[chef] Re: remote Node concept?

[Trotter Cashion < >]

Hey Patrick,

I've got a little ruby gem I've written called spatula that you can install using "gem install spatula". It'll both prepare a remote server by installing all the necessary dependencies for chef-solo to run and ssh into a server and run chef solo. So... maybe it'll fit your needs :-)

Here's a little example of usage:

$ gem install spatula

$ cd your-chef-repo

$ spatula prepare some.remote.box

$ spatula cook some.remote.box node-config-name

That'll prepare the box, rsync your chef-repo over, and then run chef-solo on the box. Let me know if you have any problems.

- Trotter

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 8:17 AM, Patrick Debois < "> > wrote:

Hi list,

I'm rather new to Chef usage. So please forgive for ignorant questions, remarks ;-)

While looking at the functionality in Chef, I'm wondering if there exists a way to manage nodes over ssh.
In the past I've written my own scripts (not recipes obviously) that can be either executed locally or remote (over ssh).

If I understand it correctly, in Chef currently every node has to be a chef-server or chef-client installed. What I'm looking for is a kind of agent-less approach, where recipes get applied over ssh. Hence the idea of a remote Node.

I understand that recipes can be written in ruby, so making them execute remote will be hard if no ruby is installed. Still for the script or commandline execution, file copying and so on, these can be executed over ssh (if they execute commandline equivalents) using plain shell commands. Recipes could be marked as remote if all commands can be executed remote or not.

Another side effect of this capability, is that any device that has ssh and a commandline API (such as vmware, xen, routers, switches, firewalls) can be integrated in Chef without them requiring ruby or anything else.  It would make the tool pass better security guys because it doesn't require any additional software on the devices.

My first thought would be to make chef-solo execute command over an ssh.

What do you guys think of this idea? Wrong assumptions? Worth investigating time in to integrate it in Chef? Or any other ways to tackle this?

Thanks for any feedback ,

Patrick