Chef Infra Client installation

Chef Infra (archive)
1

I am trying to setup my client nodes. I have been reading up on how to install the client. Seems the current way is still run the bootstrap. However I did see that there is a Chef Infra Client but the directions on how to install it and setup are kind of lacking. I would rather use that then the bootstrap method since I would have to technically generate an ssh key as root (or another user). Is there a way to use the new client and join it to the Chef Infra Server?

Specifically talking about this - https://downloads.chef.io/chef/15.8.23

2

Sure thing, you can install via script.
https://docs.chef.io/install_omnibus.html
Then you follow the rest of the configuration instructions under chef-client, client.rb and security. This will tell you how to connect your client to the chef infra server etc.

3

What if I want to use the RPM?

4

If you've got the RPM already installed and the validator.pem on the machine, you can follow this: https://docs.chef.io/install_bootstrap.html#bash-user-data All you really need is the client.rb (I don't think the validation_client_name is needed and I added policy_name and policy_group instead of a firstboot.json). I used this to re-bootstrap some nodes from Hosted Chef to a local Chef Server recently.

1 Like
6

Should I install the Chef Infra Client on my Chef Infra Server as well? I guess i'm not sure what the proper way to get the first server going that is NOT the infra server.

7

@andrewm659 I recomend you to follow:

Roughly out of knife bootstrap the other method for a node to register to the chef-server is to have:

  • chef-client installed
  • a client.rb configured to point to your chef-server
  • the validator.pem file for initial registration

The three points above is the summary of what knife bootstrap does for you.

On first run, chef-client check if it has a client.pem file, if not it will search the validator.pem file to register itself.

8

I'll check it out.