6
sudo ruby setup.rb
If the last command installs the Gems
executable as /​usr/​bin/​gem1.8 (as is
the case with Debian and Ubuntu), a
symbolic link will improve things:
sudo ln ‐sfv /usr/bin/gem1.8 /usr/bin/gem
Now you can issue the following
Gems command to install the Chef
package:
sudo gem install chef
When you run a Gem update, keep
an eye on the JSON Gem. The version
that now comes with RubyGems,
1.4.3, causes an error in Chef. If gem
update installs the offending JSON
package on your disk, these commands
revert to the original version:
sudo gem uninstall ‐aIx json
sudo gem install ‐v1.4.2 json
The steps thus far provide the underpinnings
for Chef operations. Now,
Chef can automate the process of installing
and configuring software, so
it only seems logical to let Chef install
itself. The developers refer to this
process as bootstrapping. Having said
this, recipes that install the server
in this way only exist for Debian 5,
Ubuntu 8.10 or later, and CentOS 5.x.
On any other distribution, you need
to perform all of the steps manually
as described in the [Manual Server
Installation] boxout.
Life is a little easier with one of the
operating systems officially supported
by Chef. To begin, make sure the
computers involved have Fully Qualified
Domain Names (FQDNs), such
as chefserver.example.com. If you
don’t, you will be bombarded with
error messages like Attribute domain
is not defined! (ArgumentError)
later on. Additionally, the repositories
need to provide the runit program in
Manual Server Installation
If you need to set up the Chef server manually, start by installing the
RabbitMQ messaging server [2]. openSUSE users should use the open-
SUSE Build Service to install rabbit-mq [3]. Doing so means that YaST
automatically adds repositories that you need later on.
Once you have RabbitMQ in place, it’s time to start the Chef configuration:
sudo rabbitmqctl add_vhost /chef
sudo rabbitmqctl add_user chef testing
sudo rabbitmqctl set_permissions ‐p /chef chef ".*" ".*" ".*"
The next task on the list concerns the CouchDB database from the
CouchDB package. If needed, you can start the service manually on
openSUSE by typing rccouchdb start. The Chef server also requires
Sun Java SDK version 1.6.0. Some distributions keep this package in an
external or special repository. On Debian, you need to enable the nonfree
package source; on Ubuntu 10.04, you can add the partner repository
like this:
openSUSE goes for zlib-devel and libxml-devel. Now, finally, you
can install the Chef server
sudo gem install chef‐server chef‐server‐api chef‐server chef‐solr
and add the really practical web front end:
sudo gem install chef‐server‐webui
After completing this work, create the /​etc/​chef/​server.rb configuration
file. [Listing 1] gives you a template. As a minimum, you need
to replace the domain name that follows chef_server_url with the
output from hostname ‐f and add a password of your choice after
web_ui_admin_default_password. All the other defaults you can
keep, particularly the paths, which the server automatically creates
later, should the need arise.
In the next step, the script shown in [Listing 2] creates a pair of SSL
certificates, which you will need. The following command line creates
the search index:
sudo add‐apt‐repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ U
lucid partner"
sudo apt‐get update
Now install the JDK. On Debian and Ubuntu, the JDK is hidden away
in the sun-java6-jdk package, whereas openSUSE calls it java-
1_6_0-sun-devel. Users on openSUSE will probably want to delete the
OpenJDK packages java-1_6_0-openjdk and java-1_6_0-openjdkdevel
to be on the safe side.
Then, you just need to install the developer packages for zlib and
libxml. Debian and Ubuntu call them zlib1g-dev and libxml2-dev;
sudo chef‐solr‐indexer
Another command launches the Chef SOLR Server
sudo chef‐solr
and the Chef server itself,
sudo chef‐server ‐N ‐e production
including the graphical web interface:
sudo chef‐server‐webui ‐p 4040 ‐e production
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