[chef] How to set excludes in yum cookbook?

[Cooper Simmons < >]

Hello.

I would like to exclude certain packages in my yum.conf file but I can't figure out how to do it with the Opscode yum cookbook.

I see this in attributes/default.rb:

# Example: override.yum.exclude = "kernel* compat-glibc*"

default[:yum][:exclude]

And this in templates/default/yum-rhel6.conf.erb:

<%- if node[:yum][:exclude] %>

exclude=<%= node[:yum][:exclude].join(" ") %>

<%- end %>

I tried putting this in the attributes:

default[:yum][:exclude] = "kernel*"

But that didn't do anything.

Not sure where to put the override.

I tried putting this in the role override_attributes:  https://gist.github.com/2832357

But that gave me a fatal error:

FATAL: Chef::Mixin::Template::TemplateError: undefined method `join' for "kernel*":String

Can anyone tell me how to add excludes to the yum.conf file with the yum cookbook?

Thanks,

Cooper