Cookbooks

Basic info in README.

Resources

A chef resource describes some piece of infrastructure (file, template or package). A recipe is a file taht groups related resources.

• resources describe the what, not the how
• resources have actions, like :create
• recipes can live in the chef-repo, or in cookbooks
• chef provides resources, for ex: apt_update is a resource to automate apt-get update

• recipes can include packages: package 'apache2' (no do block, since :install is default action)

  package 'apache2'
  # enable the Apache service when the server boots, then start
  service 'apache2' do
  supports :status => true
  action [:enable, :start]
  end

Create a cookbook

chef generate cookbook myCookbook generates default file structure (Berksfile, chefignore, metadata.rb, README, recipes/default.rb, spec directory, test directory)

• cookbooks can have a template directory, for html views
• adding recipe logic to default.rb lets you add recipe[myCookbook] to the run-list

Debugging

If debugging node['stenographer']['user']:

require 'pp'
pp node.debug_value('stenographer', 'user')