[chef] Export/Import clients from one chef server to another

[Chris Sibbitt < >]

Hello. I’m preparing to upgrade from Chef Server 10 to 11 on a newly built server and I’m looking for a way to export/import my node and client records so that all of the machines do not need to be re-keyed. The problem I’m running into is that I can’t seem to find a way to explicitly set the public key of a client. I tried `knife client edit` and it looks like it would work, but it actually doesn’t change the key. I’ve also tried in shef by using the API to pull down a client object, update the client.public_key and then save it back, and that doesn’t work either.

 

Lastly, I found a knife plugin called “client from file” (https://gist.github.com/mhalligan/3101750) which uses a similar technique to my shef experiment, but still no luck.

 

Can anyone tell me how to set the public key of a client? Alternately is there some existing process for how to migrate node/client objects from one server to another that I’m just overlooking?

 

My next step is to go spelunking in the postgres DB and see if I can just jigger the public key in there. Will that work? Is there a better way?