# Chef-client manual install

**URL:** <https://discourse.chef.io/t/chef-client-manual-install/14682>\
**Category:** Chef Infra (archive)\
**Created:** [March 7, 2019, 12:37am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/chef-client-manual-install/14682 "2019-03-07T00:37:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![yezdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/d6d6ee/32.png) [@yezdi](https://discourse.chef.io/u/yezdi)\
**Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 12:37am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/chef-client-manual-install/14682/1 "2019-03-07T00:37:52Z")

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Hello Chef Guru's,

I am new to Chef. We are running Chef Open Source and I am trying to bootstrap some clients which don't have access to internet. Manually installed client, and when I run chef-client, it's looking for validator.pem file. I searched it on the Chef server and I don't see that file.

Two questions.

1. How do I generate validator.pem on Chef server ?
2. Is their any other way to register the chef client ?

Appreciate your quick response

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**Author:** ![Larryc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Larryc](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Larryc)\
**Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 1:03am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/chef-client-manual-install/14682/2 "2019-03-07T01:03:28Z")

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You dont need the validator pem if you have your pem for the server configured in your knife.rb or config.rb file. Do you have your user pem inside of your .chef directory?

If you have an http server or an artifact repository you can pull the chef client from there

[https://docs.chef.io/knife\_bootstrap.html#validatorless-bootstrap](https://docs.chef.io/knife_bootstrap.html#validatorless-bootstrap)

Here is an example of bootstrapping a server that has no internet access

> **[Bootstrapping a Node With No Internet](https://thaiwood.io/bootstrapping-a-node-with-no-internet/)**
>
> When you bootstrap a node using knife bootstrap Chef assumes that you’ll have access to the internet. It uses this to download the client package and some metadata, but you don’t have to be connected to the internet to bootstrap a node.

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**Author:** ![yezdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/d6d6ee/32.png) [@yezdi](https://discourse.chef.io/u/yezdi)\
**Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 4:44pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/chef-client-manual-install/14682/3 "2019-03-07T16:44:26Z")

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Thanks Larry. Let me test these options.

Yezdi