[chef] Re: Missing information in the Chef Installation Docs

[Lunixer < >]

I agree that the documentation is not in the proper sequence.

One needs to go back and forth between pages to put the pieces together, but the Chef v11, docs are so much better than v10.

This link contains details to disable the WebUI.
http://www.opscode.com/blog/2013/03/11/chef-11-server-up-and-running/

Chef Server Configuration

The main configuration file for the Chef Server in Chef 11 is /etc/chef-server/chef-server.rb. It uses a Ruby DSL similar to other Chef configuration files, /etc/chef/client.rb, ~/.chef/knife.rb, etc. We’re working on getting all the various settings documented. For now, they’re all defined as attributes in the cookbook used by chef-server-ctl reconfigure. An example will illustrate this.

In the attributes file, we control whether the WebUI is enabled:

 default['chef_server']['chef-server-webui']['enable'] = true

To modify this in /etc/chef-server/chef-server.rb, for example to disable it:

 chef_server_webui['enable'] = false

Note Attributes that have a dash should have it replaced with an underscore in the chef-server.rb config file.

-lun

On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 6:08 AM, Mike Tewner < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

Hi All - 

I think there are important steps missing in the installation documentation.

Following the instructions at http://docs.opscode.com/chef/install_server.html:

At no point do the instructions mention the existence or the requirement of logging in to the web console. This means that:

1. The continuation of the instructions in the workstation setup (http://docs.opscode.com/chef/install_workstation.html) make no sense when it says "Organizations page" and "Account Management"
2. If the user continues without the web interface (using "knife client create, etc), the admin password is never set, meaning that anyone who stumbles over the web interface is able to set it, AFAIK.

In Chef 10, there was a documented option to not install the web interface at all, and there were instructions (such as "knife configure -i" IIRC)  on how to SECURELY complete the installation.

-Mike

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