Chef Infra Client 15.8.23 Released!

tas50 · February 10, 2020, 10:57pm

Hey Everyone,

We have a great new release today with Chef Infra Client 15.8. This release comes with a cool new notify_group feature as well as several dozen new helpers to make writing cookbooks easier than ever.

New notify_group functionality

Chef Infra Client now includes a new notify_group feature that can be used to extract multiple common notifies out of individual resources to reduce duplicate code in your cookbooks and custom resources. Previously cookbook authors would often use a log resource to achieve a similar outcome, but using the log resource results in unnecessary Chef Infra Client log output. The notify_group method produces no additional logging, but fires all defined notifications when the :run action is set.

Example notify_group that stops, sleeps, and then starts service when a service config is updated:

  service "crude" do
    action [ :enable, :start ]
  end

  chef_sleep "60" do
    action :nothing
  end

  notify_group "crude_stop_and_start" do
    notifies :stop, "service[crude]", :immediately
    notifies :sleep, "chef_sleep[60]", :immediately
    notifies :start, "service[crude]", :immediately
  end

  template "/etc/crude/crude.conf" do
    source "crude.conf.erb"
    variables node["crude"]
    notifies :run, "notify_group[crude_stop_and_start]", :immediately
  end

Chef InSpec 4.18.85

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.18.39 to 4.18.85. This release includes a large number of bug fixes in addition to some great resource enhancements:

The service resource features new support for yocto-based linux distributions. Thank you to @michaellihs for this addition!
The package resource now includes support for FreeBSD. Thank you to @fzipi for this work!
We standardized the platform for the etc_hosts, virtualization, ini, and xml resources.
The oracledb_session resource works again due to a missing quote fix.
The groups resource on macOS no longer reports duplicates anymore.
command.exist? now conforms to POSIX standards. Thanks to @PiQuer!
Changed the postfix_conf resource's supported platform to the broader unix. Thank you to @fzipi for this fix!

New Cookbook Helpers

New helpers have been added to make writing cookbooks easier.

Platform Version Helpers

New helpers for checking platform versions have been added. These helpers return parsed version strings so there's no need to convert the returned values to Integers or Floats before comparing them. Additionally, comparisons with version objects properly understand the order of versions so 5.11 will compare as larger than 5.9, whereas converting those values to Floats would result in 5.9 being larger than 5.11.

windows_nt_version returns the NT kernel version which often differs from Microsoft's marketing versions. This helper offers a good way to find desktop and server releases that are based on the same codebase. For example, NT 6.3 is both Windows 8.1 and Windows 2012 R2.
powershell_version returns the version of PowerShell installed on the system.
platform_version returns the value of node['platform_version'].

Example comparison using windows_nt_version:

if windows_nt_version >= 10
  some_modern_windows_things
end

Cloud Helpers

The cloud helpers from chef-sugar have been ported to Chef Infra Client:

cloud? - if the node is running in any cloud, including internal clouds
ec2? - if the node is running in ec2
gce? - if the node is running in gce
rackspace? - if the node is running in rackspace
eucalyptus? - if the node is running under eucalyptus
linode? - if the node is running in linode
openstack? - if the node is running under openstack
azure? - if the node is running in azure
digital_ocean? - if the node is running in digital ocean
softlayer? - if the node is running in softlayer

Virtualization Helpers

The virtualization helpers from chef-sugar have been ported to Chef Infra Client and extended with helpers to detect hypervisor hosts, physical, and guest systems.

kvm? - if the node is a kvm guest
kvm_host? - if the node is a kvm host
lxc? - if the node is an lxc guest
lxc_host? - if the node is an lxc host
parallels?- if the node is a parallels guest
parallels_host?- if the node is a parallels host
vbox? - if the node is a virtualbox guest
vbox_host? - if the node is a virtualbox host
vmware? - if the node is a vmware guest
vmware_host? - if the node is a vmware host
openvz? - if the node is an openvz guest
openvz_host? - if the node is an openvz host
guest? - if the node is detected as any kind of guest
hypervisor? - if the node is detected as being any kind of hypervisor
physical? - the node is not running as a guest (may be a hypervisor or may be bare-metal)
vagrant? - attempts to identify the node as a vagrant guest (this check may be error-prone)

include_recipe? helper

chef-sugar's include_recipe? has been added to Chef Infra Client providing a simple way to see if a recipe has been included on a node already.

Example usage in a not_if conditional:

execute 'install my_app'
  command '/tmp/my_app_install.sh'
  not_if { include_recipe?('my_app::install') }
end

Updated Resources

ifconfig

The ifconfig resource now supports the newer ifconfig release that ships in Debian 10.

mac_user

The mac_user resource, used when creating a user on Mac systems, has been improved to work better with macOS Catalina (10.15). The resource now properly looks up the numeric GID when creating a user, once again supports the system property, and includes a new hidden property which prevents the user from showing on the login screen. Thanks @chilcote for these fixes and improvements.

sysctl

The sysctl resource has been updated to allow the inclusion of descriptive comments. Comments may be passed as an array or as a string. Any comments provided are prefixed with '#' signs and precede the sysctl setting in generated files.

An example:

sysctl 'vm.swappiness' do
  value 10
  comment [
     "define how aggressively the kernel will swap memory pages.",
     "Higher values will increase aggressiveness",
     "lower values decrease the amount of swap.",
     "A value of 0 instructs the kernel not to initiate swap",
     "until the amount of free and file-backed pages is less",
     "than the high water mark in a zone.",
     "The default value is 60."
    ]
end

which results in /etc/sysctl.d/99-chef-vm.swappiness.conf as follows:

# define how aggressively the kernel will swap memory pages.
# Higher values will increase aggressiveness
# lower values decrease the amount of swap.
# A value of 0 instructs the kernel not to initiate swap
# until the amount of free and file-backed pages is less
# than the high water mark in a zone.
# The default value is 60.
vm.swappiness = 10

Platform Support

Chef Infra Clients packages are now validated for Debian 10.

macOS Binary Signing

Each binary in the macOS Chef Infra Client installation is now signed to improve the integrity of the installation and ensure compatibility with macOS Catalina security requirements.

Enjoy,
Tim

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 15.8.23

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 15.8.23

# In Windows Powershell
. { iwr -useb https://omnitruck.chef.io/install.ps1 } | iex; install -project chef -version 15.8.23

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: 15.8.23

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