[chef] Re: Chef-Server Files

[Daniel DeLeo < >]

On Wednesday, October 5, 2011 at 8:08 AM, Bryan Baugher wrote:
> I was trying to figure this out on my own but I can't seem to find where 
> chef-server keeps cookbook files, (recipes, templates, files....). Although 
> the cookbook_path in server.rb would seem like a good place for them almost 
> none of my cookbooks are there even after I shutdown chef-server. I am also 
> fairly certain they are not somehow held within couchdb. 
In the past (v. 0.8.x and previous) chef-server did store the files there. 
Since 0.9.x chef-server supports having multiple versions of a cookbook 
available simultaneously, so the storage mechanism changed. Cookbooks are now 
stored in two pieces on the server. First, there is a couchdb document for 
each version of a cookbook. This contains the list of checksums of the files 
belonging to the cookbook. Second, there is a "checksum repository" stored on 
disk, located by default in /var/chef/checksums (the configuration setting 
for this is `checksum_path`). The files therein are further organized by the 
first two hex digits of their checksums, e.g., a file may be located at a 
path like /var/chef/checksums/ab/ab00000000.

When you download a cookbook, chef-server fetches the list of checksums from 
couch, then gives you URLs to download the individual files. The client 
(chef-client, knife, etc.) then downloads the individual files as needed by 
making requests to the URLs given by the server.

-- 
Dan DeLeo