#chef

coderanger: the reason i went to UI was because knife configure --initial was giving me trouble

ERROR: Chef::Exceptions::ValidationFailed: Option admin must be a kind of [TrueClass, FalseClass]! You passed "https://example.com/users/admin".

@coderanger: well, but data bags can be encrypted and moving things to a data bag is a good practice for if I upgrade from chef-solo.

nm.. i got the fix.. i had to give url has https://

mikexstudios: encrypted data bags with solo are almost certainly not what you want to be using

mikexstudios: Check out the citadel cookbook and chef-vault

mikexstudios: With solo, even that is probably pushing it though

coderanger: Thanks for the suggestions. I was just reading up on chef-vault.

mikexstudios: Basically think very carefully about what security assertions you are making and why, knee jerk "we need encryption" is sometimes counter productive :)

For example, if the git repo isn't public, and you are using something like knife solo, encryption is mostly moot since the only place your data lives is either on your workstation (presumed safe) or the target server (which you just gave the decryption key)

coderanger: Right. I was thinking about possibly making my git repo public in the future, which is why I considered encryption despite using chef-solo at the moment.

But even then, I should probably just not check any data in the git repo in the first place.

mikexstudios: So in that case, think about how you are going to store and manage your decryption keys, and if you can just distribute secret data that way and skip the encryption

coderanger: Thanks. I'll re-think my strategy.

:-) Its a Very Hard Thing to get right

citadel is nice, but only works if you are 100% amazon kool aid

beyond that, just cross your fingers for barbican or something similar

What's the appropriate way to compare ubuntu versions? for example, node['platform_version

What's the appropriate way to compare ubuntu versions? for example, node['platform_version'] appears to return a string ("12.04") but I want to do a comparison to it (i.e. <13.10, do this, else do this)

JayF: The usual trick is to use Gem::Version

I don't understand what you mean

which implements major/minor/rev/etc comparison logic

ah

but I'd have to import all of rubygems to get that

if Gem::Version.new(node['platform_verison']) > Gem::Version.new('whatever')

Rubygems is always loaded

Thats how Ruby packaging works in the first place

sweet, that appears to do exactly what I wanted

Thanks a bunch!

Hey guys I'm trying to run bootstrap on an existing node, and it keeps running an old version of one of my recipes! My depends line does NOT state a version. Once I deleted the old recipe off my hosted chef entirely it began to just throw an error saying the recipe doesn't exist at all (which is incorrect, I just deleted old version). Is there somewhere that recipe version is set OTHER THAN metadata.rb???????

mdpatrick: check the environment for a version constraint, or other cookbooks that depend on it

coderanger: Environment just says _default on opscode. there is a cookbook depending on it, but no version specified on depends line

mdpatrick: Also check all other cookbooks depending on it, and look in your run lists for a [email protected] yntax