[chef] Overriding default attributes

[Leonard Messier < >]

Ohai there,

I'm quite new to chef, sorry for the noobish question. Here is my problem :

I had a set of recipes for my developpment machine that I used to run with sudo like this : 

sudo chef-solo -c config/solo.rb -j config/system.json

At some point, I decided to rework it from the ground up with chefspec testing which lead me to understand that using sudo was a very bad idea.

I included the community sudo cookbook in my kitchen, but I don't have a clue on how to override the default attributes being set on it. This is the last content of my system.json file.

{

  "run_list": [ "system::default" ],

  "override_attributes": {

    "authorization": {

      "sudo": {

        "prefix": "/etc",

        "groups": [ "virtualeo" ],

        "users":  [ "virtualeo" ],

        "passwordless": "true",

        "include_sudoers_d": "true"

      }

    }

  }

}

Launching the command in a ubuntu 13.04 that I virtualized for testing, I get the following result :

Starting Chef Client, version 11.4.4
Compiling Cookbooks...

================================================================================
Recipe Compile Error in /home/virtualeo/.oh-my-chef/cookbooks/system/recipes/default.rb

================================================================================


NoMethodError
-------------
undefined method `[]' for nil:NilClass


Cookbook Trace:
---------------
  /home/virtualeo/.oh-my-chef/vendor/cookbooks/sudo/recipes/default.rb:20:in `from_file'

  /home/virtualeo/.oh-my-chef/cookbooks/system/recipes/default.rb:1:in `from_file'


Relevant File Content:
----------------------
/home/virtualeo/.oh-my-chef/vendor/cookbooks/sudo/recipes/default.rb:


 13:  # Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 14:  # distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 15:  # WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.

 16:  # See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 17:  # limitations under the License.
 18:  #
 19:  
 20>> prefix = node['authorization']['sudo']['prefix']

 21:  
 22:  package 'sudo' do
 23:    not_if 'sudo -V'
 24:  end
 25:  
 26:  if node['authorization']['sudo']['include_sudoers_d']
 27:    directory "#{prefix}/sudoers.d" do

 28:      mode    '0755'
 29:      owner   'root'



[2014-02-03T13:54:31+01:00] ERROR: Running exception handlers
[2014-02-03T13:54:31+01:00] ERROR: Exception handlers complete
Chef Client failed. 0 resources updated

[2014-02-03T13:54:31+01:00] FATAL: Stacktrace dumped to /home/virtualeo/.chef/state/cache/chef-stacktrace.out
[2014-02-03T13:54:31+01:00] FATAL: NoMethodError: undefined method `[]' for nil:NilClass

What I understand from this stacktrace is that  « node['authorization']['sudo']['prefix'] » causes the error. 

I guess the solution is pretty straightforward but I'm stuck for now !

Thanks in advance

--
Léonard Messier