Knife solo cook command not working properly

Question

So I'm running Chef-Solo on Ubnuntu 12.04 with a Linux OS on puTTy. My ultimate objective is to deploy an instance of Islandora/Drupal using Chef. However, at the moment, I'm not having much success. Here's the commands I've run:

knife solo prepare [user name]@[server name]

which gives me this output:

WARNING: No knife configuration file found
Bootstrapping Chef...
Enter the password for biblio@giada:
% Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                             Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 15934  100 15934    0     0  47449      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 70504

Downloading Chef 11.12.2 for ubuntu...
downloading https://www.opscode.com      /chef/metadata?v=11.12.2&prerelease=false&
nightlies=false&p=ubuntu&pv=12.04&m=x86_64
  to file /tmp/install.sh.14381/metadata.txt
trying wget...
url     https://opscode-omnibus-packages.s3.amazonaws.com/ubuntu/12.04/x86_64/chef_11.12.2-1_amd64.deb
md5     cedd8a2df60a706e51f58adf8441971b
sha256  af53e7ef602be6228dcbf68298e2613d3f37eb061975992abc6cd2d318e4a0c0
downloaded metadata file looks valid...
     downloading https://opscode-omnibus-packages.s3.amazonaws.com/ubuntu/12.0/x86_64/chef_11.12.2-1_amd64.deb
  to file /tmp/install.sh.14381/chef_11.12.2-1_amd64.deb
trying wget...
Comparing checksum with sha256sum...
Installing Chef 11.12.2
installing with dpkg...
(Reading database ... 72031 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace chef 11.12.2-1 (using .../chef_11.12.2-1_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement chef ...
Setting up chef (11.12.2-1) ...
Thank you for installing Chef!
Generating node config 'nodes/giada.json'...

Then when I run this:

knife solo cook [user name]@[server name]

...I get this:

WARNING: No knife configuration file found
WARNING: solo.rb found, but since knife-solo v0.3.0 it is not used any more
WARNING: Please read the upgrade instructions: https://github.com/matschaffer/knife-solo/wiki/Upgrading-to-0.3.0
Running Chef on [server name]...
Checking Chef version...
Enter the password for [user name]@[server name]:
Uploading the kitchen...
[user name]@[server name]'s password:
WARNING: Local cookbook_path '/etc/chef/cookbooks' does not exist
[user name]@[server name]'s password:
[user name]@[server name]'s password:
WARNING: Local role_path './roles' does not exist
WARNING: Local data_bag_path './data_bags' does not exist
WARNING: Local environment_path './environments' does not exist
Generating solo config...
[user name]@[server name]'s password:
Running Chef...

[2014-05-01T12:56:51-04:00] WARN:
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
SSL validation of HTTPS requests is disabled. HTTPS connections are still
encrypted, but chef is not able to detect forged replies or man in the middle
attacks.

To fix this issue add an entry like this to your configuration file:

```
  # Verify all HTTPS connections (recommended)
  ssl_verify_mode :verify_peer

   # OR, Verify only connections to chef-server
   verify_api_cert true
 ```

To check your SSL configuration, or troubleshoot errors, you can use the
`knife ssl check` command like so:

```
   knife ssl check -c /home/biblio/chef-solo/solo.rb
 ```

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Starting Chef Client, version 11.12.2
Compiling Cookbooks...
Converging 0 resources

Running handlers:
Running handlers complete

Chef Client finished, 0/0 resources updated in 2.278793398 seconds

In the situation described above, I am operating as root. Everything is where it's supposed to be according to the documentation from Opscode. But to my way of thinking, these warnings tell me something is not as it should be. Can anybody tell me what I'm missing? Thanks!

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered May 07 '14 at 20:08

In the folder where you are running the knife solo command, you need to have another hidden folder with a knife configuration file. aka

.chef/knife.rb -- this must include your knife settings. Here is mine.

   cookbook_path    "cookbooks"
   node_path        "nodes"
   role_path        "roles"

   knife[:berkshelf_path]          = "cookbooks"
   knife[:aws_access_key_id]       = "#{ENV['AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID']}"
   knife[:aws_secret_access_key]   = "#{ENV['AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY']}"
   knife[:region]                  = "#{ENV['EC2_REGION']}"
   knife[:availability_zone]       = "#{ENV['EC2_AVAILABILITY_ZONE']}"
   knife[:ssh_user]                = "ubuntu"
   knife[:groups]                  = "default"
   knife[:solo]                    = true

As you can see, I am making use of environment variables (ENV) so I check this into version control without exposing secrets. To do this in OSX or Linux, you need to edit your ~/.bash_profile and for each of the variables;

   export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=REAL_KEY_GOES_HERE

Then source it by running, source ~/.bash_profile.

Also a useful prepare argument is --run-list 'role[role-name]' so it will automatically use the right role when you run cook.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 23 '14 at 23:20

I once got this error because my dna.json was wrong. Some double quote mismatch. so first I tried doing what they suggest (adding ssl_verify_mode :verify_peer to the config file) which made no difference; then I knew that this message is just misleading.

Knife solo cook command not working properly

2 Answers2