1. knife(1)
2. Chef Manual
3. knife(1)

NAME

knife - Chef Server API client utility

SYNOPSIS

knife sub-command [argument...] (options)

DESCRIPTION

Knife is a command-line utility used to manage data on a Chef server through the HTTP(S) API. Knife is organized into groups of subcommands centered around the various object types in Chef. Each category of subcommand is documented in its own manual page. Available topics are:

• bootstrap
• client
• configure
• cookbook-site
• cookbook
• data-bag
• environment
• exec
• index
• node
• recipe
• role
• search
• ssh
• status
• tag

If the knife manuals are in your MANPATH, you can access help for the above topics using man knife-TOPIC; otherwise, you can view the documentation using knife help TOPIC.

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, --environment ENVIRONMENT

Set the Chef environment

-e, --editor EDITOR

Set the editor to use for interactive commands

-F, --format FORMAT

Which format to use for output. See FORMATS for details.

-d, --disable-editing

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

-V, --verbose

More verbose output. Use twice for max verbosity.

-y, --yes

Say yes to all prompts for confirmation

--defaults

Accept default values for all questions

--[no-]color

Use colored output. Color enabled by default.

-h, --help

Show the available options for a command.

SUB-COMMANDS

Sub-commands that operate on the basic Chef data types are structured as NOUN verb NOUN (options). For all data types, the following commands are available:

• create (create)
• list and show (read)
• edit (update)
• delete (destroy)

Knife also includes commands that take actions other than displaying or modifying data on the Chef Server, such as knife-ssh(1).

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.

• node_name: User or client identity (i.e., name) to use for authenticating requests to the Chef Server.
• client_key: Private key file to authenticate to the Chef server. Corresponds to the -k or --key option.
• 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. These options are dependent on the cache_type.
• validation_client_name: Specifies the name of the client used to validate new clients.
• validation_key: Specifies the private key file to use when bootstrapping new hosts. See knife-client(1) for more information about the validation client.
• cookbook_copyright, cookbook_email, cookbook_license, readme_format Used by knife cookbook create sub-command to specify the copyright holder, maintainer email, license and readme format (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. Currently supported readme formats are "md", "mkd", "txt", and "rdoc". Any other value will result in an unformatted README.

FILES

~/.chef/knife.rb

Ruby DSL configuration file for knife. See CONFIGURATION.

FORMATS

The amount of content displayed and the output format are modified by the --format option. If no alternate format is selected, the default is summary.

Valid formats are:

summary

displays the node in a custom, summarized format (default)

text

displays the node data in its entirety using the colorized tree display

json

displays the node in JSON format

yaml

displays the node in YAML format

pp

displays the node using Ruby's pretty printer.

For brevity, only the first character of the format is required, for example, -Fj will produce JSON format output.

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

ENVIRONMENT

EDITOR

The text editor to use for editing data. The --editor option takes precedence over this value, and the --disable-editing option supresses data editing entirely.

SEE ALSO

chef-client(8) chef-server(8) shef(1)

knife-bootstrap(1) knife-client(1) knife-configure(1) knife-cookbook-site(1) knife-cookbook(1) knife-data-bag(1) knife-environment(1) knife-exec(1) knife-index(1) knife-node(1) knife-recipe(1) knife-role(1) knife-search(1) knife-ssh(1) knife-tag(1)

Complete Chef documentation is available online: http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Home/

JSON is JavaScript Object Notation http://json.org/

SOLR is an open source search engine. http://lucene.apache.org/solr/

git(1) is a version control system http://git-scm.com/

This manual page was generated from Markdown with ronn(1) http://rtomayko.github.com/ronn/ronn.1.html

AUTHOR

Chef was written by Adam Jacob adam@opscode.com of Opscode (http://www.opscode.com), with contributions from the community.

DOCUMENTATION

This manual page was written by Joshua Timberman joshua@opscode.com.

LICENSE

Both Chef and this documentation are released under the terms of the Apache 2.0 License. You may view the license online: http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html On some systems, the complete text of the Apache 2.0 License may be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/Apache-2.0.

CHEF

Knife is distributed with Chef. http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Home

1. Chef 10.14.0.rc.4
2. September 2012
3. knife(1)