[chef] Re: Genuinely automatic install of chef server

[Bryan McLellan < >]

On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 8:42 AM, Geoff Meakin Acid
<
 >
 wrote:
>  however I cant seem to install a chef-server automatically.

This is a bit of a chicken or the egg problem.

But first, let's look at a more extreme example. If the goal of Chef
is to automatically build a server for you hands off, should it also
be a DHCP and PXE server for bootstrapping the operating system? What
about physically racking the server? I jest, but the line is in there
somewhere. Chef install directions on the wiki try to start from the
point we believe most people will be with a fresh install of that
operating system.

As AJ points out, you can use chef-solo to configure a chef-server.
There are manual steps though because chef-solo has dependencies, the
most obvious being Ruby.

http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Installing+Chef+Server+using+Chef+Solo
http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Installing+Chef+Client+and+Chef+Solo

There are a number of ways to automate this like Kickstart or some
shell scripts, but they're unique to what OS deployment infrastructure
you have.

If you want to build a Chef server from an existing existing Chef
server, that's a different direction.

Bryan