Chef-Resources Elementary ingredient..

Introduction

Resources are the “elementary ingredient” of Chef house. Before mounting up on the spikes of chef’s elevations, it's favorable to tailor your suit with basics. Combining common ingredients to make a new play substance is always thrilling!. I wish I had some magic secrets or shortcuts to share, but the truth is that you have to start with the ABC's and then you can rule over the game.

Trigger a VM

Git clone our repository dedicated for this blog series.

$ git clone git@github.com:OpsTree/Chef.git

Change directory to Chef/centos/chefResourceBackings. Here you find a Vagrantfile which spin up a centos7 machine with chefdk and other tools installed in it.

$ cat Vagrantfile

Launch a new vagrant machine and login.

$ vagrant up

$ vagrant ssh

Your learning environment is ready. Although in this blog we do not focus a lot on practicals, we try to clear our theoretical concepts.

Backings of Resources

Chef resources are the statements which define the configuration approach for any element. From the officials of chef, resources are

• Describes the desired state for a configuration item
• Declares the steps needed to bring that item to the desired state
• Specifies a resource type—such as package, template, or service
• Lists additional details (also known as resource properties), as necessary
• Are grouped into recipes, which describe working configurations

Chef works with two basic parts, properties and actions.

Properties

Properties are the attributes and definitions for the target element of any resources. Some common properties for all resources without exception.

ignore_failure

What to do when a resource is fail in its doings i.e. continue or stop. Default value is false or stop.   

provider

This is an optional property. You can explicitly define the correct provider for a resource. In common practices this is not mandatory to specified.

retries

Number of attempts that a resource tries in chef-run. Default value is 0.

retry_delay

Time duration between two consecutive tries. Default value is 2.

sensitive

This defines that the data in resource is sensitive and is not logged by chef-client. Default value is false. This property only applies to the execute, file and template resources.

Action

Actions differ for distinct resources. A common action for every resource is :nothing. Nothing action stated that resource should not do anything until it is notified by any other resource.  

Some Basic Resources

Lets took example of some of the basic resources.

• Package

This resource manage packages. This install, uninstall and upgrade any package. This resource is also a platform for some other dependent package management resources such as apt_package, dpkg_package, gem_package, yum_package etc. Available actions are :install, :purge, :remove, :upgrade and :nothing.

Example:

package 'tar' do
 version '1.26-29.el7'
 action :install
end

OR

package 'tar' do
 action :remove
end

• File

This is responsible to manage files on a machine. Available actions are :create, :create_if_missing, :delete, :nothing and :touch.

Example

file '/tmp/test.txt' do
 content 'This is testing file.'
 mode '0755'
 owner 'root'
 group 'root'
end

OR

file '/tmp/test2.txt' do
 content IO.read('/vagrant/resources/string.txt')
 action :create
end

This will create a test.txt file under /tmp directory and put the contents of string.txt file into it.

• Service

Subjected to manage services. Available actions are :disable, :enable, :nothing, :reload, :restart, :start and :stop.

Example

service 'nginx'  do
 action :start
end

OR

service 'nginx' do
 supports :status => true, :restart => true, :reload => true
 action [ :enable, :start ]
end

This will ensure enable then start options for nginx service. Before this, install nginx using package resource.

• Template

This resource calls chef templates to dynamically generate static files. Templates are ".erb" files with some variables and placed under “/templates” directory of cookbook. Available actions are  :create, :create_if_missing, :delete, :nothing and :touch.  Template resource only available with cookbooks, you can not use this resource with chef-apply from command line.

Example

template '/tmp/sshd_config' do
 source 'sshd_config.erb'
 owner 'root'
 group 'root'
 mode '0755'
end

OR

template '/tmp/config.conf' do
 source 'config.conf.erb'
 variables(
   :config_var => 'mytext'
 )
end

This will pass variables to config.conf.erb file to generate config.conf file.

Extended Resource

Have some attention towards less likely used but important resources.  

• Git

This resource manages git repository by interacting with source code management system. Git version 1.6.5 (or higher) is required. Available actions are :checkout, :export, :nothing and :sync.

Example

git '/opt/mygit/' do
 repository 'https://github.com/OpsTree/Chef.git'
 revision 'master'
 action :sync
end

• Link

Resource is responsible to manage soft and hard links. Available actions are :create, :delete and :nothing.

Example

link '/tmp/myfile' do
 to '/etc/ssh/sshd_config'
end

OR

link '/tmp/myhardfile' do
 to '/etc/ssh/sshd_config'
 link_type :hard
end

The default link_type is :symbolic.  

• Script

This resources is used to execute external script. The supported interpreters are Bash, csh, Perl, Python, or Ruby. Available actions are :run and :nothing.

Example   

script 'extract_module' do
 interpreter 'bash'
 cwd '/tmp'
 code <<-EOH
   mkdir -p /tmp/mytest
   touch /tmp/mytest/file.txt
   EOH
end

• Cron

To manage your cron jobs use this resource. If a property is not specified then default ‘*’ value is taken. Available actions are :create, :delete and :nothing.

Example

cron 'noop' do
 hour '5'
 minute '0'
 command '/bin/true'
end

OR

cron 'tuesdaycron' do
 minute '50'
 hour '11'
 weekday '2'
 command '/bin/true'
 action :create
end

This will run the cron job only on tuesday 11:50am.

To test all resources available above, go to resource directory under “chefResourceBackings” directory.  All resources are available as bash script.

Custom Resources

It’s an extension of the initially available properties.  Chef allows you to create your own resources. These custom resources extend the basic definitions of the built-in resources. The custom resources resides in the “/resources” directory of any cookbook. Conventionally name of any custom resource is the name of cookbook and name of resource file separated by underscore (_).  Custom resource creation is not an initial task for us so we skip this for now.

This is difficult to cover all about the resource(every resource and their properties or actions) in this article. Refer to chef-resources for more information.

It’s hard to get this boring stuff exciting in any manner. But it's a fact that every serious effort makes you closer towards the excellence.

“The Expert In Anything Was Once A Beginner. “

Wanna be an adroit of Chef then from now “practice like a devil play like an angel”.