Hey Everybody!
A new Chef Infra Client has been released today with updated resources, a new way to write custom resources, updated platform support, and more!
Platform Updates
Newly Supported Platforms
The following platforms are now packaged and tested for Chef Infra Client:
- Red Hat 8
- FreeBSD 12
- macOS 10.15
- Windows 2019
- AIX 7.2
Deprecated Platforms
The following platforms have reached EOL status and are no longer packaged or tested for Chef Infra Client:
- FreeBSD 10
- macOS 10.12
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11
- Ubuntu 14.04
See Chef's Platform End-of-Life Policy for more information on when Chef ends support for an OS release.
Updated Resources
dnf_package
The dnf_package resource has been updated to fully support RHEL 8.
zypper_package
The zypper_package resource has been updated to properly update packages when using the :upgrade action.
remote_file
The remote_file resource now properly shows download progress when the show_progress property is set to true.
Improvements
Custom Resource Unified Mode
Chef Infra Client 14.14 introduces an exciting new way to easily write custom resources that mix built-in Chef Infra resources with Ruby code. Previously, custom resources would use Chef Infra's standard compile and converge phases, which meant that Ruby would be evaluated first and then the resources would be converged. This often results in confusing and undesirable behavior when you are trying to mix resources with Ruby logic. Many custom resource authors would attempt to get around this by forcing resources to run at compile time so that all the code in their resource would execute during the compile phase.
An example of forcing a resource to run at compile time:
resource_name 'foo' do
action :nothing
end.run_action(:some_action)
With unified mode, you opt in to a single phase per resource where all Ruby and Chef Infra resources are executed at once. This makes it far easier to determine how your code will be evaluated and run. Additionally, you no longer need to force any resources to run at compile time, as all code is run in the compile phase. To enable this new mode just add unified_mode true to your resources like this:
property :Some_property, String
unified_mode true
action :create do
# some code
end
New Options for installing Ruby Gems From metadata.rb
Chef Infra Client allows gems to be specified in the cookbook metadata.rb, which can be problematic in some environments. When a cookbook is running in an airgapped environment, Chef Infra Client attempts to connect to rubygems.org even if the gem is already on the system. There are now two additional configuration options that can be set in your client.rb config:
- gem_installer_bundler_options: This allows setting additional bundler options for the install such as --local to install from local cache. Example: ["--local", "--clean"].
- skip_gem_metadata_installation: If set to true skip gem metadata installation if all gems are already installed.
SLES / openSUSE 15 detection
Ohai now properly detects SLES and openSUSE 15.x. Thanks for this fix @balasankarc.
Performance Improvements
We have improved the performance of Chef Infra Client by resolving bundler errors in our packaging.
Bootstrapping Chef Infra Client 15 will no fail
Knife now fails with a descriptive error message when attempting to bootstrap nodes with Chef Infra Client 15. You will need to bootstrap these nodes using Knife from Chef Infra Client 15.x. We recommend performing this bootstrap from Chef Workstation, which includes the Knife CLI in addition to other useful tools for managing your infrastructure with Chef Infra.
Security Updates
Ruby
Ruby has been updated from 2.5.5 to 2.5.7 in order to resolve the following CVEs:
openssl
openssl has been updated from 1.0.2s to 1.0.2t in order to resolve CVE-2019-1563 and CVE-2019-1547.
nokogiri
nokogori has been updated from 1.10.2 to 1.10.4 in order to resolve CVE-2019-5477.
Get the Build
As always, you can download binaries directly from downloads.chef.io or by using the mixlib-install command line utility:
$ mixlib-install download chef -v 14.14.14
Alternatively, you can install Chef Infra Client using one of the following command options:
# In Shell
$ curl https://omnitruck.chef.io/install.sh | sudo bash -s -- -P chef -v 14.14.14
# In Windows Powershell
. { iwr -useb https://omnitruck.chef.io/install.ps1 } | iex; install -project chef -version 14.14.14
If you want to give this version a spin in Test Kitchen, create or add the following to your kitchen.yml file:
provisioner:
product_name: chef
product_version: 14.14.14
Regards,
Chris