Chef 14.3.37 Released!

Chef Release Announcements
1

Ohai Chefs!

We’re happy to announce the release of Chef v14.3!

Release Highlights

New Preview Resources Concept

This release of Chef introduces the concept of Preview Resources. Preview resources behave the same as a standard resource built into Chef, except Chef will load a resource with the same name from a cookbook instead of the built-in preview resource.

What does this mean for you? It means we can introduce new resources in Chef without breaking existing behavior in your infrastructure. For instance if you have a cookbook with a resource named manage_everything and a future version of Chef introduced a preview resource named manage_everything you will continue to receive the resource from your cookbook. That way outside of a major release your won’t experience a potentially breaking behavior change from the newly included resource.

Then when we perform our yearly major release we’ll remove the preview designation from all resources, and the built in resources will take precedence over resources with the same names in cookbooks.

New Resources

chocolatey_config

Use the chocolatey_config resource to add or remove Chocolatey configuration keys."

Actions

  • set - Sets a Chocolatey config value.
  • unset - Unsets a Chocolatey config value.

Properties

  • config_key - The name of the config. We’ll use the resource’s name if this isn’t provided.
  • value - The value to set.

chocolatey_source

Use the chocolatey_source resource to add or remove Chocolatey sources.

Actions

  • add - Adds a Chocolatey source.
  • remove - Removes a Chocolatey source.

Properties

  • source_name - The name of the source to add. We’ll use the resource’s name if this isn’t provided.
  • source - The source URL.
  • bypass_proxy - Whether or not to bypass the system’s proxy settings to access the source.
  • priority - The priority level of the source.

powershell_package_source

Use the powershell_package_source resource to register a powershell package repository.

Actions

  • register - Registers and updates the powershell package source.
  • unregister - Unregisters the powershell package source.

Properties

  • source_name - The name of the package source.
  • url - The url to the package source.
  • trusted - Whether or not to trust packages from this source.
  • provider_name - The package management provider for the source. It supports the following providers: ‘Programs’, ‘msi’, ‘NuGet’, ‘msu’, ‘PowerShellGet’, ‘psl’ and ‘chocolatey’.
  • publish_location - The url where modules will be published to for this source. Only valid if the provider is ‘PowerShellGet’.
  • script_source_location - The url where scripts are located for this source. Only valid if the provider is ‘PowerShellGet’.
  • script_publish_location - The location where scripts will be published to for this source. Only valid if the provider is ‘PowerShellGet’.

kernel_module

Use the kernel_module resource to manage kernel modules on Linux systems. This resource can load, unload, blacklist, install, and uninstall modules.

Actions

  • install - Load kernel module, and ensure it loads on reboot.
  • uninstall - Unload a kernel module and remove module config, so it doesn’t load on reboot.
  • blacklist - Blacklist a kernel module.
  • load - Load a kernel module.
  • unload - Unload kernel module

Properties

  • modname - The name of the kernel module.
  • load_dir - The directory to load modules from.
  • unload_dir - The modprobe.d directory.

ssh_known_hosts_entry

Use the ssh_known_hosts_entry resource to add an entry for the specified host in /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts or a user’s known hosts file if specified.

Actions

  • create - Create an entry in the ssh_known_hosts file.
  • flush - Immediately flush the entries to the config file. Without this the actual writing of the file is delayed in the Chef run so all entries can be accumulated before writing the file out.

Properties

  • host - The host to add to the known hosts file.
  • key - An optional key for the host. If not provided this will be automatically determined.
  • key_type - The type of key to store.
  • port - The server port that the ssh-keyscan command will use to gather the public key.
  • timeout - The timeout in seconds for ssh-keyscan.
  • mode - The file mode for the ssh_known_hosts file.
  • owner- The file owner for the ssh_known_hosts file.
  • group - The file group for the ssh_known_hosts file.
  • hash_entries - Hash the hostname and addresses in the ssh_known_hosts file for privacy.
  • file_location - The location of the ssh known hosts file. Change this to set a known host file for a particular user.

New knife config get command

The knife config get command has been added to help with debugging configuration issues with knife and other tools that use the knife.rb file.

With no arguments, it will display all options you’ve set:

$ knife config get
Loading from configuration file /Users/.../.chef/knife.rb
chef_server_url: https://...
client_key:      /Users/.../.chef/user.pem
config_file:     /Users/.../.chef/knife.rb
log_level:       warn
log_location:    STDERR
node_name:       ...
validation_key:

You can also pass specific keys to only display those knife config get node_name client_key, or use --all to display everything (including options that are using the default value).

Simplification of shell_out APIs

The following helper methods have been deprecated in favor of the single shell_out helper:

  • shell_out_with_systems_locale
  • shell_out_with_timeout
  • shell_out_compact
  • shell_out_compact_timeout
  • shell_out_with_systems_locale!
  • shell_out_with_timeout!
  • shell_out_compact!
  • shell_out_compact_timeout!

The functionality of shell_out_with_systems_locale has been implemented using the default_env: false option that removes the PATH and locale mangling that has been the default behavior of shell_out.

The functionality of shell_out_compact has been folded into shell_out. The shell_out API when called with varargs has its arguments flatted, compacted and coerced to strings. This style of calling is encouraged over using strings and building up commands using join(" ") since it avoids shell interpolation and edge conditions in the construction of spaces between arguments. The varargs form is still not supported on Windows.

The functionality of shell_out*timeout has also been folded into shell_out. Users writing Custom Resources should be explicit for Chef-14: shell_out!("whatever", timeout: new_resource.timeout) which will become automatic in Chef-15.

Silencing deprecation warnings

While deprecation warnings have been great for the Chef community to ensure cookbooks are kept up-to-date and to prepare for major version upgrades, sometimes you just can’t fix a deprecation right now. This is often compounded by the recommendation to enable treat_deprecation_warnings_as_errors mode in your Test Kitchen integration tests, which doesn’t understand the difference between deprecations from community cookbooks and those from your own code.

Two new options are provided for silencing deprecation warnings: silence_deprecation_warnings and inline chef:silence_deprecation comments.

The silence_deprecation_warnings configuration value can be set in your client.rb or solo.rb config file, either to true to silence all deprecation warnings or to an array of deprecations to silence. You can specify which to silence either by the deprecation key name (e.g. "internal_api"), the numeric deprecation ID (e.g. 25 or "CHEF-25"), or by specifying the filename and line number where the deprecation is being raised from (e.g. "default.rb:67").

An example of setting the silence_deprecation_warnings option in your client.rb or solo.rb:

silence_deprecation_warnings %w{deploy_resource chef-23 recipes/install.rb:22}

or in your kitchen.yml:

provisioner:
  name: chef_solo
  solo_rb:
    treat_deprecation_warnings_as_errors: true
    silence_deprecation_warnings:
    - deploy_resource
    - chef-23
    - recipes/install.rb:22

You can also silence deprecations using a comment on the line that is raising the warning:

erl_call 'something' do # chef:silence_deprecation

We advise caution in the use of this feature, as excessive or prolonged silencing can lead to difficulty upgrading when the next major release of Chef comes out.

Misc Windows improvements

  • A new skip_publisher_check property has been added to the powershell_package resource
  • windows_feature_powershell now supports Windows 2008 R2
  • The mount resource now supports the mount_point property on Windows
  • windows_feature_dism no longer errors when specifying the source
  • Resolved idempotency issues in the windows_task resource and prevented setting up a task with bad credentials
  • windows_service no longer throws Ruby deprecation warnings

Newly Introduced Deprecations

CHEF-26: Deprecation of old shell_out APIs

As noted above, this release of Chef unifies our shell_out helpers into just shell_out and shell_out!. Previous helpers are now deprecated and will be removed in Chef 15.

See CHEF-26 Deprecation Page for details.

Legacy FreeBSD pkg provider

Chef 15 will remove support for the legacy FreeBSD pkg format. We will continue to support the pkgng format introduced in FreeBSD 10.

Please see the CHANGELOG for the complete list of changes.

Get the Build

As always, you can download binaries directly from downloads.chef.io or by using the mixlib-install command line utility available in ChefDK.

$ mixlib-install download chef -v 14.3.37

Alternatively, you can install Chef using one of the following command options:

# In Shell
$ curl https://omnitruck.chef.io/install.sh | sudo bash -s -- -P chef -v 14.3.37

# In Windows Powershell
. { iwr -useb https://omnitruck.chef.io/install.ps1 } | iex; install -project chef -version 14.3.37

-Tim