knife(1) -- Chef Server REST API utility ======================================== ## SYNOPSIS __knife__ _sub-command_ _(options)_ ## DESCRIPTION This manual page documents knife, a command-line utility used to interact with a Chef server directly through the RESTful API. Knife uses sub-commands to take various actions on different types of Chef objects. Some sub-commands take additional options. General options follow sub-commands and their options. A configuration file can be created for common defaults. Unless otherwise specified, output is in JSON format, and input files are also JSON format. The Chef class `Chef::Config` that configures the behavior of how knife runs has options that correspond to command-line options. These are noted as `Chef::Config` values. ## GENERAL OPTIONS * `-s`, `--server-url` URL: Chef Server URL, corresponds to `Chef::Config` `chef_server_url`. * `-k`, `--key` KEY: API Client Key, corresponds to `Chef::Config` `client_key`. * `-c`, `--config` CONFIG: The configuration file to use * `-e`, `--editor` EDITOR: Set the editor to use for interactive commands * `-F`, `--format` FORMAT: Which format to use for output * `-l`, `--log_level` LEVEL: Set the log level (debug, info, warn, error, fatal), corresponds to `Chef::Config` `log_level`. * `-L`, `--logfile` LOGLOCATION: Set the log file location, defaults to STDOUT, corresponds to `Chef::Config` `log_location`. * `-n`, `--no-editor`: Do not open EDITOR, just accept the data as is * `-u`, `--user` USER: API Client Username, corresponds to `Chef::Config` `node_name`. * `-p`, `--print-after`: Show the data after a destructive operation * `-v`, `--version`: Show chef version * `-y`, `--yes`: Say yes to all prompts for confirmation * `-h`, `--help`: Show this message Usage information for sub-commands can be displayed with `knife SUB-COMMAND --help`. ## SUB-COMMANDS Knife sub-commands are structured as _NOUN verb NOUN (options)_. The sub-commands are meant to be intuitively named. Because the Chef Server API is RESTful, sub-commands generally utilize CRUD operations. * create (create) * list and show (read) * edit (update) * delete (destroy) Objects stored on the server support these, as described below. ## GENERAL SUB-COMMANDS __recipe list [PATTERN]__ List available recipes from the server. Specify _PATTERN_ as a regular expression to limit the results. ## CONFIGURATION The knife configuration file is a Ruby DSL to set configuration parameters for Knife's __GENERAL OPTIONS__. The default location for the config file is `~/.chef/knife.rb`. If managing multiple Chef repositories, per-repository config files can be created. The file must be `.chef/knife.rb` in the current directory of the repository. If the config file exists, knife uses these settings for __GENERAL OPTIONS__ defaults. `log_level` A Ruby symbol specifying the log level. Corresponds to `-l` or `--log_level` option. Default is _:info_. Valid values are: * :info * :debug * :warn * :fatal `log_location` Corresponds to the `-L` or `--log-file` option. Defaults is __STDOUT__. Valid values are __STDOUT__ or a filename. `node_name` User to authenticate to the Chef server. Corresponds to the `-u` or `--user` option. This is requested from the user when running this sub-command. `client_key` Private key file to authenticate to the Chef server. Corresponds to the `-k` or `--key` option. This is requested from the user when running this sub-command. `chef_server_url` URL of the Chef server. Corresponds to the `-s` or `--server-url` option. This is requested from the user when running this sub-command. `cache_type` The type of cache to use. Default is BasicFile. This can be any type of Cache that moneta supports: BasicFile, Berkeley, Couch, DataMapper, File, LMC, Memcache, Memory, MongoDB, Redis, Rufus, S3, SDBM, Tyrant, Xattr, YAML. `cache_options` Specifies various options to use for caching. Default reads the Chef client configuration (/etc/chef/checksums). `validation_client_name` Specifies the name of the client used to validate new clients. This is requested from the user when running the configuration sub-command. `validation_key` Specifies the private key file to use for generating ec2 instance data for validating new clients. This is implied from the `validation_client_name`. `cookbook_copyright` `cookbook_email` `cookbook_license` Used by `knife cookbook create` sub-command to specify the copyright holder, maintainer email and license (respectively) for new cookbooks. The copyright holder is listed as the maintainer in the cookbook's metadata and as the Copyright in the comments of the default recipe. The maintainer email is used in the cookbook metadata. The license determines what preamble to put in the comment of the default recipe, and is listed as the license in the cookbook metadata. Currently supported licenses are "apachev2" and "none". Any other values will result in an empty license in the metadata (needs to be filled in by the author), and no comment preamble in the default recipe. `knife[:aws_access_key_id]` `knife[:aws_secret_access_key]` Specifies the Amazon AWS EC2 credentials to use when running the ec2 sub-commands. `knife[:rackspace_api_username]` `knife[:rackspace_api_key]` Specifies the Rackspace Cloud credentials to use when running the rackspace sub-commands. `knife[:terremark_username]` `knife[:terremark_password]` `knife[:terremark_service]` Specifies the Terremark vCloud credentials to use when running the terremark sub-commands. `knife[:slicehost_password]` Specifies the Slicehost password to use when running the slicdehost sub-commands. ## FILES _~/.chef/knife.rb_ Ruby DSL configuration file for knife. See __CONFIGURATION__. ## CHEF WORKFLOW When working with Chef and Knife in the local repository, the recommended workflow outline looks like: * Create repository. A skeleton sample is provided at _http://github.com/opscode/chef-repo/_. * Configure knife, see __CONFIGURATION__. * Download cookbooks from the Opscode cookbooks site, see __COOKBOOK SITE SUB-COMMANDS__. * Or, create new cookbooks, see `cookbook create` sub-command. * Commit changes to the version control system. See your tool's documentation. * Upload cookbooks to the Chef Server, see __COOKBOOK SUB-COMMANDS__. * Launch instances in the Cloud, OR provision new hosts; see __CLOUD COMPUTING SUB-COMMANDS__ and __BOOTSTRAP SUB-COMMANDS__. * Watch Chef configure systems! A note about git: Opscode and many folks in the Chef community use git, but it is not required, except in the case of the `cookbook site vendor` sub-command, as it uses git directly. Version control is strongly recommended though, and git fits with a lot of the workflow paradigms. ## EXAMPLES Example client config (`/etc/chef/client.rb`) from `knife configure client`. The same configuration is used when using the `knife bootstrap` command with the default `gem` templates that come with Chef. log_level :info log_location STDOUT chef_server_url 'https://api.opscode.com/organizations/ORGNAME' validation_client_name 'ORGNAME-validator' Setting up a custom bootstrap is fairly straightforward. Create `.chef/bootstrap` in your Chef Repository directory or in `$HOME/.chef/bootstrap`. Then create the ERB template file. mkdir ~/.chef/bootstrap vi ~/.chef/bootstrap/debian5.0-apt.erb For example, to create a new bootstrap template that should be used when setting up a new Debian node. Edit the template to run the commands, set up the validation certificate and the client configuration file, and finally to run chef-client on completion. The bootstrap template can be called with: knife bootstrap mynode.example.com --template-file ~/.chef/bootstrap/debian5.0-apt.erb Or, knife bootstrap mynode.example.com --distro debian5.0-apt The `--distro` parameter will automatically look in the `~/.chef/bootstrap` directory for a file named `debian5.0-apt.erb`. Templates provided by the Chef installation are located in `BASEDIR/lib/chef/knife/bootstrap/*.erb`, where _BASEDIR_ is the location where the package or Gem installed the Chef client libraries. Uploading cookbooks to the Opscode cookbooks site using the user/certificate specifically: knife cookbook site share example Other -k ~/.chef/USERNAME.pem -u USERNAME ## ENVIRONMENT * `EDITOR`: The text editor to use for editing data. The --editor option takes precedence over this value, and the --no-editor option supresses data editing entirely. ## SEE ALSO Full documentation for Chef is located on the Chef wiki, http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Home/. JSON is JavaScript Object Notation and more information can be found at http://json.org/. SOLR is an open source search engine. The Chef Server includes a SOLR installation. More information about SOLR, including the search query syntax, can be found at http://lucene.apache.org/solr/. Git is a version control system and documented at http://git-scm.com/. This manual page was generated in nroff from Markdown with ronn. Ryan Tomayko wrote ronn and more information can be found at http://rtomayko.github.com/ronn/ronn.5.html. ## AUTHOR Chef was written by Adam Jacob of Opscode (), with contributions from the community. This manual page was written by Joshua Timberman . Permission is granted to copy, distribute and / or modify this document under the terms of the Apache 2.0 License. On Debian systems, the complete text of the Apache 2.0 License can be found in `/usr/share/common-licenses/Apache-2.0`.