Questions[cookbook](server)

I'm trying to install Maven 3 using Chef Solo and the following cookbook:

http://community.opscode.com/cookbooks/maven

The cookbook installs Maven 2 by default, and the first time I ran it, it installed Maven 2 as expected.

Later on I modified my solo.json file to look like this:

{
    "maven": {
        "version": "3"
    },
    "run_list": [
        "recipe[java]",
        "recipe[maven]"
    ]
}

But Chef isn't updating Maven to version 3. I don't know if this is because I'm incorrectly specifying the override attribute or if there's some other issue. I using this for reference:

http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Chef+Solo#ChefSolo-JSON%2CAttributesandRecipes

Thanks.

I'm using Opscode's application_python cookbook, and trying to deploy a Django application. I need to use Python 2.7 for this project, but it appears that the virtualenv creation is done with python2.6 by default, which I don't plan on installing on the system. Therefore, I get the following error when running chef-client:

[Fri, 08 Jun 2012 16:55:35 +0000] FATAL: Mixlib::ShellOut::ShellCommandFailed: execute[virtualenv --python=python2.6 /opt/apps/trippingbear/shared/env] (/var/chef/cache/cookbooks/python/providers/virtualenv.rb line 28) had an error: Mixlib::ShellOut::ShellCommandFailed: Expected process to exit with [0], but received '3'
---- Begin output of virtualenv --python=python2.6 /opt/apps/trippingbear/shared/env ----
STDOUT: The executable python2.6 (from --python=python2.6) does not exist
STDERR: 
---- End output of virtualenv --python=python2.6 /opt/apps/trippingbear/shared/env ----
Ran virtualenv --python=python2.6 /opt/apps/trippingbear/shared/env returned 3

I'm pretty (extremely) new to Chef, and haven't got an idea of how to change it. The default seems to be set with attribute :interpreter, :default => 'python2.6' in cookbooks/python/resources/virtualenv.rb. I've tried setting defaults both on my node and in the environment as the following, with no success:

default_attributes(
  "python" => {
    "virtualenv" => {
      "interpreter" => "python2.7"
    }
  }
)

I'm sure this is configurable, but I can't figure out quite how to do it. What am I setting incorrectly?

I do tests atm with Chef and I have a virtual machine which I'm cloning to generate new nodes. I do bootstrap with the knife command and the -N Parameter to give each host a nodename. The Problem is tough, that the hostname on the VM doesn't change and if I'm trying to bootstrap another client it fails because Chef has this node already signed up. I did now try to set the hostname in my base Role with the hostname cookbok but when I run chef-client it gives me a:

---- Begin output of hostname @config[:chef_node_name] ----
STDOUT: 
STDERR: hostname: the specified hostname is invalid
---- End output of hostname @config[:chef_node_name] ----
Ran hostname @config[:chef_node_name] returned 1

The Attributes for the base Role are:

name "base"
description "Base role applied to all nodes"
override_attributes(
  "chef_client" => {
    "init_style" => "upstart",
    "server_url" => "http://chef.ws:4000"
    },
  "set_fqdn" => 
        "@config[:chef_node_name]"
)
run_list(
  "recipe[hostname]",
  "recipe[chef-client::delete_validation]",
  "recipe[chef-client::service]"
)

Do I have a syntax error here in the set_fqdn or is the @config variable simply not accessible on the node? Is there a better way to set the hostname to the nodename?

I am using a custom bash script to spin up/down EC2 instances as needed. The script creates the instance similar to: knife ec2 server create --config .chef/knife.rb with a few other parameters. It creates the instance fine but I want to be able to assign my elastic ip to the current active instance.

Short of sending the output to a text file, parsing the output for the IP and instance name, and then running ec2-associate-address -i $instancename $ipaddress is there a good way to do this programmatically?

I believe I'm over thinking this.

I've been trying to setup a chef server and supply it with the cookbooks form the opscode github page

http://github.com/opscode/cookbooks.git

I've cloned this repo and set it in both my server config and knife config

server.rb

cookbook_path [ '/opt/chef/cookbooks', '/opt/chef/site-cookbooks' ]

knife.rb

cookbook_path [ '/opt/chef/cookbooks', '/opt/chef/site-cookbooks']

Both directories contain the cookbooks from the repo, but cookbooks are visible either in the web-ui or via knife cookbook list. I'm pretty sure I have everything configured correctly as clients can connect and all the processes seem to be running (as per the server setp doc).

Anyone got this working and can set me on the right track to getting my cookbooks listed?

rgds,

ste