I am having trouble understanding the proper way to define my recipe’s attributes and allow for certain ones to be overridden in roles. The classic example is where you have one attribute for the version of an external library and then another attribute that constructs a URL which references the first version attribute. Then, if the version number is overridden, the URL gets updated as well.
The problem is, setting an attribute in a role does not seem to affect other attributes that reference the changed attribute.

Example:

attributes/default.rb

default['noodle']['foo'] = "foo-version-1"
default['noodle']['bar'] = "bar-version-1"
default['noodle']['baz'] = "#{noodle['foo']} & #{noodle['bar']}"

recipes/default.rb

Chef::Log.info "NOODLE: Value for foo = #{node['noodle']['foo']}"
Chef::Log.info "NOODLE: Value for bar = #{node['noodle']['bar']}"
Chef::Log.info "NOODLE: Value for baz = #{node['noodle']['baz']}"

roles/noodle.rb

name 'noodle'
run_list(
  'recipe[noodle]'
)
default_attributes({
    :noodle => {
      :bar => 'bar-version-2'
    }
  })

chef-client run output

INFO: NOODLE: Value for foo = foo-version-1
INFO: NOODLE: Value for bar = bar-version-2
INFO: NOODLE: Value for baz = foo-version-1 & bar-version-1

Using ‘override_attributes’ instead of ‘default_attributes’ doesn’t make a difference:

name 'noodle'
run_list(
  'recipe[noodle]'
)
override_attributes({
    :noodle => {
      :bar => 'bar-version-2'
    }
  })

chef-client run output

INFO: NOODLE: Value for foo = foo-version-1
INFO: NOODLE: Value for bar = bar-version-2
INFO: NOODLE: Value for baz = foo-version-1 & bar-version-1

I have discovered that if I literally set one of those attributes on the node, it gets picked up.

Set node attribute with ‘knife node edit NODE’:

{
  ...
  "normal": {
    "noodle": {
      "foo": "foo-version-NODE"
    }
  },
  "run_list": [
    "role[noodle]"
  ]
}

Then a chef-client run shows:

INFO: NOODLE: Value for foo = foo-version-NODE
INFO: NOODLE: Value for bar = bar-version-2
INFO: NOODLE: Value for baz = foo-version-NODE & bar-version-1

Isn’t this what roles are for? I need to be able to manage attributes like this en masse and in source control (role files). There are several official cookbooks that are designed the same way such as java, couchdb, and munin so it seems like it should be supported somehow.

I need to mount a network drive on a windows vm. I am currently using chef solo to automate the process.

This is what I have in my recipe file:

mount "W:" do
  action :mount
  device "\\\\blazer\\INTAPPS"
end

This does not work and I get the following error messages:

Unable to detect IP6Address ...
chef-client does not have administrator priviledges on node BESTVM.ms.otpp.net. This might cause unexpected resource failures....

I can manually map the drive on the windows vm, but then I need to provide a domain-name-qualified user name and password. Is there a way I can provide the domain name, user name, password to the mount resource? is there an alternate way to mount the drive using chef?

I also tried the following command (as suggested in http://docs.opscode.com/ctl_chef_client.html)

runas /user:my_user_name "cmd /C chef-client"

After I entered password, a window appears and then dissapears. So I don’t exactly know what is happenning in it.

I am an absolute new by to chef, so a detailed answer would be very much appreciated.

Thanks.

Hi
I’m following the opscode tutorial to learn chef, and trying to bootstrap a node with the following command:
knife bootstrap localhost —ssh-user vagrant -ssh-password -ssh-port 2222 —run-list “recipe[apt],recipe[aliases],recipe[apache2],recipe[networking_basic]” —sudo but get this networking error ERROR: Network Error: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it. – connect(2) check your knife configuration and network settings

Can anyone help? Thanks

Whenever I execute chef-solo, I get this error

[2013-03-05T20:59:50+09:00] INFO: Chef 10.18.2 [2013-03-05T20:59:51+09:00] INFO: Setting the run_list to “role[test_ruby]” from JSON [2013-03-05T20:59:51+09:00] INFO: Run List is [role[test_ruby]] [2013-03-05T20:59:51+09:00] INFO: Run List expands to [ADMINS] [2013-03-05T20:59:51+09:00] INFO: Starting Chef Run for sg8tb08208 [2013-03-05T20:59:51+09:00] INFO: Running start handlers [2013-03-05T20:59:51+09:00] INFO: Start handlers complete. [2013-03-05T20:59:51+09:00] INFO: HTTP Request Returned 404 Not Found: Action ‘update’ was not found in DataBags [2013-03-05T20:59:51+09:00] INFO: HTTP Request Returned 403 Forbidden: You are not allowed to take this action.

Recipe Compile Error in /var/chef-solo/cookbooks/ADMINS/recipes/default.rb

Net::HTTPServerException

403 “Forbidden”

Cookbook Trace:

/var/chef-solo/cookbooks/ADMINS/recipes/default.rb:12:in `from_file'

Relevant File Content:

/var/chef-solo/cookbooks/ADMINS/recipes/default.rb:

5: # Copyright 2013, YOUR_COMPANY_NAME 6: # 7: # All rights reserved – Do Not Redistribute 8: # 9: 10: users = Chef::DataBag.new 11: users.name(“users”) 12>> users.save 13: 14: puts “[INFO] Finished!” 15:

[2013-03-05T20:59:51+09:00] ERROR: Running exception handlers [2013-03-05T20:59:51+09:00] ERROR: Exception handlers complete [2013-03-05T20:59:51+09:00] FATAL: Stacktrace dumped to /var/chef-solo/chef-stacktrace.out [2013-03-05T20:59:51+09:00] FATAL: Net::HTTPServerException: 403 “Forbidden”

Below is the procedure I did,

In Chef workstation,

1. Edit default.rb of ADMINS cookbook

   vi /var/chef-solo/cookbooks/ADMINS/recipes/default.rb

   users = Chef::DataBag.new

   users.name(“users”)

   users.save

2. Edit role:

   vi /var/chef-solo/roles/test_ruby.rb

   name ‘test_ruby’

   description ‘This is just a test role, no big deal.’

   run_list ‘recipe[ADMINS]’

3. Run chef-solo:

   chef-solo -c /etc/chef/solo.rb -j ~/chef.json

~/chef.json contents are:

{ “run_list”: “role[test_ruby]” }

I have re-registering the node again, restarting solr, couchdb, rabbitmq and server but the error persists. If not, the error changes to Error 401 “Unauthorized”

UPDATE: ADMINS is a self-made cookbook.

Is it possibly to query a node’s system information gathered by Ohai using the Chef API?

I am following the getting started steps on the wiki to set up a chef server, workstation and a node. I managed to get all 3 of them working, I can see the master server’s webui, I can run ‘knife client list’ on my workstation and my node is in that list.

I then installed the ‘chef-client’ cookbook and tried to upload it to the master server with knife cookbook upload. Now if I execute the following: knife cookbook upload cron chef-client, I get this error message:

Uploading cron         [1.2.2]
/opt/chef/embedded/lib/ruby/1.9.1/net/http.rb:762:in `initialize': getaddrinfo: nodename nor servname provided, or not known (SocketError)
from /opt/chef/embedded/lib/ruby/1.9.1/net/http.rb:762:in `open'
from /opt/chef/embedded/lib/ruby/1.9.1/net/http.rb:762:in `block in connect'
from /opt/chef/embedded/lib/ruby/1.9.1/timeout.rb:68:in `timeout'
from /opt/chef/embedded/lib/ruby/1.9.1/timeout.rb:99:in `timeout'
from /opt/chef/embedded/lib/ruby/1.9.1/net/http.rb:762:in `connect'
from /opt/chef/embedded/lib/ruby/1.9.1/net/http.rb:755:in `do_start'
from /opt/chef/embedded/lib/ruby/1.9.1/net/http.rb:744:in `start'

I am running both server and node as a virtual machine for development purposes. The master server is configured in the knife.rb file as chef_server_url 'https://10.0.1.129'

Does anyone know what is causing this problem?