# Some Questions

**URL:** <https://discourse.chef.io/t/some-questions/1626>\
**Category:** Chef Infra (archive)\
**Created:** [December 1, 2010, 7:51pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/some-questions/1626 "2010-12-01T19:51:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Martin\_Eigenbrodt1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Martin\_Eigenbrodt1](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Martin_Eigenbrodt1)\
**Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 7:51pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/some-questions/1626/1 "2010-12-01T19:51:51Z")

</div>

Hi everrybody,

I’m currently digging into Chef and have some questions regarding the Idea to have  
"Infrastructure as Code".

1. As I understand Cookbooks should be maintained in VCS. But it is still possible  
to locally modify a cookbook on a developers machine and upload it  
to the chef server, thus applying changes not present in any version control. How do you handle this situation?  
I could think of two measurement to solve this: a) Change ‘knife cookbook upload’ to only accept cookbooks not changed against the git/svn.  
b) Do not ever upload changeds directly, but commit them and let a CI server apply them to a chef server (and maybe run some tests?). Is anybody doing like that? Am I getting things totaly wrong?

2. How are changes to attributes tracked? As far as I understand there ist nothingh that keeps track of changes to attributes. So I can not my infrastructure as it was as at a certain time.

3. I’ve played around with some recipes and often succeeded to upload recipe and/or attribute files to my chef server that were syntactically wrong, atlhough there seems to be some validation done during ‘knife cookbook upload’. Is there a way to get a stronger validation for my files before uploading them?

4. Is there a way to download cookooks from a side including dependencies?

5. Is there any standard way to run automated tests against your cookbooks?

Thanks and Best Regards,

Martin

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**Author:** ![Adam\_Jacob](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/adam_jacob/32/292_2.png) [@Adam\_Jacob](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Adam_Jacob)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2010, 5:50am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/some-questions/1626/2 "2010-12-02T05:50:09Z")

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On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 11:51 AM, Martin Eigenbrodt  
[martineigenbrodt@googlemail.com](mailto:martineigenbrodt@googlemail.com) wrote:

> Hi everrybody,
> 
> I'm currently digging into Chef and have some questions regarding the Idea to have  
> "Infrastructure as Code".
> 
> 1. As I understand Cookbooks should be maintained in VCS. But it is still possible  
> to locally modify a cookbook on a developers machine and upload it  
> to the chef server, thus applying changes not present in any version control. How do you handle this situation?  
> I could think of two measurement to solve this: a) Change 'knife cookbook upload' to only accept cookbooks not changed against the git/svn.  
> b) Do not ever upload changeds directly, but commit them and let a CI server apply them to a chef server (and maybe run some tests?). Is anybody doing like that? Am I getting things totaly wrong?

Either are fine choices. A common tactic would be to use a  
post-commit/post-push hook in Git.

> 1. How are changes to attributes tracked? As far as I understand there ist nothingh that keeps track of changes to attributes. So I can not my infrastructure as it was as at a certain time.

You can back the data up easily. Something like this:

[https://gist.github.com/671369](https://gist.github.com/671369)

Stuck in a cron-job would allow you to back up the data (and perhaps  
automatically check it in to source control.)

> 1. I've played around with some recipes and often succeeded to upload recipe and/or attribute files to my chef server that were syntactically wrong, atlhough there seems to be some validation done during 'knife cookbook upload'. Is there a way to get a stronger validation for my files before uploading them?

The syntax checks pre-upload are just that - pure syntax. Short of  
running the code itself, there is no way to get a deeper validation.

> 1. Is there a way to download cookooks from a side including dependencies?

knife cookbook site vendor with the '-d' switch.

> 1. Is there any standard way to run automated tests against your cookbooks?

Not at this time - there has been some thought around cookbook  
testing, but nothing formalized.

Best,  
Adam

--  
Opscode, Inc.  
Adam Jacob, CTO  
T: (206) 508-7449 E: [adam@opscode.com](mailto:adam@opscode.com)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Martin\_Eigenbrodt1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Martin\_Eigenbrodt1](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Martin_Eigenbrodt1)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2010, 6:38am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/some-questions/1626/3 "2010-12-02T06:38:54Z")

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Thanks for your reply,  
more questions inline...

> You can back the data up easily. Something like this:
> 
> [https://gist.github.com/671369](https://gist.github.com/671369)
> 
> Stuck in a cron-job would allow you to back up the data (and perhaps

automatically check it in to source control.)

> 

Seems like a valid solution to have backups and be able to restore data.  
I'll try this (It's a welcome opportunity to learn some ruby.) .  
Nevertheless it is still a "after facts" approach and you can't say who  
changed the data.

> > 1. Is there a way to download cookooks from a side including  
> > dependencies?
> 
> knife cookbook site vendor with the '-d' switch.

Hm. This seems to be git only. At the moment I've to go with svn. Are there  
plans to add "-d" for knife cookbooks site download?

Best regards,

Martin

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Adam\_Jacob](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/adam_jacob/32/292_2.png) [@Adam\_Jacob](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Adam_Jacob)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2010, 7:48pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/some-questions/1626/4 "2010-12-02T19:48:30Z")

</div>

On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 10:38 PM, Martin Eigenbrodt  
[martineigenbrodt@googlemail.com](mailto:martineigenbrodt@googlemail.com) wrote:

> Seems like a valid solution to have backups and be able to restore data.  
> I'll try this (It's a welcome opportunity to learn some ruby.) .  
> Nevertheless it is still a "after facts" approach and you can't say who  
> changed the data.

Yep. Reporting and auditing for these kind of events is on the radar,  
but it won't be a priority till after we ship environments in Chef  
0.10.

> Hm. This seems to be git only. At the moment I've to go with svn. Are there  
> plans to add "-d" for knife cookbooks site download?

Yes.

Adam

--  
Opscode, Inc.  
Adam Jacob, CTO  
T: (206) 508-7449 E: [adam@opscode.com](mailto:adam@opscode.com)