Knife Handy Commands

What is knife?

Knife is what let’s us talk to the Chef server.

Acronym	Explanation
`knife <command> --help`	List out any help eg: `knife node --help`
`knife node list`	Show all nodes
`knife --version`	Show the version, lol
`knife cookbook create <bla>`	Makes a Cookbook
`knife node run_list add web1.awesomehost.com "receipe[apache]"`	Makes to run list
`knife node run_list remove web1.awesomehost.com "receipe[apache]"`	Removes from run list
`knife client list`	Show all clients.Also see Clients vs Nodes
`knife node show <nodename>`	Show the details of the node-name
`knife node show -l -F json <nodename>`	Show the all details, including Attributes in JSON
`knife node edit <nodename>`	Edit the node9object) - edit the runlist
`knife search node 'recipes:cookbook_name\:\:recipe_name'`	Show nodes which have the `recipe` of the `cookbook` attached
`knife search node 'cookbooks:cookbook-name'`	Show nodes which have the `cookbook` in the run list or if it is a dependency
`knife search node 'key:value AND NOT rabbitmq_version:bla' -a rabbitmq.version`	Search for a value with not in the search itself
`knife search <query> -a <attribute name>`	Seach for nodes with the attribute name
`knife search 'os:windows AND name:.awesomehost.com AND !region:production' -a "my.attribute"`	Seach with a query and attributes
`knife winrm --winrm-user 'domain\username' 'hostname:host-001.awesomehost.com' 'net statistics server'`	Knife `WINRM` example
`knife winrm --winrm-user 'domain\username' 'hostname:host-001.awesomehost.com' 'schtasks.exe /QUERY /TN "chef-client"'`	Knife `WINRM` example 2
`knife winrm --winrm-user 'domain\username' 'hostname:host-001.awesomehost.com' 'schtasks.exe /CHANGE /TN "chef-client" /DISABLE'`	Knife `WINRM` example 3
`knife ssh 'hostname:host-002.awesomehost.com' 'hostname'`	Knife SSH example 1
`knife ssh --ssh-password <plaintext> 'id:01 AND os:linux AND name:host-002.awesomehost.com' 'cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness'`	Knife SSH example 2
How to see multiple run-lists	Run-List for multiple nodes
`knife data bag list databag-ssl-certificates`	See stuff in `databag-ssl-certificates`
`knife data bag show databag-ssl-certificates`	Show stuff in `databag-ssl-certificates`
`knife data bag show databag-ssl-certificates Awesomehost-RootCA`	See stuff further down in a databagg `databag-ssl-certificates`
`knife environment compare dev staging`	Compare two environments
`knife search node "chef_environment:awesome-env AND os:linux" -i`	See all nodes in your env
`knife status 'env:production AND name:awesome' -r`	See nodes in search query with last chef-runs and the run-list
`knife configure client`	Configure `client.rb`
`knife configure`	Configure `knife.rb`
`knife bootstrap <nodename> -x <username> -P <password> -N <nodeName>`	Bootstrap Bootstrap
`knife cookbook create <cookbookName>`	Create a cookbook
`knife cookbook list`	List all the cookbooks
`knife cookbook delete <cookbookName>`	Delete a cookbook
`knife bootstrap <whatever options>`	Bootstrap options
`knife cookbook site <whatever options>`	Cookbook options via/for the supermarket
`knife search node 'name:awesomehost-01 AND virtualization_system:vmware`	Search nested attributes within the actual search query
`knife data bag from file idname.json --secret-file encrypted_data_bag_secret`	Create databag or databag item from file and encrypt it
`knife data create <databbag name> <item-name> --secret-file encrypted_data_bag_secret`	Create databag or databag item using an editor and encrypt it

See Run-Lists of multiple nodes

This can be used to

see order of cookbooks on the nodes
other interesting stuff on the run-lsit itself of the node!

S.No	Action	Command
1.	Get list of nodes you want to query on	`knife search node "chef_environment:testing" -i > node-list.txt`
2.	Make a directory	`mkdir run-lists`
2.	Save the run-lists of nodes you want to query on	`for i in` cat node-list.txt `; do knife node show -F json $i > run-lists/$i.json ; done`
3.	Do `bash` magic eg; to see order of cookbooks linux and windows after `cd run-lists`	`for i in` ls -l \| grep -v ‘./’ \| awk ‘{ print $9 }’ `; do echo $i && grep -ni 'linux' $i && grep -ni 'windows' $i ; done > /tmp/order.txt`

Update run-lists of multiple nodes

This can be used to

Update the run-lists any subset of nodes
I’m only appending a cookbook to the end of the run-list but this can be modified a custom use-case
Get list of nodes you want to perform the action on - knife search node "chef_environment:testing" -i > node-list.txt or grep from knife node list | grep 'myname' > /node-list.txt
Add your cookbook to the run-list for all - for i in $(cat /tmp/node-list.txt); do knife node run_list add $i 'recipe[my-code]' ; done

Client VS Node

A client - is a user that will authenticate against the Chef server to do something A node - is a machine that uses data from the Chef server to configure itself.

A client will have the level of permission to access data from the Chef server A node will get the list of recipies / cookbooks to be run

Consider a webserver web1.awesomehost.com , when it connects to chef-server to get all the recipies needed for web1.awesomehost.com it says “Hello Chef Server, I am client web1.awesomehost.com and here, I can authenticate to you, I need the recipies / run-list / node-object etc. for the node web1.awesomehost.com please pass them along.

Change vagrant stuff in kitchen

All right, this is not a knife thing, but you may ant to see this link to set all sorts of stuff for Vagrant in your kitchen file.

Here’s extracted code from that page for reference

driver:
  name: vagrant
  customize:
    cpus: 2
    memory: 1024
  network:
    # Allow access to the Jenkins webui which is useful when troubleshooting
    - - forwarded_port
      - guest: 8080
        host: 9090
auto_correct: true

Chef Cheat-sheet

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