[chef] Re: Chef-client as a cron, or as a service, which cookbook?

[Bryan McLellan < >]

On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 11:42 PM, Tim Diggins 
<
 >
 wrote:
> Is there a strong reason for running chef-client as a service rather than a
> cron? The chef-client cookbook's README encourages me to delete the
> validation before installing chef-client. Why would I want to do that?
> There's also a client_service recipe within the chef cookbook as well.
> Options, options. Any pointers?

We've just added a feature in 0.10 [1] so if you were running
chef-client as a daemon, you could run "knife ssh SEARCH sudo killall
-USR1 chef-client" to trigger a client run. If the client is already
in a run, it runs again when finished. If you were running in cron, it
is up to you to manage locking so multiple chef-clients do not run at
once.

The validation key allows the registration of additional clients. By
deleting it, you gain a little additional protection from a malicious
user. The client recipe used to be managed in the chef cookbook, but
because we only ship cookbooks to systems when required now, the
client code was forked into its own cookbook.

Bryan

[1] http://tickets.opscode.com/browse/CHEF-1761