# Notification of changes to non-node Chef server data

**URL:** <https://discourse.chef.io/t/notification-of-changes-to-non-node-chef-server-data/4376>\
**Category:** Chef Infra (archive)\
**Created:** [August 29, 2013, 8:42pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/notification-of-changes-to-non-node-chef-server-data/4376 "2013-08-29T20:42:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Jeff\_Blaine](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/jeff_blaine/32/19_2.png) [@Jeff\_Blaine](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Jeff_Blaine)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2013, 8:42pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/notification-of-changes-to-non-node-chef-server-data/4376/1 "2013-08-29T20:42:41Z")

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How are others going about being notified of changes (and their  
contents/diffs) to a Chef server? Perform Big Data Agile  
SplunkStash Analytics HadoopStormStash on the Erchef log?

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**Author:** ![Jeff\_Blaine](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/jeff_blaine/32/19_2.png) [@Jeff\_Blaine](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Jeff_Blaine)\
**Post date:** [September 3, 2013, 2:49pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/notification-of-changes-to-non-node-chef-server-data/4376/2 "2013-09-03T14:49:52Z")

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On 8/29/2013 4:42 PM, Jeff Blaine wrote:

> How are others going about being notified of changes (and their  
> contents/diffs) to a Chef server? Perform Big Data Agile  
> SplunkStash Analytics HadoopStormStash on the Erchef log?

Nobody's keeping track of what changed in the Chef server data store  
and who changed it?

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**Author:** ![Pete\_Cheslock](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/pete_cheslock/32/326_2.png) [@Pete\_Cheslock](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Pete_Cheslock)\
**Post date:** [September 3, 2013, 3:21pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/notification-of-changes-to-non-node-chef-server-data/4376/3 "2013-09-03T15:21:51Z")

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Are you talking about changes to cookbooks, roles, data bags, etc?

In that case the way that we set that up is managing those assets with SCM  
(git in our case). We have jenkins jobs that control the uploading of  
those cookbooks to our chef server.

So for us, no users have the ability to upload cookbooks to chef server  
directly - only jenkins is able to (kinda).  
There are ways we can get around that if there is a jenkins failure and we  
need to push a change very quickly. But there is a separate jenkins job  
that will run (and fail) if someone uploaded data that is not the same as  
the version in Git. So in the (rare) case that jenkins is bypassed we'll  
be notified appropriately by a failing CI job. We are trying to keep any  
individual from uploading cookbooks from their local version and  
potentially causing issues.

On Tue, Sep 3, 2013 at 10:49 AM, Jeff Blaine [jblaine@kickflop.net](mailto:jblaine@kickflop.net) wrote:

> On 8/29/2013 4:42 PM, Jeff Blaine wrote:
> 
> > How are others going about being notified of changes (and their  
> > contents/diffs) to a Chef server? Perform Big Data Agile  
> > SplunkStash Analytics HadoopStormStash on the Erchef log?
> 
> Nobody's keeping track of what changed in the Chef server data store  
> and who changed it?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Kevin\_Counts](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/kevin_counts/32/489_2.png) [@Kevin\_Counts](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Kevin_Counts)\
**Post date:** [September 3, 2013, 3:39pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/notification-of-changes-to-non-node-chef-server-data/4376/4 "2013-09-03T15:39:20Z")

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One possibility would be to run a knife backup export on a regular basis to  
a time-stamped directory, then have a job run a recursive diff to detect  
any changes.

You can also run knife diff against the server comparing whats in your  
local repository and find discrepancies but this doesn't diff nodes which  
are usually only in chef server.

Nginx logs definitely show puts, posts, etc. but don't have any offhand  
suggestions on parsing methods for that - to me, although depending on the  
size of your instance may take some time, comparing knife backup exports  
seems like a start.

On Tue, Sep 3, 2013 at 10:49 AM, Jeff Blaine [jblaine@kickflop.net](mailto:jblaine@kickflop.net) wrote:

> On 8/29/2013 4:42 PM, Jeff Blaine wrote:
> 
> > How are others going about being notified of changes (and their  
> > contents/diffs) to a Chef server? Perform Big Data Agile  
> > SplunkStash Analytics HadoopStormStash on the Erchef log?
> 
> Nobody's keeping track of what changed in the Chef server data store  
> and who changed it?

--  
Kevin Counts [counts@digicat.org](mailto:counts@digicat.org)