[chef] Re: Re: Re: A question about override_attributes

[Daniel DeLeo < >]

On Tuesday, May 28, 2013 at 8:48 AM, JJ Asghar wrote:

It looks like this can work:

(snip) 

I believe when you edit a node you want to set the precedence to be "normal" level attribute which is above the default attribute level.

I don't believe override attributes can be edited in the node data.  

This is correct, you cannot meaningfully edit override attributes per-node. Default and override attributes are designed to belong to cookbooks/roles/environments, so they are cleared by chef-client at the beginning of each chef-client run. This ensures that attributes you've removed from cookbooks/roles/environments are also deleted from clients.

Generally, it's better to define attributes on roles (or "role cookbooks" if you're into that) instead of munging the node data to make a snowflake node. This makes it clear why one particular node has a different behavior than others with the same cookbook(s).

-- 

Daniel DeLeo