If you start with Chef and simply want to set up a system on a
single machine, you should use the chef-solo client utility as it doesn't require
a Chef Server or an account for Hosted
Chef.
Prerequisites
Before you can start deploying the components with chef-solo, you need to fulfill
the following requirements:
Install chef-solo.
Provide the RPM artifacts either from a local directory or from a remote YUM repository.
Provide a Zip archive of a content export, either as a local file or from a remote accessible URL.
Installing Chef Client
To install Chef Client (including chef-solo) execute the following command:
sudo true && curl -L https://www.chef.io/chef/install.sh | sudo bash
Configuring the solo.rb file
The file to configure the chef-solo client is solo.rb, it
contains the paths' to the cookbooks and the roles and the logging configuration of
Chef. You have to create this file. A simple solo.rb file should look like
the example below.
# CHEF ENVIRONMENT CONFIGURATION
log_level :info
log_location "/var/log/chef/chef-solo.log"
cookbook_path "PATH_TO_YOUR_CHEF_REPO/cookbooks"
role_path "PATH_TO_YOUR_CHEF_REPO/roles"
Example 4.14. An example solo.rb file
Install Berkshelf and vendor the cookbooks. To do so,
cd boxes/chef/chef-repo
berks vendor
Afterwards the new generated berks-cookbooks directory must be added
to the cookbooks path of the solo.rb.
Configuring the node.json file
The node.json file contains all the configurations you want to apply with
the chef-solo run. This includes the attributes you want to set but also the roles and recipes
you want to apply. The example below configures a complete CoreMedia
7 run.
{
"fqdn":"YOUR_ALIAS",
"mysql":{
"allow_remote_root":true,
"bind_address":"0.0.0.0",
"use_upstart":false,
"server_repl_password":"coremedia",
"server_debian_password":"coremedia",
"server_root_password":"coremedia",
"tunable":{
"wait_timeout":"7200"
},
"client": {
"packages": ["mysql-community-client", "mysql-community-devel"]
},
"server": {
"packages": ["mysql-community-server"]
}
},
"coremedia":{
"db":{
"schemas":["cm7management",
"cm7master",
"cm7replication",
"cm7caefeeder",
"cm7mcaefeeder"]
},
"yum":{
"local": {
"path": "YOUR_LOCAL_RPM_REPO",
"archive": "YOUR_RPM_REPO_ARCHIVE_URL"
}
},
"content_archive": "YOUR_CONTENT_ARCHIVE"
},
"configuration":{
"configure.STUDIO_TLD":"YOUR_ALIAS",
"configure.DELIVERY_TLD":"YOUR_ALIAS",
"configure.CROWD_APP_NAME":"YOUR_CROWD_APP_NAME",
"configure.CROWD_PASSWORD":"YOUR_CROWD_PASSWORD",
"configure.CROWD_SERVER":"YOUR_CROWD_SERVER:8443",
"configure.ELASTIC_MAIL_HOST":"YOUR_MAIL_SERVER",
"configure.DELIVERY_REPOSITORY_HTTP_PORT":"42080",
"configure.DELIVERY_SOLR_PORT":"44080"
},
"logging":{
"default":{
"com.coremedia":{"level":"info"},
"cap.server":{"level":"info"},
"hox.corem.server":{"level":"info"},
"workflow.server":{"level":"info"}
}
},
"tomcat":{
"manager":{
"credentials":{
"admin":{
"username":"admin",
"password" : "tomcat",
"roles" : "manager-gui"
},
"script": {
"username" :"script",
"password" : "tomcat",
"roles" : "manager-jmx,manager-script"
}
}
}
}
},
"run_list":[
"recipe[blueprint-yum::default]",
"recipe[coremedia::chef_logging]",
"recipe[coremedia::reporting]",
"recipe[mysql::server]",
"recipe[coremedia::db_schemas]",
"recipe[mongodb::default]",
"recipe[coremedia::solr_master]",
"recipe[coremedia::master_live_server]",
"recipe[coremedia::content_management_server]",
"recipe[coremedia::workflow_server]",
"recipe[coremedia::caefeeder_preview]",
"recipe[coremedia::caefeeder_live]",
"recipe[coremedia::studio]",
"recipe[coremedia::studio_apache]",
"recipe[coremedia::certificate_generator]",
"recipe[coremedia::delivery]",
"recipe[coremedia::delivery_apache]"
]
}
Example 4.15. An example node.json file
Before you can execute chef-solo with this configuration, you need to replace all
uppercase values starting with YOUR_. The following table lists the most
important ones:
| Token | Replacement |
|---|---|
YOUR_ALIAS | If your machine has an alias and you want the system to use it instead of the resolved hostname, you can set it here. |
YOUR_LOCAL_RPM_REPO |
The path of the local directory containing the RPM artifacts. If you want to use this option, remove the
attribute coremedia['yum']['local']['archive'].
|
YOUR_LOCAL_RPM_REPO_ARCHIVE_URL |
The URL to a remote archive of the RPM artifacts. If you want to use this option, you can remove the
attribute coremedia['yum']['local']['path] and Chef will
use the default for this value (/shared/rpm-repo).
|
YOUR_LOCAL_CONTENT_ARCHIVE | An array of paths to local Zip archives containing content, typically an archive with global content and some content archives of extensions which you have activated. |
Table 4.2. node.js configurations
Now, you can simply start chef-solo by executing:
chef-solo -c solo.rb -j node.json
Configuring a Jenkins Setup
As described above, RPM repository and example content can be specified with and retrieved from a
remote HTTP URL. For a quick retest system with Jenkins, you can
use the REST API of Jenkins to retrieve those archives via the
lastSuccessfulBuild URLs. All you need to do is activate
archiving for the boxes/target/shared/rpm-repo/ folder and if you have a
corresponding content job, you can apply this pattern there too.
For the chef-repo, you can choose between using the archived artifacts or directly reference
the jobs workspace using the *zip* controller of Jenkins. The
Jenkins job then only needs execute a script, that downloads and
extract the chef-repo archive and configure the paths in the solo.rb
correctly.
The script itself can be committed together with the node.json in the VCS
that the Jenkins job checks out.
The following list shows example URLs using lastSuccessFul artifact URLs for RPM repository and
content and a direct workspace URL for the chef-repo:
http://MY_JENKINS/job/MY_CM7_JOB/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/boxes/target/shared/rpm-repo/*zip*/rpm-repo.ziphttp://MY_JENKINS/job/MY_CM7_CONTENT_JOB/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/target/content-users.ziphttp://MY_JENKINS/job/MY_CM7_JOB/ws/boxes/chef/chef-repo/*zip*/chef-repo.zip
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