knife search¶

Search indexes allow queries to be made for any type of data that is indexed by the Chef server, including data bags (and data bag items), environments, nodes, and roles. A defined query syntax is used to support search patterns like exact, wildcard, range, and fuzzy. A search is a full-text query that can be done from several locations, including from within a recipe, by using the search subcommand in Knife, or by using the /search or /search/INDEX endpoints in the Chef Server API. The search engine is based on Apache Solr and is run from the Chef server.

The knife search subcommand is used run a search query for information that is indexed on a Chef server.

Syntax¶

This subcommand has the following syntax:

$ knife search INDEX SEARCH_QUERY

where INDEX is one of client, environment, node, role, or the name of a data bag and SEARCH_QUERY is the search query syntax for the query that will be executed.

INDEX is implied if omitted, and will default to node. For example:

$ knife search '*:*' -i

will return something similar to:

8 items found

centos-62-dev
opensuse-1203
ubuntu-1304-dev
ubuntu-1304-orgtest
ubuntu-1204-ohai-test
ubuntu-1304-ifcfg-test
ohai-test
win2k8-dev

and is the same search as:

$ knife search node '*:*" -i

If the SEARCH_QUERY does not contain a colon character (:), then the default query pattern is tags:*#{@query}* OR roles:*#{@query}* OR fqdn:*#{@query}* OR addresses:*#{@query}*, which means the following two search queries are effectively the same:

$ knife search ubuntu

or:

$ knife search node "tags:*ubuntu* OR roles:*ubuntu* OR fqdn:*ubuntu* (etc.)"

Options¶

Note

Review the list of common options available to this (and all) Knife subcommands and plugins.

This sub-command has the following options:

-a ATTR, --attribute ATTR: The attribute (or attributes) to show.
-b ROW, --start ROW: The row at which return results will begin.
-i, --id-only: Indicates that only matching object IDs will be shown.
INDEX: The name of the index to be queried: client, environment, node, role, or DATA_BAG_NAME. Default index: node.
-l, --long: Display long output when searching nodes while using the default summary format.
-m, --medium: Display more, but not all, of a node’s data when searching using the default summary format.
-o SORT, --sort SORT: The order in which search results will be sorted.
-q SEARCH_QUERY, --query SEARCH_QUERY: Use to protect search queries that start with a hyphen (-). A -q query may be specified as an argument or an option, but not both.
-r, --run-list: Indicates that only the run-list will be shown.
-R INT, --rows INT: The number of rows to be returned.
SEARCH_QUERY: The search query used to identify a a list of items on a Chef server. This option uses the same syntax as the search sub-command.

Examples¶

The following examples show how to use this Knife subcommand:

Search by platform ID

To search for the IDs of all nodes running on the Amazon EC2 platform, enter:

$ knife search node 'ec2:*' -i

to return something like:

4 items found

ip-0A7CA19F.ec2.internal

ip-0A58CF8E.ec2.internal

ip-0A58E134.ec2.internal

ip-0A7CFFD5.ec2.internal

Search by instance type

To search for the instance type (flavor) of all nodes running on the Amazon EC2 platform, enter:

$ knife search node 'ec2:*' -a ec2.instance_type

to return something like:

4 items found

ec2.instance_type:  m1.large
id:                 ip-0A7CA19F.ec2.internal

ec2.instance_type:  m1.large
id:                 ip-0A58CF8E.ec2.internal

ec2.instance_type:  m1.large
id:                 ip-0A58E134.ec2.internal

ec2.instance_type:  m1.large
id:                 ip-0A7CFFD5.ec2.internal

Search by node

To search for all nodes running Ubuntu, enter:

$ knife search node 'platform:ubuntu'

Search by node and environment

To search for all nodes running CentOS in the production environment, enter:

$ knife search node 'chef_environment:production AND platform:centos'

Search for nested attributes

To find a nested attribute, use a pattern similar to the following:

$ knife search node <query_to_run> -a <main_attribute>.<nested_attribute>

Search for multiple attributes

To build a search query to use more than one attribute, use an underscore (_) to separate each attribute. For example, the following query will search for all nodes running a specific version of Ruby:

$ knife search node "languages_ruby_version:1.9.3"

Search for nested attributes using a search query

To build a search query that can find a nested attribute:

$ knife search node name:<node_name> -a kernel.machine

Use a test query

To test a search query that will be used in a knife ssh command:

$ knife search node "role:web NOT name:web03"

where the query in the previous example will search all servers that have the web role, but not on the server named web03.