[chef] Re: Re: Knifing multiple different chef servers

[KC Braunschweig < >]

Thanks for the inspiration! In my situation i basically just have 2
chef servers, preprod and production. I was just symlinking
~/.chef/knife.rb to the knife config of the server i wanted at the
moment (I didn't really want the files in my repo). Now I've instead
symlinked ~/bin/pknife to /usr/bin/knife and created 1 knife.rb with
this:

if File.basename($0) == 'pknife' then
  <prod-specific stuff>
else
  <preprod stuff>
end

<general configs>

This way by running knife I get preproduction. When I wanna touch
prod, I just use pknife instead. No need to edit any files/symlinks
and its always clear what I'm gonna touch if I forget what state I
left things in. Ruby config files are cool!

KC


On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 6:18 AM, Bryan Brandau 
<
 >
 wrote:
> In my Knife file I'm just using a simple if block like so:
> environment = "Prod"
> #environment = "Stage"
> #environment = "Dev"
> if environment ==" Prod"
> <stuff here>
> elseif environment == "Stage"
> <stuff here>
> elseif environment == "Dev"
> <stuff here>
> end
>
> All I do is change the comment to the environment/application that I want.
>  It's worked well and simple.
>
> On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 7:34 AM, Geoff Meakin Acid
> <
 >
>  wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>> I came across an annoyance in that, I now have set up several chef
>> infrastructures, production/staging/test/dev etc., and opted to have each
>> one have its own chef server as they span different physical locations.
>> However the standard knife client reads its config from /etc/chef/*.pem ,
>> or ~/.chef/*.pem  by default.
>> I notice you can override this to locations of your choice via a knife.rb
>> file, which can be located in $(pwd)/.chef/knife.rb  or ~/.chef/knife.rb or
>> /etc/chef/knife.rb
>> Which is great, as now I can have multiple knife files in different
>> locations, for each of the chef servers (which I've done).
>> Only problem is "knife configure -i" which is the documented way to
>> register yourself as a client of each chef server… this attempts to 
>> override
>> whatever knife.rb file it finds.. not very helpful as I've already
>> configured my various knife.rb files to look at different servers with
>> different 'environment' attributes. I dont want to have all these manual
>> steps of post-configuring knife.rb files, I want my knife.rb files 
>> committed
>> to git so I can just run&go (™)
>>
>>
>> For my solution, I created a bunch of different directories -
>> chef-production / chef-staging / chef-dev etc., and in each of those had a
>> .chef/knife.rb file configuring knife to the correct place.
>> Furthermore, in each of the directories, I had a subdir "setup" with a
>> script which copies the relevant validation/webui.pems into ~/.chef, runs
>> knife against them with no setup/.chef/knife.rb to be found (it doesnt
>> exist), and copies the resultant client.pem out into the correct
>> directories, so each knife client is totally self contained with all its
>> certs. It drives knife configure -i via expect to do this.
>> A bit of jumping through hoops, but it works a treat.
>> However, it strikes me as inelegant and I would be interested to hear your
>> views on how you solved this (for those that did).
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Geoff
>