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knife cookbook

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A cookbook is the fundamental unit of configuration and policy distribution in Chef Infra.

A cookbook defines a scenario and contains everything that is required to support that scenario:

  • Recipes that specify which Chef Infra built-in resources to use, as well as the order in which they are to be applied
  • Attribute values, which allow environment-based configurations such as dev or production.
  • Custom Resources for extending Chef Infra beyond the built-in resources.
  • Files and Templates for distributing information to systems.
  • Custom Ohai Plugins for extending system configuration collection beyond the Ohai defaults.
  • The metadata.rb file, which describes the cookbook itself and any dependencies it may have.

Use the knife cookbook subcommand to interact with cookbooks that are located on the Chef Infra Server or the local chef-repo.

Note

Review the list of common options available to this (and all) knife subcommands and plugins.

bulk delete

Use the bulk delete argument to delete cookbook files that match a pattern defined by a regular expression. The regular expression must be within quotes and not be surrounded by forward slashes (/).

Syntax

This argument has the following syntax:

knife cookbook bulk delete REGEX (options)

Options

This argument has the following options:

-p, --purge

Entirely remove a cookbook (or cookbook version) from the Chef Infra Server. Use this action carefully because only one copy of any single file is stored on the Chef Infra Server. Consequently, purging a cookbook disables any other cookbook that references one or more files from the cookbook that has been purged.

Note

See config.rb for more information about how to add certain knife options as settings in the config.rb file.

Examples

The following examples show how to use this knife subcommand:

Bulk delete many cookbooks

Use a regular expression to define the pattern used to bulk delete cookbooks:

knife cookbook bulk delete "^[0-9]{3}$" -p

delete

Use the delete argument to delete a specified cookbook or cookbook version on the Chef Infra Server (and not locally).

Syntax

This argument has the following syntax:

knife cookbook delete COOKBOOK_NAME [COOKBOOK_VERSION] (options)

Options

This argument has the following options:

-a, --all

Delete all cookbooks (and cookbook versions).

COOKBOOK_VERSION

The version of a cookbook to be deleted. If a cookbook has only one version, this option does not need to be specified. If a cookbook has more than one version and this option is not specified, knife prompts for a version.

-p, --purge

Entirely remove a cookbook (or cookbook version) from the Chef Infra Server. Use this action carefully because only one copy of any single file is stored on the Chef Infra Server. Consequently, purging a cookbook disables any other cookbook that references one or more files from the cookbook that has been purged.

Note

See config.rb for more information about how to add certain knife options as settings in the config.rb file.

Examples

The following examples show how to use this knife subcommand:

Delete a cookbook

knife cookbook delete cookbook_name version

For example:

knife cookbook delete smartmon 0.8

Type Y to confirm a deletion.

download

Use the download argument to download a cookbook from the Chef Infra Server to the current working directory.

Syntax

This argument has the following syntax:

knife cookbook download COOKBOOK_NAME [COOKBOOK_VERSION] (options)

Options

This argument has the following options:

-d DOWNLOAD_DIRECTORY, --dir DOWNLOAD_DIRECTORY

The directory in which cookbooks are located.

-f, --force

Overwrite an existing directory.

-N, --latest

Download the most recent version of a cookbook.

Note

See config.rb for more information about how to add certain knife options as settings in the config.rb file.

Examples

The following examples show how to use this knife subcommand:

Download a cookbook

To download a cookbook named smartmon, enter:

knife cookbook download smartmon

list

Use the list argument to view a list of cookbooks that are currently available on the Chef Infra Server. The list will contain only the most recent version for each cookbook by default.

Syntax

This argument has the following syntax:

knife cookbook list (options)

Options

This argument has the following options:

-a, --all

Return all available versions for every cookbook.

-w, --with-uri

Show the corresponding URIs.

Note

See config.rb for more information about how to add certain knife options as settings in the config.rb file.

Examples

The following examples show how to use this knife subcommand:

View a list of cookbooks

To view a list of cookbooks:

knife cookbook list

metadata

Use the metadata argument to generate the metadata for one or more cookbooks.

Syntax

This argument has the following syntax:

knife cookbook metadata (options)

Options

This argument has the following options:

-a, --all

Generate metadata for all cookbooks.

-o PATH:PATH, --cookbook-path PATH:PATH

The directory in which cookbooks are created. This can be a colon-separated path.

Note

See config.rb for more information about how to add certain knife options as settings in the config.rb file.

Examples

The following examples show how to use this knife subcommand:

Generate metadata

knife cookbook metadata -a

metadata from file

Use the metadata from file argument to load the metadata for a cookbook from a file.

Syntax

This argument has the following syntax:

knife cookbook metadata from file FILE

Options

This command does not have any specific options.

Examples

The following examples show how to use this knife subcommand:

View metadata

knife cookbook metadata from file /path/to/file

show

Use the show argument to view information about a cookbook, parts of a cookbook (attributes, definitions, files, libraries, providers, recipes, resources, and templates), or a file that is associated with a cookbook (including attributes such as checksum or specificity).

Syntax

This argument has the following syntax:

knife cookbook show COOKBOOK_NAME [COOKBOOK_VERSION] [PART...] [FILE_NAME] (options)

Options

This argument has the following options:

COOKBOOK_VERSION

The version of a cookbook to be shown. If a cookbook has only one version, this option does not need to be specified. If a cookbook has more than one version and this option is not specified, a list of cookbook versions is returned.

-f FQDN, --fqdn FQDN

The FQDN of the host.

FILE_NAME

The name of a file that is associated with a cookbook.

-p PLATFORM, --platform PLATFORM

The platform for which a cookbook is designed.

PART

The part of the cookbook to show: attributes, definitions, files, libraries, providers, recipes, resources, or templates. More than one part can be specified.

-V PLATFORM_VERSION, --platform-version PLATFORM_VERSION

The version of the platform.

-w, --with-uri

Show the corresponding URIs.

Note

See config.rb for more information about how to add certain knife options as settings in the config.rb file.

Examples

The following examples show how to use this knife subcommand:

Show cookbook data

To get the list of available versions of a cookbook named getting-started, enter:

knife cookbook show getting-started

to return something like:

getting-started   0.3.0  0.2.0

Show cookbook versions

To show a list of data about a cookbook using the name of the cookbook and the version, enter:

knife cookbook show getting-started 0.3.0

to return something like:

attributes:
  checksum:   fa0fc4abf3f6787aeb5c3c5c35de667c
  name:       default.rb
  path:       attributes/default.rb
  specificity:  default
  url:        https://somelongurlhere.com
chef_type:    cookbook_version
cookbook_name:  getting-started
definitions:  []
files:        []
frozen?:      false
json_class:   Chef::CookbookVersion
libraries:    []

Show a cookbook version

To only view data about templates, enter:

knife cookbook show getting-started 0.3.0 templates

to return something like:

checksum:   a29d6f254577b830091f140c3a78b1fe
name:       chef-getting-started.txt.erb
path:       templates/default/chef-getting-started.txt.erb
specificity:  default
url:        https://someurlhere.com

Show cookbook data as JSON

To view information in JSON format, use the -F common option as part of the command like this:

knife cookbook show devops -F json

Other formats available include text, yaml, and pp.

test

Use the test argument to test a cookbook for syntax errors. This argument uses Ruby syntax checking to verify every file in a cookbook that ends in .rb and Embedded Ruby (ERB). This argument will respect chefignore files when determining which cookbooks to test for syntax errors.

Warning

This feature is deprecated in favor of Cookstyle and ChefSpec

Syntax

This argument has the following syntax:

knife cookbook test COOKBOOK_NAME (options)

Options

This argument has the following options:

-a, --all

Test all cookbooks.

-o PATH:PATH, --cookbook-path PATH:PATH

The directory in which cookbooks are created. This can be a colon-separated path.

Note

See config.rb for more information about how to add certain knife options as settings in the config.rb file.

Examples

The following examples show how to use this knife subcommand:

Test a cookbook

knife cookbook test cookbook_name

upload

Use the upload argument to upload one or more cookbooks (and any files that are associated with those cookbooks) from a local repository to the Chef Infra Server. Only files that do not already exist on the Chef Infra Server will be uploaded.

Note

Use a chefignore file to prevent the upload of specific files and file types, such as temporary files or files placed in folders by version control systems. The chefignore file must be located in the root of the cookbook repository and must use rules similar to filename globbing (as defined by the Ruby File.fnmatch syntax).

Note

Empty directories are not uploaded to the Chef Infra Server. To upload an empty directory, create a “dot” file—e.g. .keep—in that directory to ensure that the directory itself is not empty.

Syntax

This argument has the following syntax:

knife cookbook upload [COOKBOOK_NAME...] (options)

Options

This argument has the following options:

-a, --all

Upload all cookbooks.

--concurrency

The number of allowed concurrent connections. Default: 10.

-d, --include-dependencies

Ensure that when a cookbook has a dependency on one (or more) cookbooks, those cookbooks are also uploaded.

-E ENVIRONMENT, --environment ENVIRONMENT

Use to set the environment version dependency to the cookbook version being uploaded.

--force

Update a cookbook even if the --freeze flag has been set.

--freeze

Require changes to a cookbook be included as a new version. Only the --force option can override this setting.

-o PATH:PATH, --cookbook-path PATH:PATH

The directory in which cookbooks are created. This can be a colon-separated path.

Note

See config.rb for more information about how to add certain knife options as settings in the config.rb file.

Examples

The following examples show how to use this knife subcommand:

Upload a cookbook

knife cookbook upload cookbook_name

Freeze a cookbook

To upload a cookbook, and then prevent other users from being able to make changes to it, enter:

knife cookbook upload redis --freeze

to return something like:

Uploading redis...
Upload completed

If a cookbook is frozen and the --force option is not specified, knife will return an error message similar to the following:

Uploading redis...
ERROR: Version 0.1.6 of cookbook redis is frozen. Use --force to override.

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