# Still confused about knife search recipe vs. recipes

**URL:** <https://discourse.chef.io/t/still-confused-about-knife-search-recipe-vs-recipes/4733>\
**Category:** Chef Infra (archive)\
**Created:** [November 22, 2013, 9:30pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/still-confused-about-knife-search-recipe-vs-recipes/4733 "2013-11-22T21:30:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Guy\_Matz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/57b2e6/32.png) [@Guy\_Matz](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Guy_Matz)\
**Post date:** [November 22, 2013, 9:30pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/still-confused-about-knife-search-recipe-vs-recipes/4733/1 "2013-11-22T21:30:52Z")

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Hi! I don’t understand this and I want to cry . . . why isn’t knife  
search returning anything here:

[gmatz@iad-qac1-admin101 iheart-chef]$ knife search node  
’recipes:attivio::clustered’  
0 items found

When the recipe attivio::clustered is in the run list (see below)? It  
seems that not all of my RunList is getting expanded in Recipes . . . Is  
that right? I thought that I should see all of the recipes applied to the  
node, as well as the expanded list of recipes from roles.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

[gmatz@iad-qac1-admin101 iheart-chef]$ knife search node  
’recipe:attivio::clustered’  
3 items found

Node Name: iad-stg-search201.ihr  
Environment: dev  
FQDN: iad-stg-search201.ihr  
IP: 10.5.52.93  
Run List: role[base], recipe[attivio::clustered],  
recipe[attivio::clustermaster], recipe[users::splunk], role[attivio]  
Roles: base, monitored  
Recipes: resolver, yum, ntp, timezone, cron, chef-client, zsh,  
users::sysadmins, sudo, emacs, vim, git, build-essential, perl, python,  
screen, nscd, openssh, motd-tail, operations, logrotate::syslog,  
vmware-tools::noop, nagios, diamond, monitoring, snmp  
Platform: centos 6.3  
Tags:

snip

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jdunn](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/jdunn/32/1800_2.png) [@jdunn](https://discourse.chef.io/u/jdunn)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2013, 5:25pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/still-confused-about-knife-search-recipe-vs-recipes/4733/2 "2013-11-23T17:25:17Z")

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On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 4:30 PM, Guy Matz [guymatz@gmail.com](mailto:guymatz@gmail.com) wrote:

> Hi! I don't understand this and I want to cry . . . why isn't knife search  
> returning anything here:
> 
> [gmatz@iad-qac1-admin101 iheart-chef]$ knife search node  
> 'recipes:attivio::clustered'  
> 0 items found
> 
> When the recipe attivio::clustered is in the run list (see below)? It seems  
> that not all of my RunList is getting expanded in Recipes . . . Is that  
> right? I thought that I should see all of the recipes applied to the node,  
> as well as the expanded list of recipes from roles.
> 
> Any thoughts?

Did you run Chef Client after adding attivio::clustered to your run list?

This is one of the shortcomings of the Node object -- at present, it  
contains both "desired state" and "current state" information, all  
intermingled together. The "run\_list" contains desired state, but  
"recipes" and "roles" contain current state. Yes, we have plans to  
change this in the future.

- Julian

--  
[Julian C. Dunn [jdunn@aquezada.com](mailto:jdunn@aquezada.com) \* Sorry, I'm ]  
[WWW: [Julian Dunn's Blog - Commentary on media, technology, and everything in between.](http://www.aquezada.com/staff/julian) \* only Web 1.0 ]  
[gopher://sdf.org/1/users/keymaker/ \* compliant!]  
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