Chef Desktop Installation

Set up Automate Server

Prepare the System

Update as well as install the system packages in your clean Linux environment:

apt-get -qq update
apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends
apt-get clean

The Chef Automate installation requires the following mentioned settings.

sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=262144
sysctl -w vm.dirty_expire_centisecs=20000

Download Automate, and install with Desktop Dashboard

Using the below-mentioned command, download the Chef Automate CLI:

curl https://packages.chef.io/files/current/latest/chef-automate-cli/chef-automate_linux_amd64.zip | gunzip - > chef-automate
chmod +x chef-automate

Use the below-mentioned command to deploy the packages:

sudo chef-automate deploy --product automate --product infra-server --product desktop --accept-terms-and-mlsa

Configure the Infra Server

The user needs to run the below-mentioned commands as an administrator, or the user needs to use sudo before each command.

chef-server-ctl user-create USER_NAME FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME EMAIL 'PASSWORD' --filename USER_NAME.pem

Create an organization

chef-server-ctl org-create SHORT_NAME 'FULL_ORGANIZATION_NAME' --association_user USER_NAME --filename ORGANIZATION-validator.pem

The generated user and validator keys need to be transferred to the workstation in the .chef directory.

Set up Cookbook for Windows 10 and macOS platforms

This section introduces the user to the fundamentals of cookbook development and also walks the user through the process of creating, editing, and event testing a simple cookbook.

Developing Cookbooks

Testing is central to good software development. By testing the Chef Desktop cookbook, the user gets the opportunity to detect as well as correct problems before putting the changes into production. Testing saves money and time.

Setup the Development Environment

This step will help the user to prepare their workstation for developing, testing, and deploying the Chef Desktop cookbook.

• Create your local repo
• The user needs a local repository on their workstation in order to store cookbooks and related chef work and to share it with GitHub.
• Use the below command from the command line in your root folder:

chef generate repo my_repo

Make Your First Cookbook

• Create a cookbook

chef generate cookbook my_repo/cookbooks/my_cookbook

• Make necessary changes in the metadata.rb file
  Using the Visual Studio Code, open the repo. The user needs to manage the metadata.rb file. The user then needs to add their contact information and also enter a starting version number for their cookbook.
• Edit the default recipe.
  The user needs to open my_repo\cookbook\my_cookbook\recipes\default.rb in their Visual Studio and add:

Windows:

powershell_script 'get my path' do
  code <<-CODE
  [Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("Path")
  CODE
end

macOS:

bash 'get my path' do
  user 'root'
  code <<-EOH
  echo $PATH
  EOH
end

Testing cookbooks with Test Kitchen

The Chef workstation installs the test kitchen. It also provides Chef Infra, which has a testing harness for cookbooks that uses VMs.

Test Kitchen Integrations

The test kitchen uses a driver plugin architecture to enable the Test kitchen to test the instances on cloud providers such as Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, and Microsoft Azure.

Run Test Kitchen

• Run the virtual devices
  While working with the desktop cookbook that comes with the Chef, the user already has two virtual devices downloaded, also known as testing images. Now, use the below command to get them started:

kitchen create

• Apply the Cookbooks to the images
  Run the below-mentioned command to apply the cookbooks with the base OS image:

kitchen converge

• Verify the settings
  The user needs to make sure that the converged code is the code that the user meant to apply. In VSCode, navigate to the test\integration\default directory and examine the generated integration tests. The user must go through these tests carefully and make the necessary changes to match the setting to the changes in the default.rb file. Then run:

kitchen verify

If in case any of the test fails, then the user needs to check the output and compare the settings in mac.rb or windows.rb files against the matching tests.

• Cleanup
  Once the user is done with testing, the user can run the below-mentioned command in order to delete the running test images:

kitchen destroy

Set up policy

Upload the Chef Desktop Cookbook

The user needs to upload their Chef Desktop Cookbook to their Chef Infra Server. The user needs to navigate to the /cookbooks from the development environment command line and then run:

knife cookbook upload <your cookbook name>

Since knife and many other Chef tools use the cookbook name that is specified either inside the metadata.rb file or the policyfile.rb file, which is case-sensitive. 

Configure and upload the Policyfile to Chef Server

The user needs to check the Policyfile and then apply it to the test nodes. Policies are a convenient strategy for managing nodes.

Check the Policyfile

The user's Chef Desktop Policyfile.rb needs to look similar to:

name 'desktop-config-lite'

# default_source :supermarket, 'https://supermarket.chef.io' do |s|
# s.preferred_for 'chef-client'
# end
cookbook 'desktop-config-lite', '~> 1.2.6'

# run_list: chef-client will run these recipes in the order specified.
# cookbook::recipe
run_list 'desktop-config-lite::default'

# Specify a custom source for a single cookbook:
# cookbook 'custom-cookbook', '.'

This uses the desktop-config-lite cookbook from Chef Supermarket and run the default recipe.

Upload the Policyfile

The user needs to upload the Policyfile to the Chef Infra Server. The user needs to call the chef update in order to do some needed housekeeping around the policyfile.

If the user is using the Policyfile for the first time, then use the Chef install command to generate a lock file:

chef install Policyfile.rb

The user must run chef update and chef push every time the user needs to update the version of the cookbook:

chef update
chef push 'my_Policy_Group' 'Policyfile.rb'

Deploying Desktop Cookbook to a Node

Configure the node

Once the user has uploaded the policy to the server, the user is then ready to try the Chef Desktop cookbook on their first node. Before that, the user needs to:

Bootstrap the First Test Node

• The user needs to create a client.rb.file that has the basic information required to connect to the Chef Infra Server instance.
• Identify a 'test node'- a VM or laptop/desktop that the user can test their working cookbook against.
• Get the serial number of the 'test node'

The user needs to configure the server and the client.rb file for their node from the workstation.

Install the Chef Infra Client

The user has to go to their test node and then install the Chef Infra Client from an elevated PowerShell window or by using the keyword sudo if working on macOS.

Windows

. { iwr -useb https://omnitruck.chef.io/install.ps1 } | iex; install -project chef

macOS

sudo bash -c "$(curl -sL https://chef.io/chef/install.sh)"

Load the client.rb

Once the Chef Infra Client is done with the installation, copy the client.rb file with the correct data for the node and Chef Infra server, and place that in c:\chef.

Load the Key

After that, copy the validator.pem file that the user has downloaded from the Chef Infra Server and place it in the same folder.

Set up a quick demo

This section will help the user set up a demonstration setup that the user can use to evaluate a trial version of the product.

Setting up the local system

There are some pre-written Terraform modules that the user can run on their system to create a demonstration setup on the AWS cloud, but for that, the user first needs to set up their local workstation.

Set up modules on the local system

The two ways through which the user can get the modules are:

• Using this link, the user can directly get the modules
• The user can clone the module from the public repository on GitHub.

If the user wants to get the modules from the public GitHub repository, then the user can simply run the below-mentioned command, provided that the git tool is already installed on the system.

git clone https://github.com/chef/chef-desktop-quick-setup

After this, the user needs to install the tools which are required to support the modules:

• Chef Workstation: it is required as it installs the chef tools that are necessary to create the chef-repo, install cookbooks, push the policies to the created server, as well as set up the local chef configuration.
• Terraform: it is used to run the modules.
• AWS CLI: it is required as the terraform needs this to communicate with the cloud provider.
• PuTTy for Windows: it is required only when the system is running on windows, as the terraform modules use this to get keys from the server.

Setting up the cloud provider configuration in the system

The user needs to make sure that they are logged in through the command line tool for the cloud provider in order to create the instances in the cloud through terraform. In case of AWS, the user can simply install the AWS CLI and follow the login instructions.

Run the modules

After configuring the CLI, the user can navigate to the aws directory where the files for AWS are present. After that, rename the file terraform.tfvars.example to terraform.tfvars. Now the user is all set to run the following command that creates an Automate server and set up endpoints running Windows.

terraform apply -target=module.automate -target=module.nodes

The command mentioned above will set up the server, create a chef-repo with the free version of the Chef Desktop cookbook, push the policy to the server, create a node and apply the policy to it and run the chef-client on it. Once it's done, the user can access the dashboard to see the report.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which command can be used to delete the running test images once the user has finished testing?

The 'kitchen destroy' command can be used to delete the running test images once the user has finished testing.

Mention the commands that must be run every time the user updates the cookbook's version.

The 'chef update' and 'chef push' commands must be run every time the user updates the cookbook's version.

What is the use of the client.rb file?

The client.rb file has the basic information which is needed to connect to the Chef Infra Server instance.

Conclusion

In this article, we have extensively discussed the Chef Desktop Installation.

After reading about the Chef, are you not feeling excited to read/explore more articles on Configuration Management? Don't worry; Coding Ninjas has you covered. To learn about what ansible is, what is ansible YAML syntax and how errors are handled in the ansible playbook. 

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