[chef] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Getting "Access denied" when use mount in recipe and run chef-client remotely via winrm

[o haya < >]

Steven and Tensibai (et al),

Thanks for the interesting comments and discussion.

With that, I think that my perspective is probably a little (maybe a lot) 
different, which probably explains the differences in opinion.  

In our case, we are not looking to maintaining an environment or environments 
over time, but rather, our desire is to be able to deploy specified 
environments kind of "on demand", mostly one-time events.  That is why the 
winrm-type approach is/would be most attractive (and as I said, "natural") to 
us.

Thanks again,
Jim


--------------------------------------------
On Thu, 7/2/15, Steven Murawski 
<
 >
 wrote:

 Subject: [chef] Re: Re: Re: Re: Getting "Access denied" when use mount in 
recipe and run chef-client remotely via winrm
 To: 

 
 Date: Thursday, July 2, 2015, 4:08 PM
 
 So, I wasn't referring to
 running part of the recipe as a scheduled task, but to
 making the full chef-client run the scheduled
 task.
 
 > Understanding that this is generically a Windows
 problem, it still seems like both the scheduled task (if it
 worked for me) and the service approaches are kind of
 "un-natural" (read: kludgy) ways to do this, but
 that's just my opinion. 
 >The
 general use case for Chef Client is to run in the background
 on a schedule, validating the known good state of the system
 and picking up changes when necessary.  This is usually
 accomplished as a service (or daemon) or via a scheduled
 task (or cron job).  On Windows, I find the task scheduler
 the better option, as you have more flexibility in
 determining the conditions you can run the task in, it
 easily supports alternate credentials, can be run on demand
 as well, and isn't treated as a service
 logon.
 There is an use
 case for invoking chef-client over winrm (or ssh) via some
 orchestration engine rather than running on a schedule, but
 that means you'll have to deal with the limitations of
 WinRM.  There are just too many "gotchas" in
 running in the WinRM context.  Many Win32 APIs can't be
 called from a non-interactive logon (which WinRM is treated
 as) and you have the credential delegation
 problem.
 As for
 setting up Chef to run as a service or scheduled task, the
 chef-client cookbook (
 https://supermarket.chef.io/cookbooks/chef-client ;) can help
 with that (though I don't think it wires up "on
 reboot").
 Steven MurawskiCommunity Software Development Engineer @
 ChefMicrosoft MVP - PowerShell
 http://stevenmurawski.com
                                        On 7/2/2015 2:44:09
 PM, Tensibai Zhaoying 
<
 >
 wrote:In my opinion, running chef (or any Configuration
 management system) on demand remotely is an anti-pattern.
 
 
 If you're describing a
 state, the targeted machine should launch the check by
 itself periodically and try to fix itself as much as it
 can.
 
 It's harder to
 compromise a network from a machine who will overwrite your
 exploits changes every 30 minutes and enforce you to restart
 your compromission from scratch over and over again. 
 
 That's just my opinion too
 :)
 
 Le 2 juil. 2015 21:29,
 o haya  a écrit :
 >
 > BTW, I should mention that I have a ticket
 on a slightly "larger" question and this came up
 right in the middle of that ticket, so I've conveyed
 info on what I di to the support person (Vikas).  I also
 was wondering out loud if maybe you guys might make
 something like a credential proxy or maybe add that
 capability to the existing Chef Windows service.  
 >
 > Understanding that
 this is generically a Windows problem, it still seems like
 both the scheduled task (if it worked for me) and the
 service approaches are kind of "un-natural" (read:
 kludgy) ways to do this, but that's just my opinion. 
 >
 >
 >
 >
 >
 >
 -------------------------------------------- 
 > On Thu, 7/2/15, o haya  wrote: 
 >
 > Subject: Re: [chef] Re: Getting
 "Access denied" when use mount in recipe and run
 chef-client remotely via winrm 
 > To:
 

 
 
 > Cc:
 

 
 
 > Date: Thursday, July
 2, 2015, 3:24 PM 
 >
 >
 Hi, 
 >
 > Thanks for
 the info.  I was just about to post 
 >
 that I've had some success today, but doing something
 
 > different... leveraging the Chef
 Windows service.  What I 
 > did was set
 the user's credentials in place of whatever 
 > was in that service (in my case the
 Windows domain 
 > Administrator) and then
 let the service fire off my 
 >
 recipe/cookbook.  I have to so some tweaking of the design
 
 > of my recipes to prevent them from
 re-running more than 
 > once, but I was
 surprised that it works after that. 
 >
 > I had seen mention of using 
 > task scheduler/schtasks before, and I
 would've tried 
 > that for this
 situation, but when I was looking into how to 
 > do processing across reboots, but even
 though I was able to 
 > get the task
 scheduling part done, the recipes appeared to 
 > run into the same type of access denied
 problems.  I fought 
 > with that for a
 couple of days, and finally gave up on it.  
 >
 >
 >
 In particular, I was doing 
 > a recipe
 for deploying Exchange, and it required installing 
 > some prerequisites and then a reboot and
 then the actual 
 > installation.  So
 back then, I would have the first part of 
 > the recipe create a scheduled task via
 schtasks, for the 2nd 
 > part, but when
 the 2nd part, which was what actually ran the 
 > setup.exe and psconfig.exe, ran, it kept
 throwing errors 
 > indicating that
 something wasn't accessible. 
 >
 > So, at this point, the service 
 > approach is the only approach that works
 for me. 
 >
 > Thanks
 again, 
 > Jim 
 >
 > P.S.  I 
 > kind of
 guessed that there wasn't something, but I 
 > posted because the threads, etc I found on
 the credssp and 
 > chef were a couple of
 years old, and was hoping that 
 >
 there'd be something better by now :(... 
 >
 >
 >
 >
 -------------------------------------------- 
 > On Thu, 7/2/15, Steven Murawski  
 > wrote: 
 >
 >   Subject: [chef] Re: 
 > Getting "Access denied" when use
 mount in recipe 
 > and run chef-client
 remotely via winrm 
 >   To: 
 > 
 
 >  
 >   Cc: "o haya"  
 >   Date: Thursday, July 2, 2015, 3:02 PM
 
 >   
 >   
 >         
 >      
                         
 >
    You are hitting one of the 
 >
 > core challenges in dealing with Windows
 remote 
 > management. 
 >    The ruby WinRM gem, which we 
 > use for knife-windows, 
 >   doesn't support 
 > CredSSP credential delegation (and there
 
 >
 > are security
 concerns with that anyway).  A better 
 >
   workaround would be to create a scheduled task 
 > that will run 
 >  
 Chef Client and trigger that 
 > from
 winrm (with schtasks 
 >   /run).  This
 
 > gets around the logon type and
 credential 
 >
 >
 delegation issues running in WinRM provide. 
 >
 > The cause of the
 issue is that when you 
 >
 > land in a remote shell hosted inside WinRM
 (either WinRS 
 > or 
 >
   PowerShell Remoting), you're 
 >
 connecting to a service and 
 >   that
 service 
 > does not have the right to
 pass on your 
 >
 >
 credentials to other services/computers.  So when you 
 > try 
 >   to mount the
 outside resource, it 
 > attempts to
 connect as the 
 >   computer's 
 > Network Service account.  The path around
 
 >
 > this is either
 Kerberos delegation (which has 
 >
 requirements 
 >   on the client side and
 in 
 > Active Directory) or CredSSP, 
 >   which the 
 > WinRM
 gem doesn't handle.  Task scheduler 
 >   suffers no such problems (and is a
 better way 
 > to run Chef 
 >   Client - and closer to how it 
 > should run in a production 
 >   context. 
 >   Steve
 
 >   Steven 
 >
 MurawskiCommunity Software Development Engineer @ 
 >   ChefMicrosoft MVP - PowerShell 
 >   http://stevenmurawski.com ;
 >                            
     
 >         On 7/1/2015 9:54:21
 
 >   PM, o haya 
 > 
 
 > wrote:Hi, 
 >   
 >   
 >   
 >   I have been implementing 
 > some 
 >  
 recipes/cookbooks for deploying and 
 >
 configuring Sharepoint 
 >   and Exchange
 onto 
 > our Windows servers.  These
 servers would 
 >
 > be
 domain mmembers. 
 >   
 >   
 >   
 >   I was originally testing by 
 > logging into 
 >   one
 of the Windows server and 
 > then running
 "chef-client 
 >   -o 
 > myCookbook" and was finally able to
 get them working 
 >   this past week.
 
 >   
 >   
 >   
 >   Both sets 
 > of recipes expect the respective 
 >
 > installation files to
 be shared out from the domain 
 >  
 controller and the recipes do a 
 >
 "mount" to 
 >   "Z:"
 drive, 
 > and then the recipes do
 "cd 
 >   z:\" 
 > and then execute the appropriate .exe
 inside a 
 >   powershell_script
 resource. 
 >
 >
 >   
 >   
 >   As I 
 > said, I got
 these recipes working this 
 >
 > week, but in the real world, we would want
 to trigger the 
 >   cookbook/recipe
 execution remotely using like 
 >
 "knife 
 >   winrm", so I
 started 
 > testing the recipes using 
 >   "knife 
 >
 winrm" this weekend, and, in both cases, I 
 >   ran into similar problems with both
 sets of 
 > recipes.  
 >   
 >   
 >   
 >   The first
 problem was that 
 > the 
 >   "mount" would fail with 
 > "access denied", 
 >   so I've 
 > since
 tried (a) pre-creating the mapped drive 
 >   outside of Chef and also (b) physically
 
 > copying the entire 
 >   directories of 
 >
 installation software to the local C: drive 
 >
 > and running the
 installations off of the local files. 
 >
   
 >   
 >   
 >   Unfortunately, neither (a) nor (b)
 approach 
 >   worked either.  These
 failures occur at 
 > different points of
 
 >   the installation, but 
 > my impression is that all the failures 
 >   are 
 > coming down
 to some kind of access denied or violation. 
 >   
 >   
 >   
 >   So, I've
 spent most of this weekend 
 >   testing
 and researching, which lead me to find 
 >
 some older 
 >   threads and information
 on 
 > things like credssp an 
 >   "2-hop" 
 >
 that seem to indicate that these problems 
 >
 > have been around for
 awhile, so I was wondering if 
 >  
 there's some mechanism or configuration 
 > that should fix 
 >  
 he problem nowadays? 
 >   
 >   
 >   
 >   Also, I should mention that I'm
 tried 
 >   setting the WinRM CredSSP to
 "true" 
 > on both the 
 >   server side and on my client 
 > (Chef workstation) side, but 
 >   that 
 > hasn't
 made any difference. 
 >   
 >   
 >   
 >   Can anyone 
 > here
 tell me how I can get these 
 >
 > cookbooks/recipes to work using
 "knife winrm"? 
 >   
 >   
 >   
 >   Thanks, 
 >   
 >
 > Jim 
 >   
 >   
 >   
 >            
                       
 >
     
 >   
 >    
     
 >                      
           
 >