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Chef Infra Client Release Notes

Chef Infra Client 18.5.0

Security

  • Updated OpenSSL to 3.0.9 for all platforms except macOS and Windows.
  • Amazon Linux and Ubuntu now support FIPS on ARM processors.

Resource Updates

chef_client_config resource

  • Fixed the ERB template used to generate client.rb files with the chef_client_config resource. When the the policy_persist_run_list and minimal_ohai properties were set to false, the template would return a NoMethodError. (#14255) (#14465)

chef_client_systemd_timer resource

  • Added the service_umask property to the chef_client_systemd_timer resource. This allows you to define a custom umask for files or directories created by Chef Infra Client. (#14238)

chocolatey_package resource

  • Fixed the use_choco_list property in the chocolatey_package resource. When set to false it was still using choco list to return a list of installed chocolatey packages. Thanks jaymzjulian! (#14227)

  • Fixed the chocolatey_package resource for customers using the licensed version of Chocolatey. Users with the licensed version of Chocolatey who were trying to install chocolatey.extension using the chocolatey_package resource would get a license error because chocolatey_package resource would run choco --version before installing a package, but Chocolatey requires that chocolatey.extension is installed before running that command. (#14320)

  • Fixed the chocolatey_package resource which would return an error when installing or upgrading multiple packages with the same action. Thanks jaymzjulian! (#14327)

habitat_install resource

Fixed the habitat_installer resource so that it correctly uses the system bash to install Chef Habitat instead of another command-line shell. (#14298)

powershell_package resource

Added the allow_clobber property to the powershell_package resource. This overrides warning messages when installing packages with conflicting commands. Thanks mikef-nl! (#14382)

sysctl resource

Updated the comment property of the sysctl resource so that property does not define system state. Thanks drdev! (#14309)

windows_service resource

Reverted an earlier change to the description property in the windows_service resource. This changed returned NoMethodError when used with the win32-service Gem. (#14334)

zypper_package resource

  • Reverted an earlier change to the zypper_package resource included in Chef Infra Client 18.3.0. After this change, the zypper_package resource was throwing an error if a package isn’t available in a repository, but its capability is provided by another package. For example the systemd-bash-completion package doesn’t exist, but its functionality is provided by systemd package. Chef Infra Client now correctly handles valid packages. (#14408)

Improvements

  • Added the hyperv? helper method to check if a node is a Hyper-V guest. (#14359)

Performance improvements

  • Added a variety of performance improvements thanks to dafyddcrosby.

Bug fixes

  • Removed the EOL warning for Chef Infra Client 18 because there is no longer a specific timeline for major version releases. (#14366)
  • Replaced the hardcoded Chef trademark with the distribution name in deprecation warnings. (#14279)
  • Client now uses the correct log level using log_level in the Credentials file or config.rb file and verbose_logging isn’t set. Previously it would use warn if verbose_logging wasn’t set and log_level was set. (#14294)
  • Fixed a Windows UTF-8 encoding error when retrieving data from the Windows registry. (#14449) (Ruby Patches)

Packaging

  • We no longer build packages for macOS 10.15. (#14291)

Dependencies

  • Upgraded Ruby 3.1 from 3.1.2 to 3.1.4. This also upgrades curl to version 8.0.1 and Perl to version 5.36.
  • Upgraded the vault gem to 0.18.2 #14423

Chef Infra Client 18.4.12

Compliance Phase improvements

  • Updated Chef InSpec to 5.22.40. (#14200)

    This update removes the dependency on the activesupport Gem by removing the blank? method. (inspec/inspec#6916)

Breaking changes

  • Removed the deprecated _blacklist and _whitelist attributes. (#14186)

    These attributes were deprecated in Chef Infra Client 16.3 and replaced with blocklist and allowlist attributes. See the attributes documentation for more information.

Packaging

  • We are now building packages for Amazon Linux 2023 on aarch64 and x86_64 platforms. #14228

Chef Infra Client 18.4.2

Improvements

  • net/http statements are now logged with the Chef debug logger (Chef::Log.debug) instead of with puts. (#13970)

New resources

  • Added the new chocolatey_installer resource which installs the Chocolatey package manager on a node.

    For additional information, see the chocolatey_installer resource documentation. (#14043)

Resource updates

  • Added the use_inline_powershell property to the powershell_script resource. This adds the ability to use the PowerShell DLL on Windows instead of shelling out. Thanks @jaymzjulian! (#14052)

  • Optimized Chocolatey resources when doing large numbers of operations. This includes adding the bulk_query and use_choco_list properties to the chocolatey_package resource.

    The bulk_query property batches queries and significantly reduces the load on upstream package servers.

    The use_choco_list property uses the choco list command to return Chocolatey packages instead of querying for NuGet package files. This property is false by default because querying for NuGet package files is faster than executing the choco list command.

    For more information, see the chocolatey_package resource documentation. Thanks @jaymzjulian! (#13972)

  • Added the following properties to the user_ulimit resource:

    • as_limit
    • as_soft_limit
    • as_hard_limit
    • locks_limit
    • maxlogins_limit
    • maxlogins_soft_limit
    • maxlogins_hard_limit
    • msgqueue_limit
    • msgqueue_soft_limit
    • msgqueue_hard_limit
    • cpu_limit
    • cpu_soft_limit
    • cpu_hard_limit
    • sigpending_limit
    • sigpending_soft_limit
    • sigpending_hard_limit
    • rss_limit
    • rss_soft_limit
    • rss_hard_limit

    For more information, see the user_ulimit resource documentation. Thanks @chrisminton! (#13394)

  • Added the anchor_package_regex property to the apt_package resource. This property restricts or allows apt_package to match packages by regular expression if it can’t find the exact package name that’s specified. For more information, see the apt_package resource documentation. #13873)

  • Improved debug logging output when the service resource can’t enable a service. (#13959)

Resource bug fixes

  • Fixed the zypper_package resource to handle error 104 when removing a non-existent package properly. (#14150)
  • Fixed the windows_service resource, which would trigger a change on every execution if you specify a service description. (#14064) Thanks @jakauppila!
  • Fixed the chef_client_systemd_timer resource to accept integer values for a unit’s CPU quota. (#14011) Thanks @blackknight36!
  • Fixed the local resource on Windows machines, which now correctly validates if locale-gen is installed. (#14014)
  • Fixed homebrew_cask, homebrew_tap, and homebrew_update resources error if Homebrew is not in the path. (#13937)
  • Fixed the chef_client_config resource which was removing permissions to the \chef directory on Windows systems. (#14173)

Dependencies

  • Updated Chef Foundation to 3.1.20. This includes loosening the package dependency chain in Solaris to allow clients with older patch versions than the Solaris builder to still be able to install. (#14183)

Security

  • Fixed an issue where sensitive items could be logged or displayed even if the sensitive attribute is set to true. (#13897)
  • Updated OpenSSL to 1.0.2zi. (#14088)

Bug fixes

  • Updated the attribute_changed event hook to handle changes in arrays. Thanks @Annih! (#13996)
  • Fixed the knife search command to correctly handle attributes with a dot, for example, a SemVer version number. (#13956)
  • Fixed chef-shell in Chef Infra Client mode when debugging a cookbook with attributes. Thanks @dafyddcrosby! (#13941)

Chef Infra Client 18.3.0

Improvements

  • Reformatted the output of the knife cookbook list -a -F json command so it returns a hierarchical JSON object of cookbook versions instead of a flat array. (#13654) Thanks aknarts!

Resource updates

Resource bug fixes

Bug fixes

  • Fixed an issue where attributes loaded slowly due to a regression in net/http in Ruby 3.1. (#13745)
  • Fixed an Invalid Memory object error when Infra Client runs on Windows. (#13677)
  • Fixed an issue where knife bootstrap would fail using the --sudo option on EL8 systems. (#13636)

Dependencies

  • Bundled chef-powershell updated from 18.0.2 to 18.1.0. (Also addresses #13357)

Packaging

  • We are now building packages for Rocky Linux 8. (#13867)
  • We brought back support for AIX systems after it was removed in Chef Infra Client 18.2.7.

Security

Chef Infra Client 18.2.7

NOTE: This release does not include Infra Client packages for AIX systems.

New Resources

selinux_user and selinux_login resources

Added the new selinux_user and selinux_login resources. (#13511)

The selinux_user resource allows you to manage the security level, security range, and roles for a given SELinux user.

The selinux_login resource allows you to manage the security range and associated SELinux user mapping for a given OS login.

Thanks wheatevo!

Resource Updates

macos_userdefaults resource

We fixed an issue in the macos_userdefaults resource where the user property was not being used when host property wasn’t passed. This update sets default values for user and host as the current user and any host. (#12791)

launchd resource

Updated the associated_bundle_identifiers property in the macOS launchd resource to accept an array instead of just a hash of values. Thanks Arequ! (#13477)

apt_repository resource

Updated the apt_repository resource so that the apt-keys are updated if the expiration of a key is updated without changing the fingerprint. Thanks tmccombs! (#13535).

Packaging

This release does not include Infra Client packages for AIX systems.

Bundled Dependencies

  • Bundled ohai updated from 18.0.26 to 18.1.3
  • Bundled proxifier (1.0.3) is replaced with proxifier2 (1.1.0)
  • Bundled inspec-core updated from 5.18.14 to 5.21.29
  • Bundled aws-partitions updated from 1.681.0 to 1.731.0
  • Bundled aws-sdk-core updated from 3.168.4 to 3.170.1
  • Bundled aws-sdk-kms updated from 1.61.0 to 1.63.0
  • Bundled aws-sdk-s3 updated from 1.117.2 to 1.119.1
  • Bundled aws-sdk-secretsmanager updated from 1.68.0 to 1.73.0
  • Bundled chef-vault updated from 4.1.10 to 4.1.11
  • Bundled concurrent-ruby updated from 1.1.10 to 1.2.2
  • Bundled erubi updated from 1.11.0 to 1.12.0
  • Bundled faraday updated from 1.4.3 to 2.7.4
  • Bundled inspec-core-bin updated from 5.18.14 to 5.21.29
  • Bundled mime-types-data updated from 3.2022.0105 to 3.2023.0218.1
  • Bundled multipart-post updated from 2.2.3 to 2.3.0
  • Bundled net-ssh updated from 7.0.1 to 7.1.0
  • Bundled parser updated from 3.1.3.0 to 3.2.1.1
  • Bundled plist updated from 3.6.0 to 3.7.0
  • Bundled rack updated from 2.2.4 to 2.2.6.4
  • Bundled regexp_parser updated from 2.6.1 to 2.7.0
  • Bundled timeout updated from 0.3.1 to 0.3.2
  • Bundled webrick updated from 1.7.0 to 1.8.1

Bug fixes

We fixed a bug in the Chef Omnibus pre-install script that sometimes led to EBUSY errors during upgrades.(#13562)

The “FFI::Yajl” errors (#13380) have been resolved by an update to chef-powershell (chef-powershell-shim#187)

Security

Test Certificates

As part of ongoing work, we updated new Digicert-based certificates for testing. These need to be updated sporadically, and we’re updating you here in case this impacts your own testing. (#13625)

Windows Certificates

We fixed an issue with private keys that are encrypted in the certificate store on a Windows node that is under management by two or more users or by an admin and the SYSTEM account. The private key could not be decrypted by a user other than the user that bootstrapped the node because the password is user-specific. We now use an initialization vector to encrypt the private key, which is stored in the Windows registry. This allows multiple users to decrypt a private key. (#13552)

Chef Infra Client 18.1.0

Resource Updates

  • Resource validation should be aware of action property requirements (#13069) - Thanks @sabat!
  • Added the option to set a release version when using activation keys in the rhsm_register resource. (#13352) - Thanks @ianl678!
  • Added the associated_bundle_identifiers property to the launchd resource. This property indicates which bundles the Login Items Added by Apps panel associates with the helper executable. (#13288) - Thanks @chilcote!
  • Added the makecache_fast property to the yum_repository resource. This allows you to download only the minimum required metadata when refreshing the cache. (#12915) - Thanks @lanky!

Security

Bug Fixes

  • Resolved FIPS mode breakage in Windows. (#13375)
  • Updated the deprecated hab sup status call to hab svc status. (#13314) - Thanks @gene1wood!
  • Fixed an error in the yum_package resource where the options property would ignore disable options if more than one option is specified and the disable option isn’t last. (#13327) - Thanks @darnaut!

Chef Infra Client 18.0.185

REST Operations Resource Support

Added REST operations to the resources DSL. (#12755)

This allows you to create a resource partial that can be used in a custom resource like this:

use "core::rest_resource"

provides :rest_resource_by_query, target_mode: true

property :address, String, required: true
property :prefix, Integer, required: true
property :gateway, String

rest_api_collection "/api/v1/addresses"
rest_api_document   "/api/v1/address/?ip={address}"
rest_property_map({
  address: "address",
  prefix: "prefix",
  gateway: "gateway",
})

Thanks to the folks at tecRacer 1 for providing the foundation for this feature.

Unified Mode in Custom Resources

Unified mode is now enabled for custom resources by default. (#12692)

In Chef Infra Client 16, we introduced unified mode allowing you to collapse the sometimes confusing compile and converge phases into a single unified phase. Unified mode makes it easier to write and troubleshoot failures in custom resources and this is now the default execution phase for custom resources. Set unified_mode false in a custom resource if you need to disable unified mode.

Potential Breaking Change

If your custom resources have specific compile/converge phase behaviors, please test them for compatibility. For more information, see the Out-of-Order Execution section of the Unified Mode documentation.

Known Issues

FIPS support on Windows

Shortly before the final GA build of Chef Infra Client 18, we discovered an issue with FIPS support for Windows. We are currently investigating the root cause and correcting the issue; however, please note that FIPS support will not be available in the initial GA version of Chef Infra Client 18.0 for all Windows versions. We have prioritized this issue and FIPS support will be released in the next minor version of Chef Infra Client (18.1). We are reviewing the release date for Chef Infra Client 18.1 with FIPS support and will announce that date on all major communication channels when it is established.

Support for Effortless on Windows

Chef Infra Client 18.0.169 does not include support for effortless on Windows.

New Resources

selinux_boolean

Use the selinux_boolean resource to set SELinux boolean values. See the selinux_boolean resource documentation for additional information.

selinux_fcontext

Use the selinux_fcontext resource to set the SELinux context of files. See the selinux_fcontext resource documentation for additional information.

selinux_install

Use the selinux_install resource to encapsulate the set of SELinux packages to install in order to manage SELinux. See the selinux_install resource documentation for additional information.

selinux_module

Use the selinux_module module resource to create an SELinux policy module from a cookbook file or content provided as a string. See the selinux_module resource documentation for additional information.

selinux_permissive

Use the selinux_permissive resource to allow some domains to misbehave without stopping them. See the selinux_permissive resource documentation for additional information.

selinux_port

Use the selinux_port resource to assign a network port to a specific SELinux context. See the selinux_port resource documentation for additional information.

selinux_state

Use the selinux_state resource to manage the SELinux state on a system. See the selinux_state resource documentation for additional information.

Resource Updates

chef_client_config

The :create action will now create directories defined in the resource properties if they are defined but don’t exist. (#12416)

Added a rubygems_url property that allows users to specify URI as a source for Ruby gems. This could be an internal mirror of rubygems for airgapped environments. (#12724) Thanks (DecoyJoe)!

chef_client_launchd

The chef_client_launchd resource now runs at load instead instead of requiring a system restart before running. (#12706)

rhsm_register

The rhsm_register resource now flushes the internal package cache after registering with Red Hat Satellite. (#12828) Thanks for fixing this @jasonwbarnett!

user

The user resource now has expire_date and inactive properties on Linux systems that specify the date a user account will be disabled and the number days after a password expires before an account is permanently disabled.

Secrets Manager Integration

The Secrets Management Integration helper is now a fully supported feature. The Secrets Management Integration helper allows you to fetch secrets from the following secrets management systems within your Infra recipes or resources:

  • AWS Secrets Manager
  • Akeyless Vault
  • Azure Key Vault
  • HashiCorp Vault

Platform Support Updates

AIX 7.3

Chef Infra Client packages are now produced for AIX 7.3.

AlmaLinux 8

Chef Infra Client packages are now produced for AlmaLinux 8.

Amazon 2022

Chef Infra Client packages are now produced for Amazon Linux 2022.

CentOS 8

CentOS 8 became end-of-life on December 2021. Chef Infra Client packages are no longer produced for CentOS 8, which is being replaced by AlmaLinux 8.

Windows 8

Chef Infra Client packages are no longer produced for Windows 8.

32-bit Windows

Chef Infra Client packages are no longer produced for 32-bit versions of Windows.

Security

Sensitive Properties in Custom Resources

Fixed an issue in custom resources where Chef Infra Client was logging data of properties with sensitive: true and desired_state: false. (#13014)

Migrate PEM Storage to Certificate Store for Windows

Use migrate_key_to_keystore true in the Chef Infra Client config.rb to migrate certificates to the Windows certificate store on Windows nodes. This creates a PFX certificate, extracts a public key from the certificate and sends it to the Chef Infra Server, and then stores the certificate in the local certificate store.

Certificates have a 90-day lifespan. If a certificate is expiring, Infra Client will automatically generate a new one and store it in the local certificate store, and then generate and replace the older public key on the Infra Server. (#12910) (#12640) (#12426) (#12518)

Updated Components

  • license_scout 1.0 -> 1.3 (#12992)
  • ncurses 5.9 -> 6.3 (#12953)
  • libxml2 2.9.10 -> 2.9.13 (#12752)
  • libxslt 1.1.14 -> 1.1.15 (#12752)
  • win32-api 1.5.3 -> 1.5 to allow for the latest releases (#12614)
  • diff-lcs to not 1.4.0 and < 1.6.0 (#12534)
  • Windows versions are now built on Universal CRT (#12959)
  • Use new msys2-based development kit for Windows (#13097)
  • inspec 4.23 -> 5.18.14 (#13144)

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed the chef_client_config resource to properly return the datacollector parameters. (#12732)
  • Fixed the zypper-package resource so it correctly handles packages specified in the source property. (#12182)
  • Fixed the plist resource so it will correctly generate a new file using the file resource. (#12680). Thanks (jazaval)!
  • Fixed the mount resource so it can handle spaces in a file path. (#11626)
  • Fixed the crod_d resource so it will accept a space in the name of the resource block. (#12377)
  • Fixed the locale resource regenerated all installed locales on every Chef Infra run. (#12833)
  • Fixed an issue when specifying a package version when using the yum_package resource. (#12657)
  • Fixed missing X-Vault-AWS-IAM-Server-ID header in the Secrets Management Integration helper when using AWS IAM to fetch secrets from HashiCorp Vault. (#12956)
  • Improved error message when using knife upload to upload a file with a syntax error to chef-zero. (#11678)
  • Fixed bug where ChefSpec fails to load Compliance Profiles in Compliance Phase that contain an InSpec profile. (#12830)
  • Fixed a performance issue when reading attributes from nodes. (#12742)
  • Fixed an issue where a PEM file was not generated when a new user is created with knife user create. (#12619)
  • Resolved failures when running the audit-enforcer reporter. (#12595)
  • Introduced a new compliance-enforcer reporter as an alias to the audit-enforcer. This forces the Infra Client run to fail if the Compliance Phase fails. (#12595)
  • The subscribes property in a resource will now validate an incorrectly formatted resource call. (#12525)
  • Fixes bug in compare_user on linux systems.(13223) - Shoutout to fretb from the community!
  • Fixes missing require and small error in REST implementation(13066) - Shoutout to tecracer-theinen from the community!

Chef Infra Client 18.0.155

Chef Infra Client Release Candidate

Chef Infra Client 18.0.155 is a release candidate. You can download this release from Chef Downloads.

Known Issues

Chef Infra Client 18.0.155 is currently unavailable for AIX 7.3, Solaris, and Windows 2012 platforms. These will be supported with the GA release.

REST Operations Resource Support

Added REST operations to the resources DSL. (#12755)

This allows you to create a resource partial that can be used in a custom resource like this:

use "core::rest_resource"

provides :rest_resource_by_query, target_mode: true

property :address, String, required: true
property :prefix, Integer, required: true
property :gateway, String

rest_api_collection "/api/v1/addresses"
rest_api_document   "/api/v1/address/?ip={address}"
rest_property_map({
  address: "address",
  prefix: "prefix",
  gateway: "gateway",
})

Unified Mode in Custom Resources

Unified mode is now enabled for custom resources by default. (#12692)

In Chef Infra Client 16, we introduced unified mode allowing you to collapse the sometimes confusing compile and converge phases into a single unified phase. Unified mode makes it easier to write and troubleshoot failures in custom resources and this is now the default execution phase for custom resources. Set unified_mode false in a custom resource if you need to disable unified mode.

New Resources

selinux_boolean

Use the selinux_boolean resource to set SELinux boolean values. See the selinux_boolean resource documentation for additional information.

selinux_fcontext

Use the selinux_fcontext resource to set the SELinux context of files. See the selinux_fcontext resource documentation for additional information.

selinux_install

Use the selinux_install resource to encapsulate the set of SELinux packages to install in order to manage SELinux. See the selinux_install resource documentation for additional information.

selinux_module

Use the selinux_module module resource to create an SELinux policy module from a cookbook file or content provided as a string. See the selinux_module resource documentation for additional information.

selinux_permissive

Use the selinux_permissive resource to allow some domains to misbehave without stopping them. See the selinux_permissive resource documentation for additional information.

selinux_port

Use the selinux_port resource to assign a network port to a specific SELinux context. See the selinux_port resource documentation for additional information.

selinux_state

Use the selinux_state resource to manage the SELinux state on a system. See the selinux_state resource documentation for additional information.

Resource Updates

chef_client_config

The :create action will now create directories defined in the resource properties if they are defined but don’t exist. (#12416)

Added a rubygems_url property that allows users to specify URI as a source for Ruby gems. This could be an internal mirror of rubygems for airgapped environments. (#12724) Thanks (DecoyJoe)!

chef_client_launchd

The chef_client_launchd resource now runs at load instead instead of requiring a system restart before running. (#12706)

rhsm_register

The rhsm_register resource now flushes the internal package cache after registering with Red Hat Satellite. (#12828) Thanks for fixing this @jasonwbarnett!

user

The user resource now has expire_date and inactive properties on Linux systems that specify the date a user account will be disabled and the number days after a password expires before an account is permanently disabled.

Secrets Manager Integration

The Secrets Management Integration helper is now a fully supported feature. The Secrets Management Integration helper allows you to fetch secrets from the following secrets management systems within your Infra recipes or resources:

  • AWS Secrets Manager
  • Akeyless Vault
  • Azure Key Vault
  • HashiCorp Vault

Platform Support Updates

AIX 7.3

Chef Infra Client packages are now produced for AIX 7.3.

AlmaLinux 8

Chef Infra Client packages are now produced for AlmaLinux 8.

Amazon 2022

Chef Infra Client packages are now produced for Amazon Linux 2022.

CentOS 8

CentOS 8 became end-of-life on December 2021. Chef Infra Client packages are no longer produced for CentOS 8, which is being replaced by AlmaLinux 8.

Windows 8

Chef Infra Client packages are no longer produced for Windows 8.

32-bit Windows

Chef Infra Client packages are no longer produced for 32-bit versions of Windows.

Security

Sensitive Properties in Custom Resources

Fixed an issue in custom resources where Chef Infra Client was logging data of properties with sensitive: true and desired_state: false. (#13014)

Migrate PEM Storage to Certificate Store for Windows

Use migrate_key_to_keystore true in the Chef Infra Client config.rb to migrate certificates to the Windows certificate store on Windows nodes. This creates a PFX certificate, extracts a public key from the certificate and sends it to the Chef Infra Server, and then stores the certificate in the local certificate store.

Certificates have a 90-day lifespan. If a certificate is expiring, Infra Client will automatically generate a new one and store it in the local certificate store, and then generate and replace the older public key on the Infra Server. (#12910) (#12640) (#12426) (#12518)

Updated Components

  • license_scout 1.0 -> 1.3 (#12992)
  • ncurses 5.9 -> 6.3 (#12953)
  • libxml2 2.9.10 -> 2.9.13 (#12752)
  • libxslt 1.1.14 -> 1.1.15 (#12752)
  • win32-api 1.5.3 -> 1.5 to allow for the latest releases (#12614)
  • diff-lcs to not 1.4.0 and < 1.6.0 (#12534)
  • Windows versions are now built on Universal CRT (#12959)
  • Use new msys2-based development kit for Windows (#13097)

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed the chef_client_config resource to properly return the datacollector parameters. (#12732)
  • Fixed the zypper-package resource so it correctly handles packages specified in the source property. (#12182)
  • Fixed the plist resource so it will correctly generate a new file using the file resource. (#12680). Thanks (jazaval)!
  • Fixed the mount resource so it can handle spaces in a file path. (#11626)
  • Fixed the crod_d resource so it will accept a space in the name of the resource block. (#12377)
  • Fixed the locale resource regenerated all installed locales on every Chef Infra run. (#12833)
  • Fixed an issue when specifying a package version when using the yum_package resource. (#12657)
  • Fixed missing X-Vault-AWS-IAM-Server-ID header in the Secrets Management Integration helper when using AWS IAM to fetch secrets from HashiCorp Vault. (#12956)
  • Improved error message when using knife upload to upload a file with a syntax error to chef-zero. (#11678)
  • Fixed bug where ChefSpec fails to load Compliance Profiles in Compliance Phase that contain an InSpec profile. (#12830)
  • Fixed a performance issue when reading attributes from nodes. (#12742)
  • Fixed an issue where a PEM file was not generated when a new user is created with knife user create. (#12619)
  • Resolved failures when running the audit-enforcer reporter. (#12595)
  • Introduced a new compliance-enforcer reporter as an alias to the audit-enforcer. This forces the Infra Client run to fail if the Compliance Phase fails. (#12595)
  • The subscribes property in a resource will now validate an incorrectly formated resource call. (#12525)

Chef Infra Client 17.10.163

Improvements

  • We removed the EOL (End Of Life) warning because major Chef Infra Client releases are no longer scheduled. (#14367)
  • Updated OpenSSL to 3.0.9 for all platforms except AIX, Windows, and macOS. (#14403)

Bug Fixes

  • We corrected a method name conflict in the Azure Secrets Manager. (#14439)
  • We updated the client.erb file to correctly process boolean properties. Previously, when properties with true/false values were set in the chef_client_config resource in a recipe, the client.erb template issued a no method error when generating a client.rb file. (#14466)
  • The chef_client_config resource now correctly handles boolean values in policy_persist_run_list, and minimal_ohai properties. Previously it returned an undefined method error. (#14431)
  • Updated Ohai so that it returns the FQDN suffix on Windows nodes. (#1816)
  • Backported a fix from Infra Client 18.1 to the yum_package resource. The options property now correctly handles disable options if more than one option is specified and the disable option isn’t last. (#14536)
  • Running choco --version now returns the correct version of Chocolatey. #14523

Security updates

  • Updated the RDoc gem to 6.3 to address CVE-2024-27281. (#14548)

Dependency updates

  • Removed support for Ruby 2.7. (#14260)

Gem updates:

  • Updated Vault gem to 0.18.2.
  • Updated chef-powershell gem to 18.1.
  • Updated inspec-core to 5.22.40.
  • Set URI gem to 0.10.1 on Fedora.
  • Set kitchen-inspec gem to 2.5.
  • Set train-core gem to between 3.10 and 3.12.5.
  • Constrained the FFI gem to less than 1.17.
  • Constrained train-core to less than 3.12.5.

Packaging

Added support for the following platforms:

  • Amazon Linux 2023
  • FreeBSD 13
  • Ubuntu 22.04
  • Ubuntu 24.04

Removed support for the following platforms:

  • FreeBSD 12
  • macOS 10.15
  • Ubuntu 16
  • Windows 8
  • Windows 2012
  • Windows 2012 R2

Chef Infra Client 17.10.122

Compliance Phase Improvements

  • Upgrade InSpec 5.22.40 from InSpec 5.22.36
    • Remove dependency on active-support method .blank?
    • Streaming report fix to capture progress correctly (inspec#6936, inspec#6912 backport)

knife

  • Updating Train support to allow for more connection types: winrm and ssh plus certain train plugins not in the deny list. #14208

Packaging

  • switched to proxifier2 gem to reflect changes in ruby/uri
  • finished removing support for Ruby 2.7. No further testing against that version. #14260

Chef Infra Client 17.10.114

Resource Updates

This release backports the following updates from Chef Infra Client 18.4:

  • Fixed the chef_client_systemd_timer resource to accept integer values for a unit’s CPU quota. (#14152). Backports (#14011).
  • Fixed the windows_service resource, which would trigger a change on every execution if you specify a service description. (#14151). Backports (#14064)
  • Fixed the zypper_package resource to properly handle error 104 when removing a non-existent package. (#14160). Backports (#14150).
  • Added support for homebrew_cask, homebrew_cask, and homebrew_tap resources on ARM64 systems and fixed a pathing issue. (#14153). Backports (#13669) and (#13937).

Security

  • Updated inspec-core Gem to 5.22.36 and its dependencies to fix security (CVE) issues. (#14147)

Bug fixes

  • Refactored Berkshelf because it failed to install and run on macOS during Test Kitchen runs. (#14149)

Dependencies

  • Updated net-ssh from 7.1.0 to 7.2.1. (#14162)
  • Updated ffi-yajl. (#14176)
  • Bump Ruby version for Chef 17 to 3.0.6. (#14056)
  • Bump Omnibus to 9.0.2, which downgrades Bash on Solaris to allow Chef to run correctly. (#14177)

Chef Infra Client 17.10.95

Backports

This release backports several features and fixes from Chef Infra Client 18.

Resource Updates

This release backports the following resource updates from Chef Infra Client 18:

  • Added a rubygems_url property to the chef_client_config resource that allows users to specify URI as a source for Ruby gems. This could be an internal mirror of RubyGems for airgapped environments. (#12978)
  • Updated the rhsm_register resource so that it flushes the internal package cache after registering with Red Hat Satellite. (#12909)
  • Updated the chocolatey_package resource to handle changes introduced in Chocolatey CLI v2.0. (#13928)

Security

This release backports the following security updates from Chef Infra Client 18:

  • Fixed an issue where properties with desired_state: false and sensitive: true would report data to the resource reporter. (#13817)
  • Add the ability to set a default secret service and secret service configuration in the Secrets Manager. (#12856)
OpenSSL

Updated OpenSSL to 1.0.2zi (#13911, #14046) to address the following CVEs :

  • CVE-2022-2068
  • CVE-2023-3446
  • CVE-2023-3817
  • CVE-2023-2650
  • CVE-2023-0465
  • CVE-2023-0466
  • CVE-2023-0464
  • CVE-2023-0286
  • CVE-2023-0215
  • CVE-2022-4304

Bug fixes

This release backports the following bug fixes from Chef Infra Client 18:

  • Fixed an issue where a PEM file is not generated when a new user created with knife user create. (#12772)
  • Fixed a performance issue when reading attributes from nodes. (#12743)
  • Fixed missing X-Vault-AWS-IAM-Server-ID header in the Secrets Management Integration helper when using AWS IAM to fetch secrets from HashiCorp Vault. (#12957)
  • Fixed a bug where ChefSpec fails to load Compliance Profiles in Compliance Phase that contain an InSpec profile. (#12872)
Resource fixes
  • Fixed the chef_client_config resource which was rendering duplicate ohai_disabled_plugins and ohai_optional_plugins properties in the client.rb template. (#12826)
  • Fixed the macos_userdefaults resource where the user property was not being used when host property wasn’t passed. This update sets default values for user and host as the current user and any host. (#12825)
  • Fixed the locale resource which was regenerating locales on every Chef Infra run. (#12905)
Windows Certificates

We fixed an issue with private keys that are encrypted in the certificate store on a Windows node that is under management by two or more users or by an admin and the SYSTEM account. The private key could not be decrypted by a user other than the user that bootstrapped the node because the password is user-specific. We now use an initialization vector to encrypt the private key, which is stored in the Windows registry. This allows multiple users to decrypt a private key. (#13552)

Packaging

  • Removed support for Debian 9. (#13738)
  • Removed support for i386 platforms. (#13694)
  • Removed support for Freebsd 11. (#12870)
  • Added support for Rocky Linux 8 and 9. (#14048)

Dependencies

  • Bump dependencies for net-ssh 7.x for RHEL 9 and Ubuntu 22.04. (#13332)
  • Bump chef-vault to 4.1.11. (#13583)

Chef Infra Client 17.10.3

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue with the powershell_package resource where it was calling an incorrect error handling method. (#12722)

Chef Infra Client 17.10.0

Security

  • Added support to move the client.pem file to secure storage (#12518).

Improvements

  • The chef_client_config resource will now create directories defined in the properties if they don’t exist (#12416).

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed an issue when specifying a package version when using the yum_package resource (#12657).
  • Fixed an issue where the subscribes notification would silently ignore an incorrectly formatted resource name (#12525).
  • Fixed an issue where the archive_file resource would fail to find archive files on CentOS 7.x (#12552).

Chef Infra Client 17.9.52

Bug Fixes

  • Resource subscriptions syntax is now properly validated to provide better error messages.

Compliance Phase Improvements

Reporter Updates

  • Resolved failures when running the audit-enforcer reporter.
  • Introduced a new compliance-enforcer reporter as an alias to the audit-enforcer. This forces the Infra Client run to fail if the Compliance Phase fails.

Packaging

  • Updated the bundled OpenSSL on macOS to 1.1.1m to resolve minor bugs.
  • Updated the bundled cacerts to the 2022-02-01 release with new certificates.
  • Resolved installation failures on older releases of Solaris 11.3

Chef Infra Client 17.9.46

Bug Fixes

  • Resolved failures using the archive_file resource on some systemd based Linux distributions.

Chef Infra Client 17.9.42

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed deprecation warnings displayed when using the chef_client_updater cookbook.
  • Fixed failures when loading waivers and inputs shipped within cookbooks.

Chef Infra Client 17.9.26

Bug Fixes

  • Resolved failures when running the homebrew_tap resource that were introduced in 17.9.18. Thanks for this fix @jweyer8!

Enhancements

  • Minor performance improvements.

Chef Infra Client 17.9.18

Bug Fixes

  • Resolved a failure in the windows_feature_powershell resource introduced in Chef Infra Client 17.8.

Compliance Phase

InSpec 4.52.9

Updated InSpec from 4.50.3 to 4.52.9 with the following improvements:

  • Added remote target support for Alpine Linux.
  • Added the ability to specify a proxy as a parameter in the http resource.
  • Added support for TLS 1.3 to the ssl resource.
  • Fixed an edge case in the service resource where InSpec may falsely detect services as enabled on FreeBSD if that service is the suffix of another enabled service.
  • Fixed the ibmdb2_session resource so that it now correctly accepts queries with clauses.
  • Fixed the oracledb_session resource to properly handle nil in the query output.
  • Fixed the packages resource to correctly list only installed packages on Alpine Linux.

Secrets Manager Integrations

HashiCorp Vault AppRole Support

The secrets helper now supports fetching secrets from HashiCorp Vault using AppRole authentication.

Fetching secret data using an AppRole ID and an associated AppRole Secret ID:

secret(name: 'secret/example',
      service: :hashi_vault,
      config: {
        vault_addr: 'vault.example.com',
        auth_method: :approle,
        approle_id: "11111111-abcd-1111-abcd-111111111111",
        approle_secret_id: "22222222-abcd-2222-abcd-222222222222"
      })

Fetching secret data using a token and an AppRole name creates a SecretID associated with that AppRole:

secret(name: 'secret/example',
      service: :hashi_vault,
      config: {
        vault_addr: 'vault.example.com',
        auth_method: :approle,
        approle_name: "my-approle",
        token: '123456'
      })

Resource Updates

homebrew_tap

Updated the homebrew_tap resource to remove the full property. Homebrew no longer supports the --full option, and attempting to use it causes Homebrew to fail.

yum_package

The yum_package resource has received extensive refactoring to align its functionality with the dnf_package resource and expand how package names and versions can be provided.

The following ways of calling yum_package with a single name argument have been fixed and are now supported:

yum_package "ypbind-3:1.37.1"
yum_package "ypbind-3:1.37.1-9.el7"

The following ways of calling yum_package with a single named argument are still supported:

yum_package "ypbind-1.37.1"
yum_package "ypbind-1.37*"
yum_package "ypbind-1.37.1-*"
yum_package "ypbind-1.37*-*"
yum_package "ypbind-*:1.37.1-*"
yum_package "ypbind-*:1.37*-*"
yum_package "ypbind-1.37.1-9.el7"
yum_package "ypbind-1.37*-9.el7"
yum_package "ypbind-1.37.1-9.*"

The following ways of calling yum_package with a single named argument do not properly match candidate versions (due to support in the underlying YUM libraries) and will fail:

yum_package "ypbind-3:1.37*-9.el7"
yum_package "ypbind-3:1.37.*"
yum_package "ypbind-3:1.37.1-9.*"

The following ways of calling yum_package with a version property have been fixed and are now supported:

yum_package "ypbind" do
  version "1.37*"
end
yum_package "ypbind" do
  version "1.37.1-*"
end
yum_package "ypbind" do
  version "1.37*-*"
end
yum_package "ypbind" do
  version "3:1.37.1-9.el7"
end
yum_package "ypbind" do
  version "*:1.37.1-*"
end
yum_package "ypbind" do
  version "*:1.37*-*"
end
yum_package "ypbind" do
  version "1.37.1-9.el7"
end
yum_package "ypbind" do
  version "1.37*-9.el7"
end
yum_package "ypbind" do
  version "1.37.1-9.*"
end

The following ways of calling yum_package with a version property were not idempotent and that has been fixed (there was previously no way to correctly use the version property of the yum_package resource and have it behave idempotently):

yum_package "ypbind" do
  version "1.37.1"
end

yum_package "ypbind" do
  version "3:1.37.1"
end

The following ways of calling yum_package with a version property do not properly match candidate versions (due to support in the underlying yum libraries) and will fail:

yum_package "ypbind" do
  version "3:1.37*-9.el7"
end
yum_package "ypbind" do
  version "3:1.37.*"
end
yum_package "ypbind" do
  version "3:1.37.1-9.*"
end

We strongly encourage users to always provide the full epoch, version, and release (EVR) of an RPM since omitting the epoch is ambiguous and the RPM, YUM, and DNF libraries tend to assume zero when the epoch is omitted. Omitting the release is also not a best practice, but may be required due to the convention of embedding the distribution string in the release.

The same fixes apply to the :upgrade action. The :remove action may have been similarly fixed, and we have added many additional tests to the test suite around idempotency and correctness.

System Detection

Improved VMware detection

Ohai now collects hypervisor information on Windows guests and provides more information in the node['vmware'] attribute. The properties node['vmware']['host'] and node['vmware']['guest'] provide more information about the hypervisor and the running version of the VMware Tools package. For example, you can use `node[‘vmware’] to get information about VM running on VMware vSphere:

{
  "host": {
    "type": "vmware_vsphere",
    "version": "VMware ESX 7.0.0 build-15843807"
  },
  "guest": {
    "vmware_tools_version": "11.0.5.17716"
  },
  "hosttime": "09 Dec 2021 12:16:55",
  "speed": "1992 MHz",
  "sessionid": "0x5ff24c6ec541d5ac",
  "balloon": "0 MB",
  "swap": "0 MB",
  "memlimit": "4294967295 MB",
  "memres": "0 MB",
  "cpures": "0 MHz",
  "cpulimit": "4294967295 MHz",
  "upgrade": "",
  "timesync": "Disabled"
}

The Chef Infra language also has two new helpers for detecting the guest VMware hypervisor:

  • vmware_desktop?: Determines if the current node is virtualized on VMware Desktop (Fusion/Player/Workstation).
  • vmware_vsphere?: Determines if the current node is virtualized on VMware vSphere (ESX).

Thanks for this new functionality @tecracer-theinen!

Packaging

RHEL 8 Build ID

Chef Infra Client packages no longer install a build ID file that prevents installing other Chef packages such as Infra Server or Workstation.

Chef Infra Client 17.8.25

Compliance Phase Improvements

CLI Output

Chef Infra Client will now always show the Compliance Phase output on the CLI when run.

Interval Runs

You can now run the Compliance Phase at less frequent intervals than the main Chef Infra Client Infra Phase. This is helpful if compliance scans impact the system performance and are only necessary on a less frequent cadence. To enable interval runs, set the following attributes:

  • node['audit']['interval']['enabled']: Set to true to enable interval runs.
  • node['audit']['interval']['time']: The time in minutes between Compliance Phase execution. This defaults to 1440 (once a day).

InSpec 4.50.3

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.49.0 to 4.50.3 which adds Windows support to the http resource.

Resource Updates

All Resources

Updated the umask common property to accept both Strings and Integers, restoring pre-Chef Infra Client 17 behavior on several resources.

chef_client_launchd

Updated the chef_client_launchd resource to properly handle restarting the Chef Infra Client service when a configuration change is made.

chef_gem

Updated the chef_gem resource with significant performance improvements, especially on Windows hosts.

dnf_package

The dnf_package resource now supports the allow_downgrade property. This removes the previous deprecation warning when using the allow_downgrade property with dnf_package.

dpkg_package

The dpkg_package resource now properly compares versions with the :upgrade action to prevent package installation on each Chef Infra Client run.

macos_userdefaults

Updated the macos_userdefaults resource to resolve failures from coercing certain data types in properties.

mount

Updated the mount resource to converge idempotently on Linux with loopback mounts. Thanks for reporting this issue @Blorpy!

powershell_package

Refactored the powershell_package package to improve performance, especially on subsequent Chef Infra Client runs where no changes need to be performed.

rhsm_register

Updated the rhsm_register resource with the following new properties for managing how a node is registered with RHSM:

  • server_url
  • base_url
  • service_level
  • release

See the rhsm_register resource documentation for more information on using these new properties.

windows_feature_powershell

Refactored the windows_feature_powershell package to improve performance, especially on subsequent Chef Infra Client runs where no changes need to be performed.

zypper_package

Updated the zypper_package resource to prevent failures when removing packages that do not exist on the system or in available Zypper repositories.

Packaging

coreutils Dependency

Chef Infra Client RPMs now depend on coreutils. This resolves an issue where Chef Infra Client may install before coreutils when used in a kickstart script, causing the installation of the chef-client symlink to fail.

macOS 10.14 Package Removal

With the release of macOS 12, our N-2 macOS release policy now includes macOS 12, 11, and 10.15. macOS 10.14 packages will no longer be produced.

Security

Ruby 3.0.3

Ruby has been updated from 3.0.2 to 3.0.3 to resolve the following CVEs:

  • CVE-2021-41817
  • CVE-2021-41816
  • CVE-2021-41819

Chef Infra Client 17.7.29

Bug Fixes

  • Resolved a regression introduced in Chef Infra Client 17.7.22 that caused changes to node['fdqn'] data in some DNS configurations.
  • Resolved a regression introduced in Chef Infra Client 17.7.22 that could cause macos_user_defaults to fail.

Compliance Phase Improvements

Chef InSpec 4.49.0

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.46.13 to 4.49.0 with the following updates:

New Features
  • Added support for testing Cassandra DB configurations and CQL commands.
Bug Fixes
  • Resolved case sensitivity issue for Windows users and group resources.
  • Fixed the oracledb_session resource when invoking a query using OS user and DB role.
  • Additional oracledb_session resource fixes.

Resource Updates

chef_client_trusted_certificate

The chef_client_trusted_certificate resource now supports the sensitive property to mask certificate contents in logs. Thanks for this improvement @jakauppila!

Chef Infra Client 17.7.22

Secrets Manager Integration

Improved Azure Key Vault Support

The beta secrets manager helper now supports Azure Key Vault on VMs with multiple User Assigned Managed Identities. You can now specify an identity with the client_id, object_id, and mi_res_id options. The default is the system-assigned identity, which is the same as in past releases. If you omit an option, the secrets manager uses the system-assigned identity. See the Azure docs for more information.

Fetching Secret Using Specified client_id

secret(name: "test3", service: :azure_key_vault, config: { client_id: "3fc5c05e-604c-44ef-b27b-36da9d78c470" })

Fetching Secret Using Specified object_id

secret(name: "test3", service: :azure_key_vault, config: { object_id: "3fc5c05e-604c-44ef-b27b-36da9d78c470" })

Fetching Secret Using Specified mi_res_id

secret(name: "test3", service: :azure_key_vault, config: { mi_res_id: "3fc5c05e-604c-44ef-b27b-36da9d78c470" })

Thanks for this improvement @jasonwbarnett!

Target Mode

The Target Mode beta, which executes Chef Infra on remote systems without the client installed, has bug fixes and new functionality:

  • Several bugs in Ohai preventing remote Ohai execution were resolved.
  • Added an :api platform type to enable REST APIs instead of operating systems.
  • Added support for specifying transport_protocol on targets to the Chef credential file. For example:
['remote-target']
transport_protocol = "serial"

device = "/dev/ttyUSB0"
# ... and other Transport-specific settings

Thanks @tecracer-theinen for continually improving the Target Mode experience!

Resource Updates

chocolatey_source

The chocolatey_source resource now supports setting up authenticated sources. See the chocolatey_source resource documentation for more information on the new properties introduced to support user/password or certificate authentication. Thanks for this improvement @gep13!

cron

Failures running the cron resource with a commented-out cron entry have been resolved. Thanks for this fix @wheatevo!

kernel_module

The kernel_module resource now includes an :enable action, which allows you to install a kernel module that was previously disabled. Thanks for this improvement @qubitrenegade!

macos_userdefaults

The macos_userdefaults resource now uses use native macOS API calls instead of shelling out to command line tools. This complete rewrite makes setting complex data types in the resource more reliable.

subversion

Failures running the subversion resource have been resolved. Thanks for this fix @tomhughes!

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed failing knife gem installs on Windows.
  • Fixed detection of 32bit Windows applications on 64bit Windows installations in node['packages']. Thanks for this fix @knightorc!
  • Resolved Ruby deprecation warnings in Ohai on Windows and macOS hosts.

Chef Infra Client 17.6.18

Security

  • Updated cacerts to remove the expired DST Root CA X3 root certificate causing failures with Lets Encrypt certificates

Chef Infra Client 17.6.15

Compliance Phase Improvements

InSpec 4.46.13

InSpec has been updated from 4.41.20 to 4.46.13 with the following enhancements:

  • Added rocky and almalinux Linux distributions to service resource.
  • Added the ability to handle files without headers in the csv resource.
  • Added the option to establish connection using a UNIX socket in the postgres_session resource.
  • Fixed the opa_cli and opa_api resources so they are able to verify an empty result.

Resource Updates

powershell_package_source

The powershell_package_source was updated to support authenticating to package sources with new user and password properties. The existing url property has also been renamed to source_location, which better describes the purpose of this property. The existing url property will continue to function for backward compatibility with any existing cookbook code.

openssl_x509_certificate

The openssl_x509_certificate resource was updated to correctly use the provided CA key when signing the new certificate. Thanks for reporting this @nico-loeber!

System Detection

:Tc Ohai Plugin

A new optional Ohai plugin :Tc has been added to detect tc qdisc information for network interfaces on Linux systems. Thanks for this new plugin @MatthewMassey!

To enable this optional plugin set ohai_optional_plugins [:Tc] in the chef_client_config resource.

Packaging

Ubuntu 16.04

We are once again producing packages for Ubuntu 16.04. Canonical, the maker of Ubuntu, has extended support for Ubuntu releases for a full 10 years, so the previously EOL Ubuntu 16.04 release is no longer EOL.

Security

OpenSSL 1.0.2zb

OpenSSL has been updated from 1.0.2za to 1.0.2zb to resolve issues with Let’s Encrypt certificates.

cacerts

The cacerts bundle has been updated to the 2021-07-25 release which removes older expired root certificates and adds the following new root certificates:

  • AC RAIZ FNMT-RCM SERVIDORES SEGUROS
  • GlobalSign Root R46
  • GlobalSign Root E46
  • GLOBALTRUST 2020
  • ANF Secure Server Root CA
  • Certum EC-384 CA
  • Certum Trusted Root CA

Chef Infra Client 17.5.22

Compliance Phase Improvements

InSpec Profiles Within Cookbooks

You can now ship Chef InSpec profiles, waivers, and inputs directly in cookbooks allowing you to combine infrastructure and compliance concerns in a single artifact. Bringing infra and compliance together ensures security is always considered when making changes to your systems and enables collaboration in DevSecOps through shared pipelines. Combining infrastructure and compliance content in cookbook artifacts also allows for the safe and controlled promotion of compliance content from development to production using Policyfiles.

Cookbook Compliance Directory

A new compliance directory in cookbooks includes InSpec content in inputs, waivers, and profiles directories:

my_cookbook/
├─ compliance/
│  ├─ inputs/
│  │  ├─ my_inputs.yml
│  ├─ profiles/
│  │  ├─ my_profiles/
│  │  │  ├─ controls/
│  │  │  ├─ inspec.yml
│  ├─ waivers/
│  │  ├─ control_waiver.yml
├─ metadata.rb

InSpec content placed in these new directories will be available for execution during the Chef Infra Client Compliance Phase, similar to how recipes are shipped in cookbooks but must be executed with include_recipe. This gives you fine-grained control of when and how InSpec content runs using Chef Langauge helpers.

Loading InSpec Content in Recipes

InSpec content is loaded from Chef Infra recipes using new include helpers in the Chef Language:

  • include_profile
  • include_waiver
  • include_input

These helpers behave similarly to the existing include_recipe helper, allowing you to include InSpec content from various cookbooks:

# load a single profile from a specific cookbook:
include_profile "my_cookbook::profile_name"

# load all waivers from a cookbook:
include_waiver "my_cookbook::.*"

# load all inputs that start with ssh
include_input "acme_cookbook::ssh.*"

# load a specific profiles depending on cloud:
include_profile "my_cookbook::ec2_node_profile" if ec2?
include_profile "my_cookbook::gce_node_profile" if gce?
Chef Infra Resources for InSpec

If you prefer to define your InSpec content directly in cookbooks, we also include new inspec_input and inspec_waiver resources that allow you to define inputs and waivers dynamically in recipes.

# defining a waiver directly in a recipe with dynamic values
inspec_waiver 'Add waiver entry for control' do
  control 'my_inspec_control_01'
  run_test false
  justification "The subject of this control is not managed by Chef Infra Client on the systems in policy group \#{node['policy_group']}"
  expiration '2022-01-01'
  action :add
end

# loading a waiver with content on disk
inspec_waiver 'my-waiver-name' do
  source '/path/to/my/waiver.toml'
end

# setting an input directly in a recipe
inspec_input 'setting my input' do
  source( { ssh_custom_path: '/whatever2' })
end

# setting an input from content on disk
inspec_input '/path/to/my/input.yml'

Chef Inspec 4.41.20

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.41.2 to 4.41.20 with the following improvements and fixes for Compliance Phase:

  • Added support for Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 to the Chef InSpec service resource.
  • Replaced the WMI command-line (WMIC) utility in the Chef InSpec security_identifier resource with Common Information Model (CIM) cmdlets as the WMIC utility will be deprecated soon.
  • Fixed range based filtering in filter tables
  • Fixed an issue in the Chef InSpec apache_conf resource when the ServerRoot is not specified in the Apache configuration file.
  • Fixed an error in the Chef InSpec postgres_session resource where the resource was unable to connect to a database.
  • Fixed an error in the Chef InSpec apache_conf resource where it would overwrite any Apache configurations from the main Apache configuration file with configurations from any included configuration files.
  • Fixed an error where the Chef InSpec security_policy resource returned a comma-separated string of local groups (rather than SIDs) instead of an array.
  • Updated the git fetcher to handle profiles with a default git branch that is not master.

Secrets Management Beta

Our secrets management beta within Chef Infra Client has been updated to support HashiCorp Vault and Akeyless Vault secrets. These can be fetched using the new secrets helper using either AWS IAM authentication or token-based authentication.

Fetching Secrets From HashiCorp Vault Using AWS IAM

secret(name: "secret/example", 
      service: :hashi_vault,
      config: {
        vault_addr: "vault.example.com",
        role_name: "example-role"
      })

Fetching Secrets From HashiCorp Vault Using Tokens

secret(name: "secret/example", 
      service: :hashi_vault,
      config: {
        vault_addr: "vault.example.com",
        token: "123456"
      })

Fetching Secrets From Akeyless Vault Using Tokens

secret(name: "/secret/data/my_secret",
       service: :akeyless_vault,
       config: {
         access_key: "12345678910=",
         access_id: "p-12345678910"
      })

Fetching Chef Solo Recipes from AWS S3

You can now fetch recipes from Amazon’s S3 storage when using Chef Solo. To have Chef Solo fetch recipes from AWS S3, pass an S3 URL with the --recipe-url command line flag, such as s3://my-private-bucket/setup-0.1.0.tgz. Thanks for this improvement @tecracer-theinen!

Resource Updates

archive_file

The archive_file has a new strip_components property that allows you to strip any number of leading path elements similar to the tar --strip_components behavior. For example, if archive archive.tar contained some/file/name, then setting strip_components 2 would extract just name. Thanks for this improvement and a large number of new tests @jasonwbarnett!

chef_client_scheduled_task

The chef_client_scheduled_task resource now supports setting the scheduled task priority for the execution of the Chef Infra Client with a new priority property. You can also now set the scheduled task to run with the same splay value during each run using a new use_consistent_splay property. With this property set, a random splay will still be used for the node, but it will be the same splay during subsequent runs. This ensures that Chef Infra Client always runs with a consistent time between runs (i.e., always exactly 30 minutes). Thanks for these improvements @gholtiii!

file

The file resource and resources based on the file resource now include additional verifiers for YAML and JSON content in files. Set verify :json or verify :yaml to validate JSON and YAML content. Thanks for this addition @gogsbread!

mount

The mount resource no longer strips trailing / values when the mount point is just /. Thanks for this fix @jiokmiso!

registry_key

The registry_key resource has been updated to allow lazily evaluating the data passed to the values property. Thanks for reporting this @sjethvani!

remote_file

The remote_file resource has been updated with a new http_options option that accepts a Hash of Ruby Net/HTTP options such as http_retry_count and http_retry_delay.

ulimit

The ulimit resource now supports setting sensitive true to prevent logging ulimit data as it is written to disk.

windows_uac

The windows_uac resource now sets the proper registry key value when using the consent_behavior_users property. Thanks for reporting this @ahembree!

windows_user_privilege

The windows_user_privilege resource no longer fails with an error stating that the privilege property needs to be set, even if it is set.

Packages

We are now producing packages for the following platforms / architectures:

  • Windows 11 - x64
  • Windows 2022 - x64
  • Debian 11 - amd64 / arm64
  • macOS 12 (Monterey) - Intel

Security

OpenSSL 1.0.2za

OpenSSL has been updated from 1.0.2y to 1.0.2za to resolve CVE-2021-3712.

Chef Infra Client 17.4.38

Bug Fixes

  • Resolved a regression introduced in Chef Infra Client 17.4 that caused HWRP-style resources inheriting from LWRPBase to fail.

Enhancements

  • Improved log output to clearly define where the Infra Phase ends and the Compliance Phase begins.
  • Enhanced Ohai data collection of Amazon EC2 metadata to collect additional data for some configurations.
  • Removed ERROR logs when retrying failed communication with the Chef Infra Server.
  • Improved the archive_file resource by upgrading the libarchive library it uses, which includes the following improvements:
    • Support for PWB and v7 binary CPIO formats.
    • Support for the deflate algorithm in symbolic link decompression with zip files.
    • Various bug fixes when working with CAB, ZIP, 7zip, and RAR files.

Security

OpenSSL 1.1.1l

OpenSSL has been updated from 1.1.1k to 1.1.1l on macOS systems to resolve the following CVEs:

libarchive 3.5.2

Updated the libarchive library that powers the archive_file resource from 3.5.1 to 3.5.2 to resolve security vulnerabilities in libarchive’s handling of symbolic links.

Chef Infra Client 17.4.25

Compliance Phase Improvements

Chef InSpec 4.41.2

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.38.3 to 4.41.2 with the following improvements for Compliance Phase

  • New Open Policy Agent resources opa_cli and opa_api
  • New mongodb_session resource
  • The mssql_session resource now allows named connections by no longer forcing a port.
  • The PostgreSQL resources (postgres_session, postgres_conf, postgres_hba_conf, and postgres_ident_conf) now work with Windows.
  • Fixed a bug where the year in an expiration date was misinterpreted in waiver files

json-file Reporter Off By Default

The InSpec json-file reporter is no longer enabled by default in Compliance Phase. Outputting compliance data to file by default potentially exposed sensitive data to the filesystem, without much upside. If you rely on this file for processing by external systems you can produce it by setting the reporter attribute node['audit']['reporter'] to %w{json-file cli}.

Chef Attribute Integration

The chef_node_attribute_enabled configuration option for Compliance Phase is now enabled by default. This provides a chef_node object in InSpec profiles containing all attributes from the Chef Infra Client including Ohai configuration attributes.

Compliance Phase Inputs Attribute

In 2019 we renamed InSpec attributes to inputs to avoid confusion between InSpec attributes and Chef Infra attributes. Compliance Phase is now updated to use the updated inputs name. Instead of passing node['audit']['attributes'] you can now use node['audit']['inputs']. Don’t worry about rushing to update your code though because Compliance Phase will still work with the existing attributes, giving you time to migrate to the new name.

Secrets Manager Integration

We’ve updated our beta secrets management integration helper to improve the experience of fetching secrets from AWS Secrets Manager and Azure Key Vault. We’d still love to hear from you if you are integrating Chef Infra with a secrets management system or you’d like to do so in the future. E-mail us at secrets_management_beta@progress.com.

Simpler Azure Key Vault Names Declaration

The secrets helper has been updated to allow specifying the Azure Key Vault to fetch a secret using the name instead of the config hash:

Specifying the Vault in the Name:

secret(name: "test-chef-infra-secrets/test-secret-1", service: :azure_key_vault)

Specifying the Vault in the Options Hash:

secret(name: "test-secret-1", service: :azure_key_vault, config: {vault: "test-chef-infra-secrets" })

AWS Default to Node’s Region in AWS Secrets Manager

When fetching secrets from AWS Secrets Manager, the secrets helper now defaults to fetching secrets from the region where the node resides. If you need to fetch secrets from another region, you can use the region config option:

Specifying AWS Region:

secret(name: 'test1', service: :aws_secrets_manager, config: { region: 'us-west-2' })

Using the Node’s Region:

secret(name: 'test1', service: :aws_secrets_manager)

Resource Updates

group

The group resource has been updated to prevent failures on macOS systems when passing the GID as an Integer. Thanks for reporting this @rb2k!

homebrew_cask

The homebrew_cask resource now supports Homebrew Casks with ‘-’ or ‘@’ in their name. Thanks for this fix @byplayer!

rhsm_subscription

The rhsm_subscription resource now flushes all DNF or YUM caches after adding a new subscription so that subsequent package installs can use packages from the subscription. Thanks for fixing this @jasonwbarnett!

systemd_unit

The systemd_unit resource now generates valid unit files when passing a hash of data. Thanks for reporting this issue @gregkare

user

The user resource on macOS no longer fails if the shell or hidden fields are not present for the user being updated.

yum_repository

The yum_repository has been refactored to better flush cache on RHEL and Fedora derivatives Linux distributions.

Packaging

Arm64 Docker Containers

Chef Infra Client Docker containers are now published for the arm64 architecture on DockerHub at https://hub.docker.com/r/chef/chef. These containers can be used for testing Chef Infra Client on arm64 architecture Linux distributions with Test Kitchen.

Chef Infra Client 17.3.48

Compliance Phase Improvements

Chef InSpec 4.38

We’ve updated Chef InSpec from 4.37.23 to 4.38.3:

New Features
  • Added a new mongodb_conf resource.
Bug Fixes
  • Changed the Windows local pipe server connection to retry once on EPIPE.
  • Exceptions are now handled correctly in the oracledb_session resource.
  • Fixed the mysql_session resource to raise an exception if there is an error in a connection or query.
  • Fixed the postgres_session resource to raise an exception if there is an error in a connection or query

Run Lists with Policyfiles

You can now optionally execute Chef Infra Client with a specified run list on nodes that are managed with Policyfiles. This differs from the traditional Policyfile workflow by allowing you to run any cookbook/recipe combination that exists within the Policyfile lock.

Safety With Flexibility

Run lists with Policyfiles give you the safety of locked sets of cookbook dependencies while also giving you the flexibility to change run lists or run different run lists on nodes for adhoc Chef Infra Client converges. Without Policyfiles, manually specifying or overriding a run list determines an entirely new set of dependencies. When using run lists with Policyfiles, Chef Infra Client executes within the predefined set of cookbook dependencies in your Policyfile lock. This allows you to change or override run lists without introducing new, and potentially untested, cookbook dependencies.

To execute a run list defined on a node in Chef Infra Server instead of the run list defined directly in a Policyfile, set the Chef Config policy_persist_run_list to true. An override run list that is specified on the command line with Policyfiles will execute without any additional configuration.

How This Differs From Named Run Lists

Policyfiles with run lists offer additional flexibility over named run lists and are better suited for adhoc Chef Infra Client execution or programmatically changing run lists during bootstrap. Named run lists within Policyfiles need to be defined when the Policyfile is created, requiring you to predefine each potential run list you may want to run at a future date. Run lists with Policyfiles allows you to run any run list for cookbooks included in the Policyfile lock. Override run lists with Policyfiles offer adhoc flexibility as the override run list is not saved to the node on Chef Infra Server, unlike named run lists which permanently update the node.

Examples

Override Run List
chef-client -o my_cookbook::some_recipe
Set Permanent Run List via CLI
chef-client -r my_cookbook::some_recipe

or

chef-client -j my_run_list_and_attribute_data.json
Configuring Chef Infra Client to Use Run Lists
chef_client_config 'Configure Infra Client' do
  policy_persist_run_list true
end

New Resources

habitat_package

Use the habitat_package to install or remove Chef Habitat packages from Habitat Builder. See the habitat_package Resource documentation for additional details and example usage.

habitat_sup

Use the habitat_sup resource to run a Chef Habitat supervisor for one or more Chef Habitat services. The resource is commonly used in conjunction with the habitat_service resource, which will manage the services loaded and started within the supervisor. See the habitat_sup Resource documentation for additional details and example usage.

habitat_config

Use the habitat_config resource to apply a configuration to a Chef Habitat service. See the habitat_config Resource documentation for additional details and example usage.

habitat_install

Use the habitat_install resource to install Chef Habitat. See the habitat_install Resource documentation for additional details and example usage.

habitat_service

Use the habitat_service resource to manage Chef Habitat services. This requires that core/hab-sup be running as a service. See the habitat_sup resource documentation for more information. See the habitat_service Resource documentation for additional details and example usage.

habitat_user_toml

Use the habitat_user_toml resource to template a user.toml for Chef Habitat services. Configurations set in the user.toml override the default.toml for a given package, which makes it an alternative to applying service group level configuration. See the habitat_user_toml Resource documentation for additional details and example usage.

windows_defender

Use the windows_defender resource to enable, configure, or disable the Microsoft Windows Defender service. See the windows_defender Resource documentation for additional details and example usage.

windows_defender_exclusion

Use the windows_defender_exclusion resource to exclude paths, processes, or file types from Windows Defender realtime protection scanning. See the windows_defender_exclusion Resource documentation for additional details and example usage.

windows_update_settings

Use the windows_update_settings resource to manage the various Windows Update patching options. See the windows_update_settings Resource documentation for additional details and example usage.

Updated Resources

powershell_package

Updated the powershell_package resource to allow passing an array of install options via the options property. Thanks for reporting this issue @kimbernator

windows_printer

Updated the windows_printer resource to better load the current state of the printer and to allow controlling the creation of the printer port. The resource now includes a create_port property that allows skipping the creation of the printer port and a port_name property that allows specifying the name of the port to use. With these new properties, users can create advanced printer ports using the windows_printer_port resource and then attach a new printer to those ports using the windows_printer resource.

windows_printer_port '10.4.64.39' do
  port_name 'My awesome printer port'
  snmp_enabled true
  port_protocol 2
end

windows_printer 'HP LaserJet 5th Floor' do
  driver_name 'HP LaserJet 4100 Series PCL6'
  port_name 'My awesome printer port'
  ipv4_address '10.4.64.38'
  create_port false
end

chef_client_config

Updated the chef_client_config resource to properly format the client.rb config when the user sets the ohai_optional_plugins or ohai_disabled_plugins properties. Thanks for reporting this issue @caneylan. The resource can now also set the new policy_persist_run_list configuration with the client.rb file by setting the policy_persist_run_list property to true.

Chef Language Improvements

We’ve added several new helpers to the Chef Infra Language to make writing out various data formats easier. These helpers allow you to convert data from Ruby Hashes or Chef Infra attributes into YAML, JSON, or TOML formatted data. A great use case for these helpers is writing system or application configuration files to disk without having to template out data formats using a template resource.

Given this Ruby hash:

example_hash = {
          "golf": "hotel",
          "kilo": %w{lima mike},
          "india": {
                    "juliett": "blue",
                   },
          "alpha": {
                    "charlie": true,
                    "bravo": 10,
                   },
          "echo": "foxtrot",
         }

Output the data in JSON format:

render_json(example_hash)

{
  "golf": "hotel",
  "kilo": [
    "lima",
    "mike"
  ],
  "india": {
    "juliett": "blue"
  },
  "alpha": {
    "charlie": true,
    "bravo": 10
  },
  "echo": "foxtrot"
}

Output the data in TOML format:

render_toml(example_hash)

echo = "foxtrot"
golf = "hotel"
kilo = ["lima", "mike"]
[alpha]
bravo = 10
charlie = true
[india]
juliett = "blue"

Output the data in YAML format:

render_yaml(example_hash)

---
golf: hotel
kilo:
- lima
- mike
india:
  juliett: blue
alpha:
  charlie: true
  bravo: 10
echo: foxtrot

Using this helper with the file resource:

file '/etc/some_app/config.yml' do
  content render_yml(example_hash)
  mode '0640'
end

Experimental Secrets Management

With Chef Infra Client 17.3, we’re introducing experimental secrets management integration with a new secrets helper in the Infra Language. This helper has a plugable model for fetching secrets from multiple secrets management systems. In this release of Chef Infra Client we’re support AWS Secrets Manager and Azure Key Vault with additional secrets managers coming in future releases. This new functionality should be considered a beta and not not necessarily ready for production usage. We’d love to get feedback on how how this works for you and additional features you’d like, or need, in order to utilize secrets from secret managers within your cookbooks. E-mail us at secrets_management_beta@progress.com.

Authentication

The secrets helper uses cloud instance authentication to access secrets in both Azure Key Vault and AWS Secrets Manager. This avoids the need to pass authentication in the helper and allows you to control access to secrets using existing cloud vendor access control models. When using AWS Secrets Manager, this is IAM roles applied to instances. In Azure this is Manged Identities applied to the VMs.

Fetching Secrets

The secrets helper accepts the secret name, and secrets service, secret version (optional), and connection options for the secrets service.

Fetching an AWS Secrets Manager secret
secret(name: 'test1', service: :aws_secrets_manager, config: { region: 'us-west-2' })
Fetching an Azure Key Vault secret
secret(name: 'test1', service: :azure_key_vault, config: { vault: 'vault1' })
Fetching a specific version of an Azure Key Vault secret
secret(name: 'test1', version: 'v1', service: :azure_key_vault, config: { vault: 'vault1' })

Using in Cookbooks

The secrets helper returns a text string, so it can be used anywhere in Chef Infra where you might hard code a value or access a value from a data bag.

Writing a Secret To a File
file '/home/ubuntu/aws-secret' do
  content secret(name: 'test1', service: :aws_secrets_manager)
end
Passing a Secret to a Template
template '/etc/my_fancy_service/my_fancy_service.conf' do
  source 'config.erb'
  variables(
    db_token: secret(name: 'db_token', service: :aws_secrets_manager)
  )
end

System Detection Improvements

virtuozzo Support

The virtuozzo platform is now detected as a member of the RHEL platform family. Thanks for this addition @robertmasztalerz!

Linux Livepatch Detection

A new Ohai optional plugin :Livepatch has been added to detect Linux kernel Livepatch modules that have been loaded on a system. This plugin can be enabled on systems using the ohai_optional_plugins property in the chef_client_config resource. Thanks for this new plugin @liu-song-6!

Package Improvements

M1 macOS Monterey Packages

Chef Infra Client packages are now produced for Apple’s macOS Monterey preview release. Packages for Intel-based Macs will ship at a later date.

Solaris 11.3 EOL / Solaris 11.4 Packages

Oracle Solaris 11.3 became end-of-life (EOL) in January 2021. Chef Infra Client packages are no longer produced for Solaris 11.3 and new Solaris 11.4 packages are available in their place.

FIPS on PPC RHEL

Failures initializing Chef Infra Client on FIPS enabled PowerPC RHEL systems have been resolved.

RPM Package Digests

The file digest in Chef Infra RPM packages has been updated from MD5 to SHA256 to prevent failures installing on some FIPS-enabled systems.

Security

Ruby 3.0.2

Ruby has been updated to 3.0.2 to resolve a large number of bugs as well as the following CVEs:

Addressable

We’ve updated the addressable gem from 2.7 to 2.8 to resolve CVE-2021-32740.

Chef Infra Client 17.2.29

Compliance Phase Improvements

Chef InSpec 4.37

We’ve updated Chef InSpec from 4.36.4 to 4.37.8:

New Features
  • The new inspec automate command replaces the inspec compliance command, which is now deprecated.
  • Added support for zfs_pool and zfs_dataset resources on Linux.
  • Improved port resource performance: adding more specific search while using ss command.
  • Updated the inspec init plugin command with the following changes:
    • The values of flags passed to the inspec init plugin command are now wrapped in double quotes instead of single quotes.
    • Template files are now ERB files.
    • The activator flag replaces the hook flag, which is now an alias.
Bug Fixes
  • Fixed an error when using profile dependencies and require_controls.
  • Fixed the windows_firewall_rule resource when it failed to validate more than one rule.
  • The http resource response body is now coerced into UTF-8.
  • Modified the windows_feature resource to indicate if a feature is enabled rather than just available.
  • file resource more_permissive_than matcher returns nil instead of throwing an exception when the file does not exist.
  • inspec detect --no-color now returns color-free output.

Slow Resource Report

Chef Infra Client now includes a --slow-report flag that shows the 10 slowest running resources in a Chef Infra Client run to help you troubleshoot and optimize your cookbooks. This new flag also takes an argument for the number of resources to list if you’d like to see additional resources included in the output. Our next release of Chef Workstation will include the ability to set this flag in Test Kitchen to allow testing for slow resources in the development process.

Example Output

Starting Chef Infra Client, version 17.2.12
Patents: https://www.chef.io/patents
resolving cookbooks for run list: ["test"]
Synchronizing Cookbooks:
  - test (0.0.1)
Installing Cookbook Gems:
Compiling Cookbooks...
Converging 1 resources
Recipe: test::default
  * file[/tmp/foo.xzy] action create (up to date)

Running handlers:

Top 1 slowest resource:

resource           elapsed_time cookbook recipe  source
------------------ ------------ -------- ------- ----------------------------------------
file[/tmp/foo.xzy] 0.015114     test     default test/recipes/default.rb:2:in `from_file'

  - Chef::Handler::SlowReport
Running handlers complete
Chef Infra Client finished, 0/1 resources updated in 03 seconds

Improved YAML Recipe Support

Chef Infra Client now supports both .yaml and .yml file extensions for recipes. If a .yml and .yaml recipe of the same name is present, Chef Infra Client will now fail as there is no way to determine which recipe should be loaded in this case.

Improved Reporting to Automate

Chef Infra Client run reporting to Automate now respects attribute allowlist and denylist configurations set in the client.rb. This change allows users to limit the data sent to their Automate servers to prevent indexing sensitive data or to reduce the necessary storage space on the Automate server.

Updated Resources

homebrew_path

The homebrew_path now passes the homebrew_path when creating or deleting taps. This change prevents failures when running homebrew in a non-standard location or on a M1 system. Thanks @mattlqx!

hostname

The hostname resource now sets the hostname on Windows systems using native PowerShell calls for increased reliability and allows changing the hostname on domain-attached systems. To change the hostname on a domain-attached system, pass a domain administrator account using the new domain_user and domain_password properties.

openssl_x509_certificate

The openssl_x509_certificate no longer marks the creation of the X509 certificate file as sensitive since this makes troubleshooting difficult and this content is not sensitive. Thanks @jasonwbarnett!

windows_firewall_rule

The windows_firewall_rule resource now allows specifying multiple IP addresses in the remote_address property.

windows_pagefile

The windows_pagefile resource features improved performance and support for the latest releases of Windows 10. These improvements also make managing pagefiles more predictable:

  • The path property now accepts a drive letter in addition to the full path of the pagefile on disk. For example, C, C:, or C:\ can now be used to specify a pagefile stored at C:\pagefile.sys.
  • Creating a new pagefile no longer disables the system-managed pagefile by default. If you wish to create a pagefile while also disabling the system-managed pagefile, set system_managed false.

windows_printer

The windows_printer resource includes improved logging when adding or removing printers.

windows_printer_port

The windows_printer_port resource has been refactored with several improvements:

  • Better performance when adding and removing ports.
  • Supports updating existing ports with new values.
  • Clearer logging of changes made to ports.
  • Deprecated the description property, which does not set a description on the ports.

windows_security_policy

The windows_security_policy resource now limits the value of ResetLockoutCount to any value less than LockoutDuration rather than limiting it to 30 minutes.

zypper_repository

The zypper_repository resource now accepts an array of GPG key locations in the gpgkey property. Thanks for reporting this @bkabrda.

Chef Infra Client 17.1.35

Compliance Phase Improvements

cli reporter by default

The compliance phase will now default to using both the json-file and the new cli reporter by default. This gives you a visual indication of the success of the Compliance Phase and is perfect for running both on the CLI and in Test Kitchen.

inspec_waiver_file_entry resource

Chef Infra Client now ships with a inspec_waiver_file_entry resource for managing Chef InSpec waivers. With this resource you can add and remove waiver entries to a single waiver file located at c:\chef\inspec_waiver_file.yml on Windows or /etc/chef/inspec_waivers.yml on all other systems.

See the inspec_waiver_file_entry documentation for more information and usage examples.

Chef InSpec 4.36

We’ve updated Chef InSpec from 4.33.1 to 4.36.4:

  • Added the selinux resource which includes support for modules and booleans.
  • Added the pattern input option for DSL and metadata inputs.
  • Added the members_array property for group & groups resources.
  • Train now reads the username and port from the .ssh/config file and will use these values if present.
  • Switch to GNU timeout-based implementation of SSH timeouts.
  • Fixed the group resource when a member does not exist.

Unified Mode Improvements

We’ve extended support for Unified Mode to the edit_resource helper and also improved the Unified Mode related deprecation warnings to provide more useful information and not warn when resources are deprecated or set to only run on older Chef Infra Client releases.

Resource Improvements

service on systemd Hosts

The service resource on systemd hosts will now properly load the state of the service. Thanks for this fix @ramereth!

systemd_unit

We updated the systemd_unit resource to resolve a regression in Chef Infra Client 17.0 that would re-enable and restart unit files on each Chef Infra Client run. Thanks for this fix @gene1wood!

template

We updated the template resource to allow passing the cookbook_name variable to template files.

Windows Resource

We fixed a failure that could occur in multiple Windows resources due to larger 64-bit values that logged the error: RangeError: bignum too big to convert into 'long'.

windows_security_policy

The windows_security_policy resource now supports setting AuditPolicyChange and LockoutDuration.

yum_package / dnf_package

We’ve made multiple improvements to how we interact with the systems RPM database in the yum_package and dnf_package resources. These changes improve reliability interacting with the RPM database and includes significant performance improvements, especially when no installation or upgrade action is taken by Chef Infra Client.

Platform Detection

Rocky Linux, a RHEL clone, is now detected as a member of the rhel platform family.

Packaging

Improved Dependencies

Chef Infra Client 17.1 is once again smaller than previous releases thanks to reduced dependencies in the packages.

RHEL 8 Packages

We improved our RHEL 8 packages with additional RHEL 8 optimizations and EL8 in the filename.

Chef Infra Client 17.0.242

Chef Infra Client 17.0 is our yearly release for 2021. These yearly releases include new functionality, an update to the underlying Ruby release, as well as potentially breaking changes. These notes outline what’s new and what you should be aware of as part of your upgrade process.

Compliance Phase

Chef Infra Client’s new Compliance Phase allows users to automatically execute compliance audits and view the results in Chef Automate as part of any Chef Infra Client Run. This new phase of the Chef Infra Client run replaces the legacy audit cookbook and works using the existing audit cookbook attributes. With this new phase, you’ll always have the latest compliance capabilities out of the box without the need to manage cookbook dependencies or juggle versions during Chef Infra Client updates.

The Compliance Phase also features a new compliance reporter: cli. This reporter mimics the InSpec command line output giving you a visual indication of your system’s compliance status. Thanks for this new reporter @aknarts.

Existing audit cookbook users can migrate to the new Compliance Phase by removing the audit cookbook from their run_list and setting the node['audit']['compliance_phase'] attribute to true.

For more information see our on-demand webinar Configure Chef Infra & Compliance Using Built-In Functionality

Ruby 3

Chef Infra Client 17 packages now ship with embedded Ruby 3.0. This new release of Ruby improves performance and offers many new language improvements for those writing advanced custom resources. See the ruby-lang.org Ruby 3.0 Announcement for additional details on what’s new and improved in Ruby 3.0.

Knife Moved to Workstation

For historical packaging reasons the Chef Infra Client packages have always shipped with the knife command for managing your Chef Infra nodes. With Chef Workstation there’s no benefit to shipping knife in the Chef Infra Client package and there are several downsides. Shipping management tooling within the client is seen as a security risk to many and increases the side of the Chef Infra Client codebase by adding a large number of management dependencies. With Chef Infra Client 17 we’ve split knife into its own Ruby Gem, which will continue to ship in Chef Workstation, but will no longer come bundled with Chef Infra Client. We hope you’ll enjoy the new faster and smaller Chef Infra Client while continuing to use knife in Chef Workstation uninterrupted.

Breaking Changes

AIX Virtualization Improvements

The Ohai :Virtualization plugin on AIX systems will now properly return the lpar_no and wpar_no values as Integers instead of Strings. This makes the data much easier to work within cookbooks, but may be a breaking change depending on how AIX users consumed these values.

32bit RHEL/CentOS 6 Support

We will not produce Chef Infra Client 17 packages for 32bit RHEL/CentOS 6 systems. RHEL/CentOS 6 reached EOL in November 2020. We are extending support for 64-bit RHEL/CentOS 6 until Chef Infra Client 18 (April 2022) or when an upstream platform or library changes prevent us from building on these systems that are at the end of their lifecycle.

Chef Infra Client As A Service on Windows

Based on customer feedback and observations in the field we’ve removed the ability to run the Chef Infra Client as a service on Windows nodes. We’ve seen the service manager for the Chef Infra Client consume excessive memory, hang preventing runs, or prevent nodes from updating to new client releases properly. We’ve always seen significantly better reliability by running Chef Infra Client as a scheduled task on Windows and in July of 2006 we introduced warnings to the chef-client cookbook when running as a service. The ability to set up the client as a service was later removed from the cookbook entirely in October of 2017.

For customers currently running Chef Infra Client as a service, we advise migrating to scheduled task-based execution. This allows for complex scheduling scenarios not possible with simple services, such as skipping Chef Infra Client execution on systems running on battery power or running the Chef Infra Client immediately after a system boot to ensure configuration.

Chef Infra Client can be configured to run as a scheduled task using the chef-client cookbook or ideally using the chef_client_scheduled_task resource built into Chef Infra Client 16 or later. For users already running as a service setting up the scheduled task and then stopping the existing service can be performed within a Chef Infra Client run to migrate systems.

Gem Resource Ruby 1.9+

The gem resource used to install Ruby Gems into the system’s Ruby installation will now assume Ruby 1.9 or later. As Ruby 1.8 and below reached end of life almost 7 years ago, we believe there is little to no impact in this change.

Legacy node[‘filesystem2’] removed on AIX/Solaris/FreeBSD

The legacy node['filesystem2'] attributes leftover from our multi-year migration of filesystem data on AIX, Solaris, and FreeBSD systems has been removed. This same data is now available at node['filesystem']

node[‘filesystem’] Uses Updated Format on Windows

In Chef Infra Client 16 we introduced node['filesystem2'] on Windows to complete our migration to a unified structure for filesystem data regardless of platform. In Chef Infra Client 17 we are updating node['filesystem'] on Windows with this same unified format. Both node attributes now have the same data allowing users to more easily migrate filesystem2 to filesystem in their cookbooks. In Chef Infra Client 18, we will remove node['filesystem2'] completely finishing our multi-year migration of Ohai filesystem data format.

Removed Antergos and Pidora Detection

Ohai detection of the end-of-life Antergos and Pidora distributions has been removed. Antergos ended releases and downloads of the distribution in May 2019 and Pidora stopped receiving updates in 2014.

Infra Language Improvements

Lazy Attribute Loading

A common problem when using the “wrapper cookbook” pattern is when the wrapped cookbook declares what are called “derived attributes”, which are attributes that refer to other attributes. Because of the order that attribute files are parsed in, this does not work as intended when the base attribute is changed in a wrapper cookbook. By extending the use of the lazy {} helper to the declaration of node attributes, it makes it possible for the wrapped cookbook to cleanly allow wrapper cookbooks to override base attributes as intended.

Use the lazy helper:

default['myapp']['dir'] = '/opt/myapp'
default['myapp']['bindir'] = lazy { "#{node['myapp']['dir']}/bin" }

Instead of:

default['myapp']['dir'] = '/opt/myapp'
default['myapp']['bindir'] = "#{node['myapp']['dir']}/bin"

With the lazy helper the wrapper cookbook can then override the base attribute and the derived attribute will change:

default['myapp']['dir'] = "/opt/my_better_app" # this also changes the bindir attribute correctly

The use of this helper is not limited to declarations in attribute files and can be used whenever attributes are being assigned. For a complete description of the capabilities of lazy attribute evaluation see https://github.com/chef/chef/pull/10861

Custom Resource Property Defaults

Chef Infra Client’s handling of default property values in Custom Resources has been improved to avoid potential Ruby errors. These values are now duplicated internally allowing them to be modified by the user in their recipes without potentially receiving fatal frozen value modification errors.

effortless? helper

A new effortless? helper identifies if a system is running Chef Infra Client using the Effortless Pattern.

reboot_pending? Improvements

The reboot_pending? helper now works on all Debian based platforms instead of just Ubuntu.

Resource Improvements

Logging Improvements

A large number of resources have seen improvements to the logging available in the debug log level providing better information for troubleshooting Chef Infra Client execution. Thanks for this improvement @jaymzh!

apt_package

The apt_package resource now properly handles downgrading package versions. Please note that full versions must be provided in the version property and invalid version strings will now raise an error. Thanks for this improvement @jaymzh!

chef_client_launchd / macosx_service

The chef_client_launchd and macosx_service resources have been updated to use the full path to the launchctl command. This avoids failures running these resources with incorrect PATH environment variables. Thanks for this improvement @krackajak!

execute

The execute resource includes a new login property allowing you to run commands with a login shell. This helps ensure you have all potential environment variables defined in the user’s shell.

hostname

The hostname resource now includes a new fqdn property to allow you to set a custom fqdn in the hostname file in addition to the system’s hostname. Thanks for suggesting this improvement @evandam!

systemd_unit

The systemd_unit resource has been improved to only shell out once to determine the state of the systemd unit. This optimization should result in significant performance improvements when using large numbers of systemd_unit resources. Thanks @joshuamiller01!

windows_certificate

The windows_certificate resource has undergone a large overhaul, with improved support for importing and exporting certificate objects, the ability to create certificate objects from a URL, and a new output_path property for use with exporting.

windows_task

The windows_task resource now has a new backup property that allows you to control the number of XML backups that will be kept of your Windows Scheduled Task definition. This default for this setting is 5 and can be disabled by setting the property to false. Thanks @ kimbernator!

Ohai

Podman Detection

Ohai now includes detection for hosts running the Podman containerization engine or Chef Infra Client running in containers under Podman.

For hosts the following attributes will be set:

{
  "systems": {
    "podman": "host",
  },
  "system": "podman",
  "role": "host"
}

For Chef Infra Client within containers the following attributes will be set:

{
  "systems": {
    "podman": "guest",
  },
  "system": "podman",
  "role": "guest"
}

Thanks for this addition @ramereth!

Habitat Support

Ohai includes a new :Habitat plugin that gathers information about the Habitat installation, including installed Habitat version, installed packages, and running services.

Sample Habitat attribute output:

{
  "version": "1.6.288/20210402191717",
  "packages": ["core/busybox-static/1.31.0/20200306011713",
    "core/bzip2/1.0.8/20200305225842",
    "core/cacerts/2020.01.01/20200306005234",
    "core/gcc-libs/9.1.0/20200305225533",
    "core/glibc/2.29/20200305172459",
    "core/hab-launcher/15358/20210402194815",
    "core/hab-sup/1.6.288/20210402194826",
    "core/libedit/3.1.20150325/20200319193649",
    "core/libsodium/1.0.18/20200319192446",
    "core/linux-headers/4.19.62/20200305172241",
    "core/ncurses/6.1/20200305230210",
    "core/nginx/1.18.0/20200506101012",
    "core/openssl-fips/2.0.16/20200306005307",
    "core/openssl/1.0.2t/20200306005450",
    "core/pcre/8.42/20200305232429",
    "core/zeromq/4.3.1/20200319192759",
    "core/zlib/1.2.11/20200305174519"
  ],
  "services": [{
    "identity": "core/nginx/1.18.0/20200506101012",
    "topology": "standalone",
    "state_desired": "up",
    "state_actual": "up"
  }]
}

Alibaba Detection

Ohai now includes detection of nodes running on the Alibaba cloud and supports gathering Alibaba instance metadata.

Sample node['alibaba'] values:

{
  "meta_data": {
    "dns_conf_": "nameservers",
    "eipv4": "47.89.242.123",
    "hibernation_": "configured",
    "hostname": "1234",
    "image_id": "aliyun_2_1903_x64_20G_alibase_20210120.vhd",
    "instance_id": "i-12345",
    "instance_": {
      "instance_type": "ecs.t6-c2m1.large",
      "last_host_landing_time": "2021-02-07 19:10:04",
      "max_netbw_egress": 81920,
      "max_netbw_ingress": 81920,
      "virtualization_solution": "ECS Virt",
      "virtualization_solution_version": 2.0
    },
    "mac": "00:16:3e:00:d9:01",
    "network_type": "vpc",
    "network_": "interfaces/",
    "ntp_conf_": "ntp-servers",
    "owner_account_id": 1234,
    "private_ipv4": "172.25.58.242",
    "region_id": "us-west-1",
    "serial_number": "ac344378-4d5d-4b9e-851b-1234",
    "source_address": "http://us1.mirrors.cloud.aliyuncs.com",
    "sub_private_ipv4_list": "172.25.58.243",
    "vpc_cidr_block": "172.16.0.0/12",
    "vpc_id": "vpc-1234",
    "vswitch_cidr_block": "172.25.48.0/20",
    "vswitch_id": "vsw-rj9eiw6yqh6zll23h0tlt",
    "zone_id": "us-west-1b"
  },
  "user_data": null,
  "dynamic": "instance-identity",
  "global_config": null,
  "maintenance": "active-system-events"
}

Sample `node[‘cloud’] values:

{
  "public_ipv4_addrs": [
    "47.89.242.123"
  ],
  "local_ipv4_addrs": [
    "172.25.58.242"
  ],
  "provider": "alibaba",
  "local_hostname": "123",
  "public_ipv4": "47.89.242.123",
  "local_ipv4": "172.25.58.242"
}

The Chef Infra Language now includes an alibaba? helper method to check for instances running on Alibaba as well.

Improved Linux CPU Data

Data collection in the :Cpu plugin on Linux has been greatly expanded to give enhanced information on architecture, cache, virtualization status, and overall model and configuration data. Thanks for this addition @ramereth!

Packaging Improvements

PowerPC RHEL FIPS Support

We now produce FIPS capable packages for RHEL on PowerPC

Sample client.rb on *nix Platforms

On AIX, Solaris, macOS, and Linux platforms the Chef Infra Client packages will now create the various configuration directories under /etc/chef as well as a sample /etc/chef/client.rb file to make it easier to get started running the client.

New Deprecations

Unified Mode in Custom Resources

In Chef Infra Client 16 we introduced Unified Mode allowing you to collapse the sometimes confusing compile and converge phases into a single unified phase. Unified mode makes it easier to write and troubleshoot failures in custom resources and for Chef Infra Client 18 we plan to make this the default execution phase for custom resources. We’ve backported the unified mode feature to the Chef Infra Client 14 and 15 systems and for Chef Infra Client 17 we will now begin warning if resources don’t explicitly set this new mode. Enabling unified mode now lets you validate that resources will continue to function as expected in Chef Infra Client 18. To enable unified mode in your resource add unified_mode true to the file.

Chef Infra Client 16.18.30

Bug fixes

  • Stop executing locale-gen on every chef run (#12904) Thanks @hrak
  • Fixed issue where checksum validation fails when creating/updating files because the two checksums are in different letter cases. The existing checksum validation logic was using case sensitive equality checks.(#13322) Thanks @decoyjoe
  • Fixed issue in rhsm_register resource where it does not flush chef internal package cache after registering.(#12829) Thanks @jasonwbarnett
  • Fixed indentation of condition for disabling repos.(#13529)

Packaging

  • Bundled addressable updated from 2.8.0 to 2.8.1
  • Bundled concurrent-ruby updated from 1.1.10 to 1.2.0
  • Bundled erubi updated from 1.10.0 to 1.12.0
  • Bundled highline updated from 2.0.3 to 2.1.0
  • Bundled json updated from 2.6.1 to 2.6.3
  • Bundled logging updated from 2.3.0 to 2.3.1
  • Bundled mixlib-config updated from 3.0.9 to 3.0.17
  • Bundled multipart-post updated from 2.1.1 to 2.3.0
  • Bundled net-scp updated from 3.0.0 to 2.0.0
  • Bundled net-ssh updated from 6.1.0 to 5.2.0
  • Bundled parser updated from 3.1.2.0 to 3.2.0.0
  • Bundled public_suffix updated from 4.0.7 to 5.0.1
  • Bundled regexp_parser updated from 2.3.1 to 2.6.2
  • Bundled rspec-expectations updated from 3.11.0 to 3.11.1
  • Bundled train-core updated from 3.9.2 to 3.2.0
  • Bundled webmock updated from 3.14.0 to 3.18.1
  • Bundled webrick updated from 1.7.0 to 1.8.1

Security

Platform Support Updates

32-bit Windows

Chef Infra Client packages are no longer produced for 32-bit versions of Windows.

Compliance Phase Improvements

New Resources

Resource Updates

Chef Infra Client 16.18.0

EOL Updates

Chef-16 EOL has been extended to 30 November 2022 from earlier 30 April 2022.

Bug Fixes

  • Improves Infra Client run time by reducing execution duration.

    For more details, please refer PR

  • Fixes rendering of ohai_disabled_plugins and ohai_optional_plugins properties in the client.rb template.

    Thanks @jasonwbarnett

    For details about the issue refer

    For details about the fix refer

Compliance Phase Improvements

New Resources

Resource Updates

Packaging

  • Bundled chef-vaul updated from 4.1.5 to 4.1.10
  • Bundled inspec-core updated from 4.56.19 to 4.56.20
  • Bundled mixlib-shellout updated from 3.2.5 to 3.2.7
  • Bundled parser updated from 3.1.1.0 to 3.1.2.0
  • Bundled public_suffix updated from 4.0.6 to 4.0.7
  • Bundled regexp_parser updated from 2.2.1 to 2.3.1
  • Bundled rspec-mocks updated from 3.11.0 to 3.11.1
  • Bundled rubocop-ast updated from 1.16.0 to 1.17.0
  • Bundled train-core updated from 3.8.9 to 3.9.2
  • Bundled win32-process updated from 0.9.0 to 0.10.0
  • Bundled wmi-lite updated from 1.0.5 to 1.0.7

Security

Chef Infra Client 16.17.51

Packaging

  • Updated the bundled version of OpenSSL on macOS to 1.1.1m to resolve minor bugs.
  • Updated the bundled cacerts file to the 2022-02-01 release with new certificates.
  • Resolved installation failures on older releases of Solaris 11.3

Chef Infra Client 16.17.39

Compliance Phase Improvements

Chef InSpec 4.52.9

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.50.3 to 4.52.9 with the following updates:

New Features
  • Added remote target support for Alpine Linux.
  • Added the ability to specify a proxy as a parameter in the http resource.
  • Added support for TLS 1.3 to the ssl resource.
Bug Fixes
  • Fixed an edge case in the service resource where InSpec may falsely detect services as enabled on FreeBSD if that service is the suffix of another enabled service.
  • Fixed the ibmdb2_session resource so that it now correctly accepts queries with clauses.
  • Fixed the oracledb_session resource to properly handle nil in the query output.
  • Fixed the packages resource to correctly list only installed packages on Alpine Linux.

Chef Infra Client 16.17.18

Compliance Phase Improvements

InSpec 4.50.3

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.49.0 to 4.50.3 which adds Windows support to the http resource.

Packaging

macOS 10.14 EOL

With the release of macOS 12, our N-2 macOS release policy now includes macOS 12, 11, and 10.15. macOS 10.14 packages will no longer be produced.

Security

Ruby 2.7.5

Ruby has been updated from 2.7.4 to 2.7.5 to resolve the following CVEs:

  • CVE-2021-41817
  • CVE-2021-41816
  • CVE-2021-41819

Chef Infra Client 16.17.4

Compliance Phase Improvements

Chef InSpec 4.49.0

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.46.13 to 4.49.0 with the following updates:

New Features
  • Added support for testing Cassandra DB configurations and CQL commands.
Bug Fixes
  • Resolved case sensitivity issue for Windows users and group resources.
  • Fixed the oracledb_session resource when invoking a query using OS user and DB role.
  • Additional oracledb_session resource fixes.

Resource Updates

chef_client_trusted_certificate

The chef_client_trusted_certificate resource now supports the sensitive property to mask certificate contents in logs. Thanks for this improvement @jakauppila!

System Detection

Improved RHEL Derivative Detection

Ohai now detects XCP-ng 8, Rocky Linux, and Virtuozzo as being part of the rhel platform family.

Windows Package Detection

32-bit applications on 64-bit Windows hosts are now properly detected by Ohai in the node['packages'] attribute. Thanks for this fix @knightorc!

Packaging

Solaris 11.3 Support

Solaris 11.3 support is back due to popular demand. If you’ve upgraded to Solaris 11.4, Chef Infra Client will continue to work, but this way you’ll have a bit longer to plan your upgrade.

Security

CA Certificates 10-26-2021

The bundled CA certificates file has been updated to the 10-26-2021 release, which includes 3 new CA certs.

Chef Infra Client 16.16.13

Bug Fixes

  • Improved Windows version helper to properly detect Windows 2022

Security

  • Updated cacerts to remove the expired DST Root CA X3 root certificate causing failures with Lets Encrypt certificates

Chef Infra Client 16.16.7

Compliance Phase Improvements

InSpec 4.46.13

InSpec has been updated from 4.41.20 to 4.46.13 with the following enhancements:

  • Added rocky and almalinux Linux distributions to service resource.
  • Added the ability to handle files without headers in the csv resource.
  • Added the option to establish connection using a UNIX socket in the postgres_session resource.
  • Fixed the opa_cli and opa_api resources so they are able to verify an empty result.

Packaging

We are now shipping packages for the following new platforms:

  • Debian 11 amd64/arm64
  • Windows 11
  • Windows 2022
  • Ubuntu 16.04 (no longer EOL with vendor)

Security

OpenSSL 1.0.2zb

OpenSSL has been updated from 1.0.2za to 1.0.2zb to resolve issues with Let’s Encrypt certificates.

cacerts

The cacerts bundle has been updated to the 2021-07-25 release which removes older expired root certificate and adds the following new root certiciates:

  • AC RAIZ FNMT-RCM SERVIDORES SEGUROS
  • GlobalSign Root R46
  • GlobalSign Root E46
  • GLOBALTRUST 2020
  • ANF Secure Server Root CA
  • Certum EC-384 CA
  • Certum Trusted Root CA

Chef Infra Client 16.15.22

Bug Fixes

  • Removed ERROR logs when retrying failed communication with the Chef Infra Server.
  • Several Ruby failures on Windows have been resolved.
  • The cookbook_name variable is now available in templates as expected.
  • YAML recipes can now end in .yaml and .yml.
  • The data collector for sending data to Chef Automate now respects attribute allowlist and denylist configurations.
  • An edge condition in the deprecations system could cause failures running Chef Infra Client.
  • Chef Vault has been updated to allow storing key data.

Chef InSpec 4.41.20

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.38.9 to 4.41.20 with the following improvements:

  • New Open Policy Agent resources opa_cli and opa_api.
  • New mongodb_session resource.
  • The mssql_session resource now allows named connections by no longer forcing a port.
  • The PostgreSQL resources (postgres_session, postgres_conf, postgres_hba_conf, and postgres_ident_conf) now work with Windows.
  • Fixed a bug where the year in an expiration date was misinterpreted in waiver files.
  • Added support for Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 to the Chef InSpec service resource.
  • Replaced the WMI command-line (WMIC) utility in the Chef InSpec security_identifier resource with Common Information Model (CIM) cmdlets as the WMIC utility will be deprecated soon.
  • Fixed range-based filtering in filter tables.
  • Fixed an issue in the Chef InSpec apache_conf resource when the ServerRoot is not specified in the Apache configuration file.
  • Fixed an error in the Chef InSpec postgres_session resource where the resource was unable to connect to a database.
  • Fixed an error in the Chef InSpec apache_conf resource where it would overwrite any Apache configurations from the main Apache configuration file with configurations from any included configuration files.
  • Fixed an error where the Chef InSpec security_policy resource returned a comma-separated string of local groups (rather than SIDs) instead of an array.
  • Updated the Git fetcher to handle profiles with a default Git branch that is not master.

Resource Updates

archive_file

We improved the archive_file resource has by upgrading the libarchive library it uses, which includes the following improvements:

  • Support for PWB and v7 binary CPIO formats.
  • Support for the deflate algorithm in symbolic link decompression with zip files.
  • Various bug fixes when working with CAB, ZIP, 7zip, and RAR files.

chef_client_config

Updated the chef_client_config resource to properly format the client.rb config when the user sets the ohai_optional_plugins or ohai_disabled_plugins properties. Thanks for reporting this issue @caneylan.

homebrew_cask

The homebrew_cask resource now supports Homebrew Casks with ‘-’ or ‘@’ in their name. Thanks for this fix @byplayer! The resource also now passes the homebrew_path when creating or deleting taps. This change prevents failures when running Homebrew in a non-standard location or on an M1 system. Thanks for this fix @mattlqx!

mount

The mount resource no longer strips trailing / values when the mount point is just /. Thanks for this fix @jiokmiso!

powershell_package

Updated the powershell_package resource to allow passing an array of install options via the options property. Thanks for reporting this issue @kimbernator

rhsm_subscription

The rhsm_subscription resource now flushes all DNF or YUM caches after adding a new subscription so that subsequent package installs can use packages from the subscription. Thanks for fixing this @jasonwbarnett!

systemd_unit

The systemd_unit resource now generates valid unit files when passing a hash of data. Thanks for reporting this issue @gregkare

ulimit

The ulimit resource now supports setting sensitive true to prevent logging ulimit data as it is written to disk.

windows_security_policy

The windows_security_policy resource has been refactored to improve reliability and now supports setting AuditPolicyChange and LockoutDuration.

windows_uac

The windows_uac resource now sets the proper registry key value when using the consent_behavior_users property. Thanks for reporting this @ahembree!

windows_user_privilege

The windows_user_privilege resource no longer fails with an error stating that the privilege property needs to be set, even if it is set.

Security

OpenSSL 1.0.2za

OpenSSL has been updated from 1.0.2y to 1.0.2za on non-macOS systems to resolve CVE-2021-3712.

OpenSSL 1.1.1l

OpenSSL has been updated from 1.1.1k to 1.1.1l on macOS systems to resolve the following CVEs:

libarchive 3.5.2

Updated the libarchive library that powers the archive_file resource from 3.5.1 to 3.5.2 to resolve security vulnerabilities in libarchive’s handling of symbolic links.

Package Improvements

Intel macOS Monterey Packages

We now produce Chef Infra Client packages for Apple’s macOS Monterey preview release on Intel architecture in addition to M1 architecture.

Deprecations

Policyfile Compatibility Mode

The Chef Infra Server 11 era Policyfile Compatibility Mode is now deprecated. Users should upgrade to a newer release of Chef Infra Server 12+ that supports Policyfiles natively. With Chef Infra Server upgraded, you can remove policy_document_native_api from the client.rb config file or set it to true.

Attribute Whitelists

We deprecated the attribute whitelist feature in favor of attribute allowlists. Users will need to update whitelist configurations in their client.rb configuration file to be allowlist configurations.

Chef Infra Client 16.14.1

Bug Fixes

  • bundle install now correctly installs gems from cookbook metadata.rb files. Thanks for this fix @nvwls
  • knife bootstrap on Windows now correctly uses https://omnitruck.chef.io to download packages.

Chef InSpec 4.31

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.31.1 to 4.38.9 with the following changes:

New Features

  • Added the new --reporter-include-source CLI option, which includes the source code of the controls in the output of the CLI reporter.
  • Added ability to pass inputs to InSpec shell using input file and CLI.
  • Added a new mongodb_conf resource.
  • Fixed the inspec shell to allow loading profiles that have their own dependent profiles.
  • Updated the inspec init plugin command with the following changes.
    • The values of flags passed to the inspec init plugin command are now wrapped in double quotes instead of single quotes.
    • Template files are now ERB files.
    • The activator flag replaces the hook flag, which is now an alias.
  • Added support for zfs_pool and zfs_dataset resources on Linux.
  • Improved port resource performance: adding more specific search while using ss command.
  • The new inspec automate command replaces the inspec compliance command, which is now deprecated.
  • Added the selinux resource which includes support for modules and booleans.
  • Added the pattern input option for DSL and metadata inputs.
  • Added the members_array property for group & groups resources.
  • Train now reads the username and port from the .ssh/config file and will use these values if present.

Bug Fixes

  • Removed the default of 3600 seconds for --command-timeout CLI option.
  • Fix SSH Timeout PTY allocation.
  • Changed the Windows local pipe server connection to retry once on EPIPE.
  • Fixed the postgres_session resource to raise an exception if there is an error in a connection or query.
  • Fixed the mysql_session resource to raise an exception if there is an error in a connection or query.
  • Removed support for Chef Compliance Server and Chef Automate 1 from the inspec automate command, as both products are EOL.
  • inspec detect --no-color returns color-free output.
  • file resource more_permissive_than matcher returns nil instead of throwing exception when file does not exist.
  • The HTTP resource response body is now coerced into UTF-8.
  • Modified the windows_feature resource to indicate if a feature is enabled rather than just available.
  • Fixed an error when using profile dependencies and require_controls.
  • Fixed the windows_firewall_rule resource when it failed to validate more than one rule.
  • Switch to GNU timeout-based implementation of SSH timeouts.
  • Fixed the group resource when a member does not exist.

Packaging

M1 macOS Monterey Packages

Chef Infra Client packages are now produced for Apple’s macOS Monterey preview release. Packages for Intel-based Macs will ship at a later date.

Solaris 11.3 EOL / Solaris 11.4 Packages

Oracle Solaris 11.3 became end-of-life (EOL) in January 2021. Chef Infra Client packages are no longer produced for Solaris 11.3 and new Solaris 11.4 packages are available in their place.

PowerPC RHEL FIPS Support

We now produce FIPS capable packages for RHEL on PowerPC.

RHEL 8 Packages

We improved our RHEL 8 packages with additional RHEL 8 optimizations and EL8 in the filename.

RPM Package Digests

The file digest in Chef Infra RPM packages has been updated from MD5 to SHA256 to prevent failures installing on some FIPS-enabled systems.

Security

Ruby 2.7.4

Ruby has been updated to 2.7.4 to resolve a large number of bugs as well as the following CVEs:

Addressable

We’ve updated the addressable gem from 2.7 to 2.8 to resolve CVE-2021-32740.

Chef Infra Client 16.13.16

Chef InSpec 4.31

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.29.3 to 4.31.1.

New Features

  • Commands can now be set to timeout using the command resource or the --command-timeout option in the CLI. Commands timeout by default after one hour.
  • Added the --docker-url CLI option, which can be used to specify the URI to connect to the Docker Engine.
  • Added support for targeting Linux and Windows containers running on Docker for Windows.

Bug Fixes

  • Hash inputs will now be loaded consistently and accessed as strings or symbols. (#5446)

Ubuntu FIPS Support

Our Ubuntu packages are now FIPS compliant for all your FedRAMP needs.

Chef Language Additions

We now include a centos_stream_platform? helper to determine if your CentOS release is a standard CentOS release or a CentOS Stream release. This helper can be used in attributes files, recipes, and custom resources. Thanks for this new helper @ramereth!

Resource Improvements

dsc_script and dsc_resource

Our PowerShell integration has been improved to better handle failures that were silently occurring when running some DSC code in Chef Infra Client 16.8 and later. Thanks for reporting this problem @jeremyciak!

Platform Support Updates

Ubuntu 16.04 EOL

Packages will no longer be built for Ubuntu 16.04 as Canonical ended maintenance updates on April 30, 2021. See Chef’s Platform End-of-Life Policy for more information on when Chef ends support for an OS release.

Improved System Detection

Ohai now includes a new :OsRelease plugin for Linux hosts that includes the content of /etc/os_release. This data can be very useful for accurately identifying the Linux distribution that Chef Infra Client is running on. Thanks for this new plugin @ramereth!

Sample :OsRelease Output

{
  "name": "Ubuntu",
  "version": "18.04.5 LTS (Bionic Beaver)",
  "id": "ubuntu",
  "id_like": [
    "debian"
  ],
  "pretty_name": "Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS",
  "version_id": "18.04",
  "home_url": "https://www.ubuntu.com/",
  "support_url": "https://help.ubuntu.com/",
  "bug_report_url": "https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/",
  "privacy_policy_url": "https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy",
  "version_codename": "bionic",
  "ubuntu_codename": "bionic"
}

Security

Ruby 2.7.3

Ruby has been updated to 2.7.3, which provides a large number of bug fixes and also resolves the following CVEs:

Chef Infra Client 16.12.3

Chef InSpec 4.29

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.28 to 4.29.3.

New Features

  • The JSON metadata pass through configuration has been moved from the Automate reporter to the JSON Reporter. (#5430)

Bug Fixes

  • The apt resource now correctly fetches all package repositories using the -name flag in an environment where ZSH is the user’s default shell. (#5437)
  • Updates how InSpec profiles are created with GCP or AWS providers so they use inputs instead of attributes. (#5435)

Resource Improvements

service and chef_client_launchd

The service and chef_client_launchd resources on macOS now use the full path to launchctl to avoid potential failures. Thanks @krackajak!

file

Verifiers in the file resource are only run if the content actually changes. This can significantly speed execution of Chef Infra Client when no actual changes occur. Thanks @joshuamiller01!

mount

The mount resource now properly handles NFS mounts with a root of /. Thanks for reporting this @eheydrick and thanks for the fix @ramereth!

powershell_script and dsc_script

Our embedded PowerShell libraries have been updated for improved execution of PowerShell and DSC code on Windows systems.

Improved System Detection

Ohai has been updated to better detect system configuration details:

  • Ohai now detects Chef Infra Clients running in the Effortless pattern at node['chef_packages']['chef']['chef_effortless'].
  • Windows packages installed for the current user are now detected in addition to system wide package installations. Thanks @jaymzh!
  • Sangoma Linux is now detected as part of the rhel platform family. Thanks @hron84!
  • Docker is now properly detected even if it’s running on a virtualized system. Thanks @jaymzh!
  • Alibaba Cloud Linux is now detected as platform alibabalinux and platform family rhel.

Security

Upgraded OpenSSL on macOS hosts to 1.1.1k, which resolves the following CVEs:

Chef Infra Client 16.11.7

Native Apple M1 Architecture Packages

We now build and test native Apple M1 architecture builds of Chef Infra Client. These builds are available at Chef Downloads, our install.sh scripts, and the Omnitruck API.

Chef InSpec 4.28

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.26.4 to 4.28.0.

New Features

  • Added the option to filter out empty profiles from reports.
  • Exposed the conf_path, content, and params properties to the auditd_conf resource.
  • Added the ability to specify --user when connecting to docker containers.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed the crontab resource when passing a username to AIX.
  • Stopped a backtrace from occurring when using cmp to compare nil with a non-existing file.
  • Fixed skip_control to work on deeply nested profiles.
  • The ssh_config and sshd_config resources now correctly use the first value when a setting is repeated.

Fixes and Improvements

  • Upgraded openSSL on macOS from 1.0.2 to 1.1.1 in order to support Apple M1 builds.
  • Resolved an issue that caused the DNF and YUM package helpers to exit with error codes, which would show up in system logs.
  • Added a new attribute to make the upcoming Compliance Phase an opt-in feature: node['audit']['compliance_phase']. This should prevent the Compliance Phase from incorrectly running when using named run_lists or override run_lists. If you’re currently testing this new phase, make sure to set this attribute to true.
  • chef_client_cron: the append_log_file property now sets up the cron job to use shell redirection (>>) instead of the -L flag

Chef Infra Client 16.10.17

Bug Fixes

  • Resolved installation failures on some Windows systems
  • Fixed the mount resource for network mounts using the root level as the device. Thanks @ramereth!
  • Resolved a Compliance Phase failure with profile names using the @ symbol.

Security

Upgraded OpenSSL to 1.0.2y, which resolves the following CVEs:

Platform Updates

With the release of macOS 11 we will no longer produce packages for macOS 10.13 systems. See our Platform End-of-Life Policy for details on the platform lifecycle.

Chef Infra Client 16.10.8

Improvements

Improved Linux Network Detection

On Linux systems, Chef Infra Client now detects all installed NICs on systems with more than 10 interfaces and will populate Ethernet pause frame information if present. Thanks for these improvements @kuba-moo and @Babar!

AWS Instance Metadata Service Version 2 (IMDSv2) support

Chef Infra Client now supports the latest generation of AWS metadata services (IMDSv2). This allows you to secure the contents of the metadata endpoint while still exposing this data for use in Chef Infra cookbooks. Thanks for this new functionality @wilkosz and @sawanoboly!

Improved AWS Metadata Gathering

On AWS instances, we now gather data from the latest metadata API versions, exposing new AWS instance information for use in Infra Cookbooks:

  • elastic-gpus/associations/elastic-gpu-id
  • elastic-inference/associations/eia-id
  • events/maintenance/history
  • events/maintenance/scheduled
  • events/recommendations/rebalance
  • instance-life-cycle
  • network/interfaces/macs/mac/network-card-index
  • placement/availability-zone-id
  • placement/group-name
  • placement/host-id
  • placement/partition-number
  • placement/region
  • spot/instance-action

AlmaLinux Detection

Chef Infra Client now maps AlmaLinux to the rhel platform_family value. AlmaLinux is a new open-source RHEL fork produced by the CloudLinux team. AlmaLinux falls under Chef’s Community Support platform support policy providing community driven support without the extensive testing given to commercially supported platforms in Chef Infra Client.

You can test cookbooks on AlmaLinux in Test Kitchen using [AlmaLinux 8 Vagrant Images](https://app.vagrantup.com/bento/boxes/almalinux-8 on VirtualBox, Parallels, and VMware hypervisors as follows:

platforms:
  - name: almalinux-8
    driver:
      box: bento/almalinux-8

Knife Bootstrapping Without Sudo

The knife bootstrap command now supports elevating privileges on systems without sudo by using the su command instead. Use the new --su-user and --su-password flags to specify credentials for su.

Resource Updates

dnf_package

The dnf_package has been updated to maintain idempotency when using the :upgrade action when the RPM release “number” contains a dot (.).

windows_certificate

The windows_certificate resource now honors the user_store property to manage certificates in the User store instead of the System store.

Chef Infra Client 16.9.32

Improvements

  • Resolved orphaned PowerShell processes when using Compliance Remediation content.
  • Reduced Chef Infra Client install size by up to 5%.

Chef InSpec 4.26.4

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.25.1 to 4.26.4.

New Features

  • You can now directly refer to settings in the nginx_conf resource using the its syntax. Thanks @rgeissert!
  • You can now specify the shell type for WinRM connections using the --winrm-shell-type option. Thanks @catriona1!
  • Plugin settings can now be set programmatically. Thanks @tecracer-theinen!

Bug Fixes

  • Updated the oracledb_session to use more general invocation options. Thanks @pacopal!
  • Fixed an error with the http resource in Chef Infra Client by including faraday_middleware in the gemspec.
  • Fixed an incompatibility between parslet and toml in Chef Infra Client.
  • Improved programmatic plugin configuration.

Chef Infra Client 16.9.29

Chef InSpec 4.25.1

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.24.8 to 4.25.1:

  • OpenSSH Client on Windows can now be tested with the ssh_config and sshd_config resources. Thanks @rgeissert!
  • The --reporter-message-truncation option now also truncates the code_desc field, preventing failures when sending large reports to Automate.

Bug Fixes

  • Resolved failures from running chef-client on some Windows systems.
  • Compliance Phase: Improved detection of the audit cookbook when it is used for compliance reporting.
  • chef-shell: Added support for loading configs in client.d directories - Thanks @jaymzh!
  • Duplicate gems in our packaging have been removed to further shrink the package sizes and improve load time.

Chef Infra Client 16.9.20

  • Updated the package resource on FreeBSD to work with recent changes to the pkgng executable. Thanks @mrtazz
  • Added a missing dependency in the chef-zero binary that could cause failures when running chef-zero.
  • Resolved failures when running the audit cookbook from our yet-to-be-fully-released Chef Infra Compliance Phase. As it turns out, this dark launch was not as dark as we had hoped.

Chef Infra Client 16.9.17

Knife Improvements

  • The knife bootstrap command now properly formats the trusted_certs_dir configuration value on Windows hosts. Thanks for this fix @axelrtgs!
  • The knife bootstrap command now only specifies the ssh option -o IdentitiesOnly=yes if keys are present. Thanks for this fix @drbrain!
  • The knife status command with the -F json flag no longer fails if cloud nodes have no public IP.

Updated Resources

cron_d

The cron_d resource now respects the use of the sensitive property. Thanks for this fix @axl89!

dnf

The dnf resource has received a large number of improvements to provide improved idempotency and to better handle uses of the version and arch properties. Thanks for reporting these issues @epilatow and @Blorpy!

homebrew_cask

The homebrew_cask resource has been updated to work with the latest command syntax requirements in the brew command. Thanks for reporting this issue @bcg62!

locale

The allowed execution time for the locale-gen command in the locale resource has been extended to 1800 seconds to make sure the Chef Infra Client run doesn’t fail before the command completes on slower systems. Thanks for reporting this issue @janskarvall!

plist / macosx_service / osx_profile / macos_userdefaults

Parsing of plist files has been improved in the plist, macosx_service, osx_profile, and macos_userdefaults resources thanks to updates to the plist gem by @reitermarkus and @tboyko.

user

The user resource on Windows hosts now properly handles uid values passed as strings instead of integers. Thanks for reporting this issue @jaymzh!

yum_repository

The yum_repository resource has been updated with a new reposdir property to control the path where the Yum repository configuration files will be written. Thanks for suggesting this @wildcrazyman!

Security

  • The bundled Nokogiri Ruby gem has been updated to 1.11 resolve CVE-2020-26247.

Chef Infra Client 16.9.16

This release does not have any release notes.

Chef Infra Client 16.8.14

  • Updated openSSL to 1.0.2x to resolve CVE-2020-1971.
  • Updated libarchive to 3.5.0, which powers the archive_file resource. This new release resolves extraction failures and better handles symlinks in archives.
  • knife ssh with the --sudo flag will no longer silently fail. Thanks for the fix @rveznaver!
  • Resolve failures running the Compliance Phase introduced in the 16.8.9 release. Thanks for reporting this issue @axelrtgs!

Chef Infra Client 16.8.9

Chef InSpec 4.24

Chef InSpec has been updated to 4.24.8 including the following improvements:

  • An unset HOME environment variable will not cause execution failures
  • You can use wildcards in platform-name and release in InSpec profiles
  • The support for arrays in the WMI resource, so it can return multiple objects
  • The package resource on Windows properly escapes package names
  • The grub_conf resource succeeds even if without a menuentry in the grub config
  • Loaded plugins won’t try to re-load themselves

Updated Resources

dsc_resource / dsc_script

The dsc_resource and dsc_script resources have been updated to use the powershell_exec helper for significantly improved performance executing the PowerShell commands.

hostname

The hostname resource has been updated to prevent failures when the default system hostname is set on macOS hosts.

remote_file

The remote_file resource has been updated to use certificates located in Chef Infra Client’s trusted_certificates directory. Thanks for reporting this issue @carguel!

windows_certificate

The windows_certificate has been updated with a new exportable property that marks PFX files as exportable in the certificate store.

Ohai Improvements

  • A new optional Grub2 plugin can be enabled to expose GRUB2 environment variables.
  • Linode cloud detection has been improved.

Platform Packages

We are once again building packages for Solaris on Sparc and x86 platforms.

Chef Infra Client 16.7.61

Performance Enhancements

In Chef Infra Client 16.7, we’ve put a particular focus on optimizing the performance of the client. We’ve created several dozen minor optimizations that increase performance and reduce overall memory usage across all platforms. On Windows, our work has been particularly pronounced as we’ve improved resource execution and Chef Infra Client installation. Chef Infra Client install times on Windows are now up to 3x faster than previous releases. Resources that use PowerShell to make changes now execute significantly faster. This improvement will be the most noticeable in Chef Infra Client runs that don’t make actual system changes (no-op runs), where determining the current system state was previously resource-intensive.

Windows Bootstrap Improvements

We’ve improved how Windows nodes are bootstrapped when using the knife bootstrap command. The knife bootstrap --secret flag is now respected on Windows hosts, allowing for the proper setup of nodes to use encrypted data bags. Thanks for reporting this issue @AMC-7! Additionally, during the bootstrap we now force connections to use TLS 1.2, preventing failures on Windows 2012-2016. Thanks for this improvement @TimothyTitan!

Chef Vault 4.1

We’ve updated the release of chef-vault bundled with Chef Infra Client to 4.1. Chef Vault 4.1 properly handles escape strings in secrets and greatly improves performance for users with large numbers of secrets. Thanks for the performance work @Annih!

Updated Resources

build_essential

The build_essential resource has been updated to resolve idempotency issues and greatly improve performance on macOS hosts.

chef_client_config

The chef_client_config resource has been updated to no longer produce invalid client.rb content.

group

The group resource has been improved to provide log output of changes being made and on Windows now properly translates group SIDs to names in order to operate idempotently.

Thanks for these improvements @jaymzh!

homebrew_update

The homebrew_update has been updated to resolve failures that would occur when running the resource.

ifconfig

The ifconfig resource has been updated to better support Linux distributions that are derivatives of either Ubuntu or Debian. Support for setting the BRIDGE property on RHEL-based systems has also been added.

mount

The mount resource has been updated to resolve several issues:

  • Idempotency failures when using labels on Linux hosts.
  • Idempotency failures when using network paths that end with a slash.
  • fstab entries being reordered instead of performing in-place updates.

Thanks for reporting these issues @limitusus, @axelrtgs, and @scarpe01!

powershell_package

The powershell_package resource has been updated to better force connections to use TLS 1.2 when communicating with the PowerShell Gallery on Windows Server 2012-2016. Connections must be forced to use TLS 1.2 as the system default cipher suite because Windows 2012-2016 did not include TLS 1.2.

powershell_script

The powershell_script resource has been updated to not fail when using a not_if or only_if guard when specifying the user property. Thanks for reporting this issue @Blorpy!

user

The user resource has been improved to provide log output of changes being made.

Thanks for this improvement @jaymzh!

zypper_package

The zypper_package resource has been refactored to improve idempotency when specifying a version of the package to either install or downgrade.

Ohai Improvements

  • The Joyent plugin has been removed as the Joyent public cloud was shutdown 11/2019
  • pop_os is now detected as having the platform_family of debian. Thanks for this improvement @chasebolt!
  • Recent openindiana releases are now properly detected.
  • The Hostnamectl plugin properly detects hostnames that contain a colon. Thanks for reporting this @ziggythehamster!
  • The Zpool plugin now properly detects ZFS zpools that include nvme or xvd drives. Thanks for reporting this @ziggythehamster!
  • The Zpool plugin now properly detects ZFS zpools that use disk labels/guids instead of traditional drive designations.
  • Performance of system configuration gathering on AIX systems has been improved
  • The Virtualization plugin on AIX systems now gathers a state state per WPAR and properly gathers LPAR names that include spaces

Chef Infra Client 16.6.14

pwsh Support

We’ve updated multiple parts of the Chef Infra Client to fully support Microsoft’s pwsh (commonly known as PowerShell Core) in addition to our previous support for PowerShell.

powershell_script resource

The powershell_script resource includes a new interpreter property that accepts either powershell or pwsh.

powershell_script 'check version table' do
  code '$PSVersionTable'
  interpreter 'pwsh'
end

powershell_out / powershell_exec helpers

The powershell_out and powershell_exec helpers for use in custom resources have been updated to support pwsh with a new argument that accepts either :pwsh or :powershell.

powershell_exec('$PSVersionTable', :pwsh)

Enhanced 32-bit Windows Support

The powershell_exec helper now supports the 32-bit version of Windows. This ensures many of the newer PowerShell based resources in Chef Infra Client will function as expected on 32-bit systems.

New Resources

chef_client_config

The chef_client_config resource allows you to manage Chef Infra Client’s client.rb file without the need for the chef-client cookbook.

Example
chef_client_config 'Create client.rb' do
  chef_server_url 'https://chef.example.dmz'
end
chef-client Cookbook Future

With the inclusion of the chef_client_config resource in Chef Infra Client 16.6, it is now possible to fully manage the Chef Infra Client without the need for the chef-client cookbook. We highly recommend using the chef_client_config, chef_client_trusted_certificate, and chef_client_* service resources to manage your clients instead of the chef-client cookbook. In the future we will mark that cookbook as deprecated, at which time it will no longer receive updates.

Here’s a sample of fully managing Linux hosts with the built-in resources:

chef_client_config 'Create client.rb' do
  chef_server_url 'https://chef.example.dmz'
end

chef_client_trusted_certificate "chef.example.dmz" do
  certificate <<~CERT
  -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
  MIIDeTCCAmGgAwIBAgIJAPziuikCTox4MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBCwUAMGIxCzAJBgNV
  BAYTAlVTMRMwEQYDVQQIDApDYWxpZm9ybmlhMRYwFAYDVQQHDA1TYW4gRnJhbmNp
  c2NvMQ8wDQYDVQQKDAZCYWRTU0wxFTATBgNVBAMMDCouYmFkc3NsLmNvbTAeFw0x
  OTEwMDkyMzQxNTJaFw0yMTEwMDgyMzQxNTJaMGIxCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVTMRMwEQYD
  VQQIDApDYWxpZm9ybmlhMRYwFAYDVQQHDA1TYW4gRnJhbmNpc2NvMQ8wDQYDVQQK
  DAZCYWRTU0wxFTATBgNVBAMMDCouYmFkc3NsLmNvbTCCASIwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEB
  BQADggEPADCCAQoCggEBAMIE7PiM7gTCs9hQ1XBYzJMY61yoaEmwIrX5lZ6xKyx2
  PmzAS2BMTOqytMAPgLaw+XLJhgL5XEFdEyt/ccRLvOmULlA3pmccYYz2QULFRtMW
  hyefdOsKnRFSJiFzbIRMeVXk0WvoBj1IFVKtsyjbqv9u/2CVSndrOfEk0TG23U3A
  xPxTuW1CrbV8/q71FdIzSOciccfCFHpsKOo3St/qbLVytH5aohbcabFXRNsKEqve
  ww9HdFxBIuGa+RuT5q0iBikusbpJHAwnnqP7i/dAcgCskgjZjFeEU4EFy+b+a1SY
  QCeFxxC7c3DvaRhBB0VVfPlkPz0sw6l865MaTIbRyoUCAwEAAaMyMDAwCQYDVR0T
  BAIwADAjBgNVHREEHDAaggwqLmJhZHNzbC5jb22CCmJhZHNzbC5jb20wDQYJKoZI
  hvcNAQELBQADggEBAGlwCdbPxflZfYOaukZGCaxYK6gpincX4Lla4Ui2WdeQxE95
  w7fChXvP3YkE3UYUE7mupZ0eg4ZILr/A0e7JQDsgIu/SRTUE0domCKgPZ8v99k3A
  vka4LpLK51jHJJK7EFgo3ca2nldd97GM0MU41xHFk8qaK1tWJkfrrfcGwDJ4GQPI
  iLlm6i0yHq1Qg1RypAXJy5dTlRXlCLd8ufWhhiwW0W75Va5AEnJuqpQrKwl3KQVe
  wGj67WWRgLfSr+4QG1mNvCZb2CkjZWmxkGPuoP40/y7Yu5OFqxP5tAjj4YixCYTW
  EVA0pmzIzgBg+JIe3PdRy27T0asgQW/F4TY61Yk=
  -----END CERTIFICATE-----
  CERT
end

chef_client_systemd_timer "Run chef-client as a systemd timer" do
  interval "1hr"
  cpu_quota 50
end

Target Mode Improvements

Chef Infra Client 16 introduced an experimental Target Mode feature for executing resources remotely against hosts that do not have a Chef Infra Client or even Ruby installed. For Chef Infra Client 16.6 we’ve improved this functionality by converting the majority of the Ohai plugins to run remotely. This means when using Target Mode you’ll have the majority of Ohai data as if the Chef Infra Client was installed on the node. Keep in mind this data collection can be time consuming over high latency network connections, and cloud plugins which fetch metadata cannot currently be run remotely. Ohai also now includes a --target option for remote data gathering, which accepts a Train URI: ohai --target ssh://foobar.example.org/. We still consider Target Mode to be an experimental feature, and we’d love your feedback on what works and what doesn’t in your environment. A super huge thanks for the countless hours of work put in by tecRacer, @tecracer-theinen, and burtlo to make this a reality.

Updated Resources

ifconfig

The ifconfig resource has been updated to no longer add empty blank lines to the configuration files. Thanks for this improvement @jmherbst!

windows_audit_policy

The windows_audit_policy resource has been updated to fix a bug on failure-only auditing.

Ohai Improvements

Passwd Plugin For Windows

The optional Ohai Passwd plugin now supports Windows hosts in addition to Unix-like systems. To collect user/group data on Windows hosts you can use the ohai_optional_plugins property in the new chef_client_config resource to enable this plugin.

chef_client_config 'Create client.rb' do
  chef_server_url 'https://chef.example.dmz'
  ohai_optional_plugins [:Passwd]
end

Thanks for adding Windows support to this plugin @jaymzh!

Improved Azure Detection

The Azure plugin has been improved to better detect Windows hosts running on Azure. The plugin will now look for DHCP with the domain of reddog.microsoft.com. Thanks for this improvement @jasonwbarnett!

EC2 IAM Role Data

Ohai now collects IAM Role data on EC2 hosts including the role name and info. To address potential security concerns the data we collect is sanitized to ensure we don’t report security credentials to the Chef Infra Server. Thanks for this improvement @kcbraunschweig!

Security

Ruby has been updated to 2.7.2, which includes a fix for CVE-2020-25613.

Chef Infra Client 16.5.77

  • Added missing requires to prevent errors when loading chef/policy_builder/dynamic.
  • The homebrew_package resource will now check for the full and short package names. Both homebrew_package 'homebrew/core/vim' and homebrew_package 'vim' styles should now work correctly.
  • Resolved errors that occurred in cookbooks requiring addressable/uri.
  • Improved the license acceptance flow to give helpful information if the user passes an invalid value in the environment variable or command line argument.
  • Updated Chef InSpec to 4.23.11 in order to resolve issues when running the new junit2 reporter.
  • Additional performance improvements to reduce the startup time of the chef-client and knife commands.
  • knife vault commands now output proper JSON or YAML when using the -f json or -f yaml flags.

Chef Infra Client 16.5.64

Performance Improvements

We continue to reduce the size of the Chef Infra Client install and optimize the performance of the client. With Chef Infra Client 16.5 we’ve greatly reduced the startup time of the chef-client process. Startup times on macOS, Linux, and Windows hosts are now approximately 2x faster than the 16.4 release.

CLI Improvements

  • A new chef-client process exit code of 43 has been added to signal that an invalid configuration was specified. Thanks @NaomiReeves!
  • The knife ssh command no longer hangs when connecting to Windows nodes over SSH.
  • The knife config commands have been renamed to make them shorter and table output has been improved:
    • knife config get-profile -> knife config use
    • knife config use-profile [NAME] -> knife config use [NAME]
    • knife config list-profiles -> knife config list
    • knife config get -> knife config show

Chef InSpec 4.23.4

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.22.1 to 4.23.4. This new release includes the following improvements:

  • A new mechanism marks inputs as sensitive: true and replaces their values with ***.
  • Use the --no-diff CLI option to suppress diff output for textual tests.
  • Control the order of controls in output, but not execution order, with the --sort_results_by=none|control|file|random CLI option.
  • Disable caching of inputs with a cache_inputs: true setting.

New Resources

chef_client_launchd

The chef_client_launchd resource allows you to configure Chef Infra Client to run as a global launchd daemon on macOS hosts. This resource mirrors the configuration of other chef_client_* resources and allows for simple out-of-the-box configuration of the daemon, while also providing advanced tunables. If you’ve used the chef-client cookbook in the past, you’ll notice a number of improvements in the new resource including configuration update handling, splay times support, nice level support, and an out-of-the-box configuration of low IO priority execution. In order to handle restarting the Chef Infra Client launchd daemon when configuration changes occur, the resource also installs a new com.chef.restarter daemon. This daemon watches for daemon configuration changes and gracefully handles the restart to ensure the client process continues to run.

chef_client_launchd 'Setup the Chef Infra Client to run every 30 minutes' do
  interval 30
  action :enable
end

chef_client_trusted_certificate

The chef_client_trusted_certificate resource allows you to add a certificate to Chef Infra Client’s trusted certificate directory. The resource handles platform-specific locations and creates the trusted certificates directory if it doesn’t already exist. Once a certificate is added, it will be used by the client itself to communicate with the Chef Infra Server and by resources such as remote_file.

chef_client_trusted_certificate 'self-signed.badssl.com' do
  certificate <<~CERT
  -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
  MIIDeTCCAmGgAwIBAgIJAPziuikCTox4MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBCwUAMGIxCzAJBgNV
  BAYTAlVTMRMwEQYDVQQIDApDYWxpZm9ybmlhMRYwFAYDVQQHDA1TYW4gRnJhbmNp
  c2NvMQ8wDQYDVQQKDAZCYWRTU0wxFTATBgNVBAMMDCouYmFkc3NsLmNvbTAeFw0x
  OTEwMDkyMzQxNTJaFw0yMTEwMDgyMzQxNTJaMGIxCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVTMRMwEQYD
  VQQIDApDYWxpZm9ybmlhMRYwFAYDVQQHDA1TYW4gRnJhbmNpc2NvMQ8wDQYDVQQK
  DAZCYWRTU0wxFTATBgNVBAMMDCouYmFkc3NsLmNvbTCCASIwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEB
  BQADggEPADCCAQoCggEBAMIE7PiM7gTCs9hQ1XBYzJMY61yoaEmwIrX5lZ6xKyx2
  PmzAS2BMTOqytMAPgLaw+XLJhgL5XEFdEyt/ccRLvOmULlA3pmccYYz2QULFRtMW
  hyefdOsKnRFSJiFzbIRMeVXk0WvoBj1IFVKtsyjbqv9u/2CVSndrOfEk0TG23U3A
  xPxTuW1CrbV8/q71FdIzSOciccfCFHpsKOo3St/qbLVytH5aohbcabFXRNsKEqve
  ww9HdFxBIuGa+RuT5q0iBikusbpJHAwnnqP7i/dAcgCskgjZjFeEU4EFy+b+a1SY
  QCeFxxC7c3DvaRhBB0VVfPlkPz0sw6l865MaTIbRyoUCAwEAAaMyMDAwCQYDVR0T
  BAIwADAjBgNVHREEHDAaggwqLmJhZHNzbC5jb22CCmJhZHNzbC5jb20wDQYJKoZI
  hvcNAQELBQADggEBAGlwCdbPxflZfYOaukZGCaxYK6gpincX4Lla4Ui2WdeQxE95
  w7fChXvP3YkE3UYUE7mupZ0eg4ZILr/A0e7JQDsgIu/SRTUE0domCKgPZ8v99k3A
  vka4LpLK51jHJJK7EFgo3ca2nldd97GM0MU41xHFk8qaK1tWJkfrrfcGwDJ4GQPI
  iLlm6i0yHq1Qg1RypAXJy5dTlRXlCLd8ufWhhiwW0W75Va5AEnJuqpQrKwl3KQVe
  wGj67WWRgLfSr+4QG1mNvCZb2CkjZWmxkGPuoP40/y7Yu5OFqxP5tAjj4YixCYTW
  EVA0pmzIzgBg+JIe3PdRy27T0asgQW/F4TY61Yk=
  -----END CERTIFICATE-----
  CERT
end

Resource Updates

chef_client_cron

The chef_client_cron resource has been updated with a new nice property that allows you to set the nice level for the chef-client process. Nice level changes only apply to the chef-client process and not any subprocesses like ohai or system utility calls. If you need to ensure that the chef-client process does not negatively impact system performance, we highly recommend instead using the cpu_quota property in the chef_client_systemd_timer resource which applies to all child processes.

chef_client_systemd_timer

The chef_client_systemd_timer resource has been updated with a new cpu_quota property that allows you to control the systemd CPUQuota value for the chef-client process. This allows you to ensure chef-client execution doesn’t adversely impact performance on your systems.

launchd

The launchd resource has been updated to better validate inputs to the nice property so we can make sure these are acceptable nice values.

mount

The mount resource on Linux has new improved idempotency in some scenarios by switching to findmnt to determine the current state of the system. Thanks for reporting this issue @pollosp!

osx_profile

The osx_profile resource will now allow you to remove profiles from macOS 11 (Big Sur) systems. Due to security changes in macOS 11, it is no longer possible to locally install profiles, but this will allow you to cleanup existing profiles left over after an upgrade from an earlier macOS release. The resource has been updated to resolve a regression introduced in Chef Infra Client 16.4 that caused the resource to attempt to update profiles on each converge. Thanks for reporting these issues @chilcote!

rhsm_register

The rhsm_register resource has been updated to reduce the load on the RedHat Satellite server when checking if a system is already registered. Thanks for reporting this issue @donwlewis! A new system_name property has also been added to allow you to register a name other than the system’s hostname. Thanks for this improvement @jasonwbarnett!

windows_ad_join

The windows_ad_join resource has been updated with a new reboot_delay property which allows you to control the delay time before restarting systems.

windows_firewall_profile

The windows_firewall_profile resource was updated to prevent NilClass errors from loading the firewall state.

windows_user_privilege

The windows_user_privilege resource has been updated to better validate the privilege property and to allow the users property to accept String values. Thanks for reporting this issue @jeremyciak!

Windows securable resources

All Windows securable resources now support using SID in addition to user or group name when specifying owner, group, or rights principal. These resources include the template, file, remote_file, cookbook_file, directory, and remote_directory resources. When using a SID, you may use either the standard string representation of a SID (S-R-I-S-S) or one of the SDDL string constants.

Ohai Improvements

  • Ohai now uses the same underlying code for shelling out to external commands as Chef Infra Client. This may resolve issues from determining the state on some non-English systems.
  • The Packages plugin has been updated to gather package installation information on macOS hosts.

Platform Packages

  • We are once again building Chef Infra Client packages for RHEL 7 / SLES 12 on the S390x architecture. In addition to these packages, we’ve also added S390x packages for RHEL 8 / SLES 15.
  • We now produce packages for Apple’s upcoming macOS 11 Big Sur release.

Security

OpenSSL has been updated to 1.0.2w which includes a fix for CVE-2020-1968.

Chef Infra Client 16.4.41

Bug Fixes

  • Resolved an error that would prevent ipaddress detection on Windows hosts
  • Fixed failures running the knife configure command
  • Refactored the timezone resource to properly load the existing timezone value in order to improve logging and the data exposed to Automate/handlers.

Chef Infra Client 16.4.38

Bug Fixes

  • Resolve a regression in running the osx_profile resource on macOS 10.15.
  • Fix a failure when removing profiles that don’t exist using the osx_profile resource.

Chef Infra Client 16.4.35

Bug Fixes

  • We’ve resolved an issue with knife bootstrap that prevented bootstrapping Windows nodes from a non-Windows workstation
  • Resources that set ignore_failure true will now report failures to Automate.

Resource Updates

chef_client_systemd_timer

The chef_client_systemd_timer resource has been updated to prevent failures running the :remove action.

openssl resource

The various openssl_* resources were refactored to better report the changed state of the resource to Automate or other handlers.

osx_profile

The osx_profile resource has been refactored as a custom resource internally. This update also better reports the changed state of the resource to Automate or other handlers and no longer silently continues if the attempts to shellout fail.

powershell_package_source

The powershell_package_source resource no longer requires the url property to be set when using the :unregister action. Thanks for this fix @kimbernator!

powershell_script

The powershell_script resource has been refactored to better report the changed state of the resource to Automate or other handlers.

windows_feature

The windows_feature resource has been updated to allow installing features that have been removed if a source location is provided. Thanks for reporting this @stefanwb!

windows_font

The windows_font resource will no longer fail on newer releases of Windows if a font is already installed. Thanks for reporting this @bmiller08!

windows_workgroup

The windows_workgroup resource has been updated to treat the password property as a sensitive property. The value of the password property will no longer be shown in logs or handlers.

Security

CA Root Certificates

The included cacerts bundle in Chef Infra Client has been updated to the 7-22-2020 release. This new release removes 4 legacy root certificates and adds 4 additional root certificates.

Reduced Dependencies

We’ve audited the included dependencies that we ship with Chef Infra Client to reduce the 3rd party code we ship. We’ve removed many of the embedded binaries that shipped with the client in the past, but were not directly used. We’ve also reduced the feature set built into many of the libraries that we depend on, and removed several Ruby gem dependencies that were no longer necessary. This reduces the future potential for CVEs in the product and reduces package size at the same time.

Chef Infra Client 16.3.45

  • Resolved failures negotiating protocol versions with the Chef Infra Server.
  • Improved log output on Windows systems in the hostname resource.
  • Added support to the archive_file resource for pzstd compressed files.

Chef Infra Client 16.3.38

Renamed Client Configuration Options

We took a hard look at many of the terms we’ve historically used throughout the Chef Infra Client configuration sub-system and came to the realization that we weren’t living up to the words of our Community Code of Conduct. From the code of conduct: “Be careful in the words that you choose. Be kind to others. Practice empathy”. Terms such as blacklist and sanity don’t meet that bar so we’ve chosen to rename these configuration options:

  • automatic_attribute_blacklist -> blocked_automatic_attributes
  • default_attribute_blacklist -> blocked_default_attributes
  • normal_attribute_blacklist -> blocked_normal_attributes
  • override_attribute_blacklist -> blocked_override_attributes
  • automatic_attribute_whitelist -> allowed_automatic_attributes
  • default_attribute_whitelist -> allowed_default_attributes
  • normal_attribute_whitelist -> allowed_normal_attributes
  • override_attribute_whitelist -> allowed_override_attributes
  • enforce_path_sanity -> enforce_default_paths

Existing configuration options will continue to function for now, but will raise a deprecation warning and will be removed entirely from a future release of Chef Infra Client.

Chef InSpec 4.22.1

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.21.1 to 4.22.1. This new release includes the following improvements:

  • The = character is now allowed for command line inputs
  • apt-cdrom repositories are now skipped when parsing out the list of apt repositories
  • Faulty profiles are now reported instead of causing a crash
  • Errors are no longer logged to stdout with the html2 reporter
  • macOS Big Sur is now correctly identified as macOS

New Resources

windows_firewall_profile

The windows_firewall_profile allows you to enable, disable, or configure Windows Firewall profiles. For example, you can now set up default actions and configure rules for the Public profile using this single resource instead of managing your own PowerShell code in a powershell_script resource:

windows_firewall_profile 'Public' do
  default_inbound_action 'Block'
  default_outbound_action 'Allow'
  allow_inbound_rules false
  display_notification false
  action :enable
end

For a complete guide to all properties and additional examples, see the windows_firewall_profile documentation.

Resource Updates

build_essential

Log output has been improved in the build_essential resource when running on macOS systems.

chef_client_scheduled_task

The chef_client_scheduled_task resource no longer sets up the schedule task with invalid double quoting around the specified command. Thanks for reporting this issue @tiobagio.

execute

The user property in the execute resource can now accept user IDs as Integers.

git

The git resource will no longer fail if syncing a branch that already exists locally. Thanks for fixing this @lotooo.

macos_user_defaults

The macos_user_defaults has received a ground-up refactoring with new actions, additional properties, and better overall reliability:

  • Improved idempotency by properly loading the current state of domains.
  • Improved how we set dict and array type data.
  • Improved logging to show the existing key/value pair that is changed, and improved the property state data that the resource sends to handlers and/or Chef Automate.
  • Fixed a failure when setting keys or values that included a space.
  • Replaced the existing non-functional global property with a new default for the domain property. To set a key/value pair on the NSGlobalDomain domain, you can either set that value explicitly or just skip the domain property entirely and Chef Infra Client will default to NSGlobalDomain. The existing property has been marked as deprecated and we will ship a Cookstyle rule to detect cookbooks using this property in the future.
  • Fixed the type property to only accept valid inputs. Previously typos or otherwise incorrect values would just be ignored resulting in unexpected behavior. This may cause failures in your codebase if you previously used incorrect values. We will be shipping a Cookstyle rule to detect and correct these values in the future.
  • Added a new delete action to allow users to remove a key from a domain.
  • Added a new host property that lets you set per-host values. If you set this to :current it sets the -currentHost flag.

windows_dns_record

The windows_dns_record resource includes a new optional property, dns_server, allowing you to make changes against remote servers. Thanks for this addition @jeremyciak.

windows_package

A Chef Infra Client 16 regression within windows_package that prevented specifying path in the remote_file_attributes property has been resolved. Thanks for reporting this issue @asvinours.

windows_security_policy

The windows_security_policy resource has been refactored to improve idempotency and improve log output when changes are made. You’ll now see more complete change information in logs and any handler consuming this data will also receive more detailed change information.

Knife Improvements

  • Ctrl-C can now be used to exit knife even when being prompted for input.
  • knife bootstrap will now properly error if attempting to bootstrap an AIX system using an account with an expired password.
  • knife profile commands will no longer error if an invalid profile was previously set.
  • The -o flag for knife cookbook upload can now be used on Windows systems.
  • knife ssh now once again accepts legacy DSS host keys although we highly recommend upgrading to a more secure key algorithm if possible.
  • Several changes were made to knife to that may prevent intermittent failures running cookbook commands

Habitat Package Improvements

Habitat packages for Windows, Linux and Linux2 are now built and tested against each pull request to Chef Infra Client. Additionally we’ve improved how these packages are built to reduce the size of the package, which reduces network utilization when using the Effortless deployment pattern.

Chef Infra Client 16.2.73

  • Habitat packages for Chef Infra Client 16 are now published with full support for the powershell_exec helper now added.
  • Added a new clear action to the windows_user_privilege resource.
  • Resolved a regression in Chef Infra Client 16.1 and later that caused failures running on FIPS enabled systems.
  • Resolved failures in the archive_file resource when running on Windows hosts.
  • Resolved a failure when running chef-apply with the -j option. Thanks @komazarari.
  • Chef Infra Client running within GitHub Actions is now properly identified as running in a Docker container. Thanks @jaymzh.
  • SSH connections are now reused, improving the speed of knife bootstrap and remote resources on slow network links. Thanks @tecracer-theinen.
  • node['network']['interfaces'] data now correctly identifies IPv6 next hops for IPv4 routes. Thanks @cooperlees.
  • Updated InSpec from 4.20.10 to 4.21.1.

Chef Infra Client 16.2.50

  • Correctly identify the new macOS Big Sur (11.0) beta as platform “mac_os_x”.
  • Fix knife config use-profile to fail if an invalid profile is provided.
  • Fix failures running the windows_security_policy resource.
  • Update InSpec from 4.20.6 to 4.20.10.

Chef Infra Client 16.2.44

Breaking Change in Resources

In Chef Infra Client 16.0, we changed the way that custom resource names are applied in order to resolve some longstanding edge-cases. This change had several unintended side effects, so we’re further changing how custom names are set in this release of Chef Infra Client.

Previously you could set a custom name for a resource via resource_name and under the hood this would also magically set the provides for the resource. Magic is great when it works, but is confusing when it doesn’t. We’ve decided to remove some of this magic and instead rely on more explicit provides statements in resources. For cookbooks that support just Chef Infra Client 16 and later, you should change any resource_name calls to provides instead. If you need to support older releases of Chef Infra Client as well as 16+, you’ll want to include both resource_name and provides for full compatibility.

Pre-16 code:

resource_name :foo

Chef Infra Client 16+ code

provides :foo

Chef Infra Client < 16 backwards compatible code

resource_name :foo
provides :foo

We’ve introduced several Cookstyle rules to detect both custom resources and legacy HWRPs that need to be updated for this change:

ChefDeprecations/ResourceUsesOnlyResourceName: detects resources that only set resource_name and automatically adds a provides call as well.

ChefDeprecations/HWRPWithoutProvides: detects legacy HWRPs that don’t include the necessary provides and resource_name calls for Chef Infra Client 16.

Chef InSpec 4.20.6

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.18.114 to 4.2.0.6. This new release includes the following improvements:

  • Develop your own Chef InSpec Reporter plugins to control how Chef InSpec will report result data.
  • The inspec archive command packs your profile into a tar.gz file that includes the profile in JSON form as the inspec.json file.
  • Certain substrings within a .toml file no longer cause unexpected crashes.
  • Accurate InSpec CLI input parsing for numeric values and structured data, which were previously treated as strings. Numeric values are cast to an integer or float and YAML or JSON structures are converted to a hash or an array.
  • Suppress deprecation warnings on inspec exec with the --silence-deprecations option.

New Resources

windows_audit_policy

The windows_audit_policy resource is used to configure system-level and per-user Windows advanced audit policy settings. See the windows_audit_policy Documentation for complete usage information.

For example, you can enable auditing of successful credential validation:

windows_audit_policy "Set Audit Policy for 'Credential Validation' actions to 'Success'" do
  subcategory  'Credential Validation'
  success true
  failure false
  action :set
end

homebrew_update

The homebrew_update resource is used to update the available package cache for the Homebrew package system similar to the behavior of the apt_update resource. See the homebrew_update Documentation for complete usage information. Thanks for adding this new resource, @damacus.

Resource Updates

All resources now include umask property

All resources, including custom resources, now have a umask property which allows you to specify a umask for file creation. If not specified the system default will continue to be used.

archive_file

The archive_file resource has been updated with two important fixes. The resource will no longer fail with uninitialized constant errors under some scenarios. Additionally, the behavior of the mode property has been improved to prevent incorrect file modes from being applied to the decompressed files. Due to how file modes and Integer values are processed in Ruby, this resource will now produce a deprecation warning if integer values are passed. Using string values lets us accurately pass values such as ‘644’ or ‘0644’ without ambiguity as to the user’s intent. Thanks for reporting these issues @sfiggins and @hammerhead.

chef_client_scheduled_task

The chef_client_scheduled_task resource has been updated to default the frequency_modifier property to 30 if the frequency property is set to minutes, otherwise it still defaults to 1. This provides a more predictable schedule behavior for users.

cron / cron_d

The cron and cron_d resources have been updated using the new Custom Resource Partials functionality introduced in Chef Infra Client 16. This has allowed us to standardize the properties used to declare cron job timing between the two resources. The timing properties in both resources all accept the same types and ranges, and include the same validation, which makes moving from cron to cron_d seamless.

cron_access

The cron_access resource has been updated to support Solaris and AIX systems. Thanks @aklyachkin.

execute

The execute resource has a new input property which allows you to pass stdin input to the command being executed.

powershell_package

The powershell_package resource has been updated to use TLS 1.2 when communicating with the PowerShell Gallery on Windows Server 2012-2016. Previously this resource used the system default cipher suite which did not include TLS 1.2. The PowerShell Gallery now requires TLS 1.2 for all communication, which caused failures on Windows Server 2012-2016. Thanks for reporting this issue @Xorima.

remote_file

The remote_file resource has a new property ssl_verify_mode which allows you to control SSL validation at the property level. This can be used to verify certificates (Chef Infra Client’s defaults) with :verify_peer or to skip verification in the case of a self-signed certificate with :verify_none. Thanks @jaymzh.

script

The various script resources such as bash or ruby now pass the provided script content to the interpreter using system pipes instead of writing to a temporary file and executing it. Executing script content using pipes is faster, more secure as potentially sensitive scripts aren’t written to disk, and bypasses issues around user privileges.

snap_package

Multiple issues with the snap_package resource have been resolved, including an infinite wait that occurred, and issues with specifying the package version or channel. Thanks @jaymzh.

zypper_repository

The zypper_repository resource has been updated to work with the newer release of GPG in openSUSE 15 and SLES 15. This prevents failures when importing GPG keys in the resource.

Knife bootstrap updates

  • Knife bootstrap will now warn when bootstrapping a system using a validation key. Users should instead use validatorless bootstrapping with knife bootstrap which generates node and client keys using the client key of the user bootstrapping the node. This method is far more secure as an org-wide validation key does not not need to be distributed or rotated. Users can switch to validatorless bootstrapping by removing any validation_key entries in their config.rb (knife.rb) file.
  • Resolved an error bootstrapping Linux nodes from Windows hosts
  • Improved information messages during the bootstrap process

Platform Packages

  • Debian 8 packages are no longer being produced as Debian 8 is now end-of-life.
  • We now produce Windows 8 packages

Chef Infra Client 16.1.16

This release resolves high-priority bugs in the 16.1 release of Chef Infra Client:

  • Resolved a critical performance regression in the Rubygems release within Ruby 2.7, which was discovered by a Chef engineer.
  • Resolved several Ruby 2.7 deprecation warnings.
  • Added armv6l and armv7l architectures to the arm? and armhf? helpers
  • Resolved failures in the Windows bootstrap script
  • Resolved incorrect paths when bootstrapping Windows nodes

Security Updates

openSSL

openSSL has been updated from 1.0.2u to 1.0.2v which does not address any particular CVEs, but includes multiple security hardening updates.

Chef Infra Client 16.1.0

Ohai 16.1

Ohai 16.1 includes a new Selinux plugin which exposes node['selinux']['status'], node['selinux']['policy_booleans'], node['selinux']['process_contexts'], and node['selinux']['file_contexts']. Thanks @davide125 for this contribution. This new plugin is an optional plugin which is disabled by default. It can be enabled within your client.rb:

ohai.optional_plugins = [ :Selinux ]

Chef InSpec 4.18.114

InSpec has been updated from 4.18.111 to 4.18.114. This update adds new --reporter_message_truncation and --reporter_backtrace_inclusion reporter options to truncate messages and suppress backtraces.

Debian 10 aarch64

Chef Infra Client packages are now produced for Debian 10 on the aarch64 architecture. These packages are available at Chef Downloads.

Bug Fixes

  • Resolved a regression in the launchd resource that prevented it from converging.
  • The :disable action in the launchd resource no longer fails if the plist was not found.
  • Several Ruby 2.7 deprecation warnings have been resolved.

Chef Infra Client 16.0.287

The Chef Infra Client 16.0.287 release includes important bug fixes for the Chef Infra Client 16 release:

  • Fixes the failure to install Windows packages on the 2nd convergence of the Chef Infra Client.
  • Resolves several failures in the launchd resource.
  • Removes an extra .java file on Windows installations that would cause a failure in the IIS 8.5 Server Security Technical Implementation Guide audit.
  • Updates the windows_printer resource so that the driver property will only be required when using the :create action.
  • Fixes the incorrectly spelled knife user invite recind command to be knife user invite rescind.
  • Update Chef InSpec to 4.8.111 with several minor improvements.

Chef Infra Client 16.0.275

The Chef Infra Client 16.0.275 release includes important regression fixes for the Chef Infra Client 16 release:

  • Resolved failures when using the windows_package resource. Thanks for reporting this issue @cookiecurse.
  • Resolved log warnings when running execute resources.
  • The appropriate cron or cron_d resource call is now called when using the :delete action in chef_client_cron. Thanks for reporting this issue jimwise.
  • The chef_client_cron resource now creates the log directory with 750 permissions not 640. Thanks for this fix DhaneshRaghavan.
  • The knife yaml convert command now correctly converts symbol values.
  • The sysctl, apt_preference, and cron_d remove actions no longer fail with missing property warnings.

Chef Infra Client 16.0.257

Breaking Changes

Log Resource Notification Behavior

The log resource in a recipe or resource will no longer trigger notifications by default. This allows authors to more liberally use log resources without impacting the updated resources count or impacting reporting to Chef Automate. This change will impact users that used the log resource to aggregate notifications from other resources, so they could limit the number of times a notification would fire. If you used the log resource to aggregate multiple notifications, you should convert to using the notify group resource, which was introduced in Chef Infra Client 15.8.

Example of notification aggregation with log resource:

template '/etc/foo' do
  source 'foo.erb'
  notifies :write, 'log[Aggregate notifications using a single log resource]', :immediately
end

template '/etc/bar' do
  source 'bar.erb'
  notifies :write, 'log[Aggregate notifications using a single log resource]', :immediately
end

log 'Aggregate notifications using a single log resource' do
  notifies :restart, 'service[foo]', :delayed
end

Example of notification aggregation with notify_group resource:

template '/etc/foo' do
  source 'foo.erb'
  notifies :run, 'notify_group[Aggregate notifications using a single notify_group resource]', :immediately
end

template '/etc/bar' do
  source 'bar.erb'
  notifies :run, 'notify_group[Aggregate notifications using a single notify_group resource]', :immediately
end

notify_group 'Aggregate notifications using a single notify_group resource' do
  notifies :restart, 'service[foo]', :delayed
end

The ChefDeprecations/LogResourceNotifications cop in Cookstyle 6.0 and later detects using the log resource for notifications in cookbooks.

To restore the previous behavior, set count_log_resource_updates true in your client.rb.

HWRP Style Resources Now Require resource_name / provides

Legacy HWRP-style resources, written as Ruby classes in the libraries directory of a cookbook, will now require either the use of resource_name or provides methods to define the resource names. Previously, Chef Infra Client would infer the desired resource name from the class, but this magic was problematic and has been removed.

The ChefDeprecations/ResourceWithoutNameOrProvides cop in Cookstyle 6.0 and later detects this deprecation.

build_essential GCC Updated on Solaris

On Solaris systems, we no longer constrain the version of GCC to 4.8.2 in the build_essential resource to allow for GCC 5 installations.

git Resource Branch Checkout Changes

The git resource no longer checks out to a new branch named deploy by default. Many users found this branching behavior confusing and unexpected so we’ve decided to implement a more predictable default. The resource will now default to either checking out the branch specified with the checkout_branch property or a detached HEAD state. If you’d like to revert to the previous behavior you can set the checkout_branch to deploy.

s390x Packaging

As outlined in our blog post at https://blog.chef.io/chef-infra-end-of-life-announcement-for-linux-client-on-ibm-s390x-architecture/, we will no longer be producing s390x platform packages for Chef Infra Client.

filesystem2 Node Data Replaces filesystem on FreeBSD / AIX / Solaris

In Chef Infra Client 14 we introduced a modernized filesystem layout of Ohai data on FreeBSD, AIX, and Solaris at node['fileystem2']. With the release of 16.0, we are now replacing the existing data at node['filesystem'] with this updated filesystem data. This data has a standardized format that matches Linux and macOS data to make it easier to write cross-platform cookbooks. In a future release of Chef Infra Client we’ll remove the node['filesystem2'] as we complete this migration.

required: true on Properties Now Behaves As Expected

The behavior of required: true has been changed to better align with the expected behavior. Previously, if you set a property required: true on a custom resource property and did not explicitly reference the property in an action, then Chef Infra Client would not raise an exception. This meant many users would add their own validation to raise for resources they wanted to ensure they were always set. required: true will now properly raise if a property has not been set.

We have also expanded the required field for added flexibility in defining exactly which actions a property is required for. See Improved property require behavior below for more details.

Removal of Legacy metadata.rb depends Version Constraints

Support for the << and >> version constraints in metadata.rb has been removed. This was an undocumented feature from the Chef 0.10 era, which is not used in any cookbooks on the Supermarket. We are mentioning it since it is technically a breaking change, but it unlikely that this change will be impacting.

Examples:

depends 'windows', '<< 1.0'
depends 'windows', '>> 1.0'

Logging Improvements May Cause Behavior Changes

We’ve made low-level changes to how logging behaves in Chef Infra Client that resolves many complaints we’ve heard over the years. With these change you’ll now see the same logging output when you run chef-client on the command line as you will in logs from a daemonized client run. This also corrects often confusing behavior where running chef-client on the command line would log to the console, but not to the log file location defined your client.rb. In that scenario you’ll now see logs in your console and in your log file. We believe this is the expected behavior and will mean that your on-disk log files can always be the source of truth for changes that were made by Chef Infra Client. This may cause unexpected behavior changes for users that relied on using the command line flags to override the client.rb log location - in this case logging will be sent to both the location in the client.rb and on the command line. If you have daemons running that log using the command line options you want to make sure that client.rb log location either matches or isn’t defined.

Red Hat / CentOS 6 Systems Require C11 GCC for Some Gem Installations

The included release of Ruby in Chef Infra Client 16 now requires a C99 compliant compiler when using the chef_gem resource with gems that require compilation. Some systems, such as RHEL 6, do not ship with a C99 compiler and will fail if the gems they’re attempting to install require compilation. If it is necessary to install compiled gems into the Chef Infra Client installation on one of these systems you can upgrade to a modern GCC release.

CentOS:

yum install centos-release-scl
yum install devtoolset-7
scl enable devtoolset-7 bash

Red Hat:

yum-config-manager --enable rhel-server-rhscl-7-rpms
yum install devtoolset-7
scl enable devtoolset-7 bash

Changes to Improve Gem Source behavior

We’ve improved the behavior for those that use custom rubygem sources, particularly those operating in air-gapped installations. These improvements involved changes to many of the default client.rb values and gem_package/chef_gem properties that require updating your usage of chef_gem and gem_package resources

The default value of the clear_sources property of gem_package and chef_gem resources has been changed to nil. The possible behaviors for clear_sources are now:

  • true: Always clear sources.
  • false: Never clear sources.
  • nil: Clear sources if source property is set, but don’t clear sources otherwise.

The default value of the include_default_source property of gem_package and chef_gem resources has been changed to nil. The possible behaviors for include_default_source are now:

  • true: Always include the default source.
  • false: Never include the default source.
  • nil: Include the default source if rubygems_url client.rb value is set or if source and clear_sources are not set on the resource.

The default values of the rubygems_url client.rb config option has been changed to nil. Setting to nil previously had similar behavior to setting clear_sources to true, but with some differences. The new behavior is to always use https://rubygems.org as the default rubygems repo unless explicitly changed, and whether to use this value is determined by clear_sources and include_default_source.

Behavior Changes in Knife

knife status –long uses cloud attribute

The knife status --long resource now uses Ohai’s cloud data instead of ec2 specific data. This improves, but changes, the data output for users on non-AWS clouds.

knife download role/environment format update

The knife download role and knife download environment commands now include all possible data fields including those without any data set. This new output behavior matches the behavior of other commands such as knife role show or knife environment show

Deprecated knife cookbook site command removed

The previously deprecated knife cookbook site commands have been removed. Use the knife supermarket commands instead.

Deprecated knife data bag create -s short option removed

The deprecated knife data bag create -s option that was not properly honored has been removed. Use the --secret option instead to set a data bag secret file during data bag creation.

sites-cookbooks directory no longer in cookbook_path

The legacy sites-cookbooks directory is no longer added to the default cookbook_path value. With this change, any users with a legacy sites-cookbooks directory will need to use the -O flag to override the cookbook directory when running commands such as knife cookbook upload.

If you have a repository that contains a site-cookbooks directory, we highly recommend using Policyfiles or Berkshelf to properly resolve these external cookbook dependencies without the need to copy them locally. Alternatively, you can move the contents of this folder into your main cookbook directory and they will continue to be seen by knife commands.

New Resources

alternatives

Use the alternatives resource to manage symbolic links to specify default command versions on Linux hosts. See the alternatives documentation for full usage information. Thanks @vkhatri for the original cookbook alternatives resource.

chef_client resources

We’ve added new resources to Chef Infra Client for setting the client to run on an interval using native system schedulers. We believe that these native schedulers provide a more flexible and reliable method for running the client than the traditional method of running as a full service. Using the native schedulers reduces hung clients and eases upgrades. This is the first of many steps towards removing the need for the chef-client cookbook and allowing Chef Infra Client to configure itself out of the box.

chef_client_cron

Use the chef_client_cron resource to setup the Chef Infra Client to run on a schedule using cron on Linux, Solaris, and AIX systems. See the chef_client_cron documentation for full usage information.

chef_client_systemd_timer

Use the chef_client_systemd_timer resource to setup the Chef Infra Client to run on a schedule using a systemd timer on systemd based Linux systems (RHEL 7+, Debian 8+, Ubuntu 16.04+ SLES 12+). See the chef_client_systemd_timer documentation for full usage information.

chef_client_scheduled_task

Use the chef_client_scheduled_task resource to setup the Chef Infra Client to run on a schedule using Windows Scheduled Tasks. See the chef_client_scheduled_task documentation for full usage information.

plist

Use the plist resource to generate plist files on macOS hosts. See the plist documentation for full usage information. Thanks Microsoft and @americanhanko for the original work on this resource in the macos cookbook.

user_ulimit

Use the user_ulimit resource to set per user ulimit values on Linux systems. See the user_ulimit documentation for full usage information. Thanks @bmhatfield for the original work on this resource in the ulimit cookbook.

windows_security_policy

Use the windows_security_policy resource to modify location security policies on Windows hosts. See the windows_security_policy documentation for full usage information.

windows_user_privilege

Use the windows_user_privilege resource to add users and groups to the specified privileges on Windows hosts. See the windows_user_privilege documentation for full usage information.

Improved Resources

compile_time on all resources

The compile_time property is now available for all resources so that they can be set to run at compile time without the need to force the action.

Set the compile_time property instead of forcing the resource to run at compile time:

  my_resource "foo" do
    action :nothing
  end.run_action(:run)

With the simpler compile_time property:

  my_resource "foo" do
    compile_time true
  end

build_essential

The build_essential resource includes a new :upgrade action for macOS systems that allows you to install updates to the Xcode Command Line Tools available via Software Update.

cron

The cron resource has been updated to use the same property validation for cron times that the cron_d resource uses. This improves failure messages when invalid inputs are set and also allows for jan-dec values to be used in the month property.

dnf_package

The dnf_package resource, which provides package under the hood on any system shipping with DNF, has been greatly refactored to resolve multiple issues. The version behavior and overall resource capabilities now match that of the yum_package resource.

  • The :lock action now works on RHEL 8.
  • Fixes to prevent attempting to install the same package during each Chef Infra Client run.
  • Resolved several idempotency issues.
  • Resolved an issue where installing a package with options '--enablerepo=foo' would fail.

git

The git resource now fully supports why-run mode and no longer checks out the deploy branch by default as mentioned in the breaking changes section.

locale

The locale resource now supports setting the system locale on Windows hosts.

msu_package resource improvements

The msu_package resource has been improved to work better with Microsoft’s cumulative update packages. Newer releases of these cumulative update packages will not correctly install over the previous versions. We also extended the default timeout for installing MSU packages to 60 minutes. Thanks for reporting the timeout issue, @danielfloyd.

package

The package resource on macOS and Arch Linux systems now supports passing multiple packages into a single package resource via an array. This allows you to collapse multiple resources into a single resource for simpler cookbook authoring, which is significantly faster as it requires fewer calls to the packaging systems. Thanks for the Arch Linux support, @ingobecker!

Using multiple resources to install a package:

package 'git'
package 'curl'
package 'packer'

or

%w(git curl packer).each do |pkg|
  package pkg
end

can now be simplified to:

package %w(git curl packer)

service

The service resource has been updated to support newer releases of update-rc.d so that it properly disables sys-v init services on Debian Linux distributions. Thanks @robuye!

windows_firewall_rule

The windows_firewall_rule resource has been greatly improved thanks to work by @pschaumburg and @tecracer-theinen.

  • New icmp_type property, which allows setting the ICMP type when setting up ICMP protocol rules.
  • New displayname property, which allows defining the display name of the firewall rule.
  • New group property, which allows you to specify that only matching firewall rules of the indicated group association are copied.
  • The description property will now update if changed.
  • Fixed setting rules with multiple profiles.

windows_package

The windows_package resource now considers 3010 to be a valid exit code by default. The 3010 exit code means that a package has been successfully installed, but requires a reboot.

knife-acl is now built-in

The knife-acl gem is now part of Chef Infra Client. This gives you the ability to manage Chef organizations and ACLs directly.

YAML Recipes

We added support for writing recipes in YAML to provide a low-code syntax for simple use cases. To write recipes in YAML, Chef resources and any user-defined parameters can be added as elements in a resources hash, such as the example below:

---
resources:
  - type: "package"
    name: "httpd"
  - type: "template"
    name: "/var/www/html/index.html"
    source: "index.html.erb"
  - type: "service"
    name: "httpd"
    action:
      - enable
      - start

This implementation is restrictive and does not support arbitrary Ruby code, helper functions, or attributes. However, if the need for additional customization arises, YAML recipes can be automatically converted into the DSL via the knife yaml convert command.

Custom Resource Improvements

Improved property require behavior

As noted in the breaking changes above, we improved how the required value is set on custom resource properties, in order to give a more predictable behavior. This new behavior now allows you to specify actions where individual properties are required. This is especially useful when :create actions require certain properties that may not be required for a :remove type property.

Example required field defining specific actions:

property :password, String, required: [:create]

action :create do
  # code to create something
end

action :remove do
  # code to remove it that doesn't need a password
end

Resource Partials

Resource partials allow you to define reusable portions of code that can be included in multiple custom resources. This feature is particularly useful when there are common properties, such as authentication properties, that you want to define in a single location, but use for multiple resources. Internally in the Chef Infra Client codebase, we have already used this feature to remove duplicate properties from our subversion and git resources and make them easier to maintain.

Resource partials are stored in a cookbook’s /resources directory just like existing custom resources, but they start with the _ prefix. They’re then called using a new use helper within the resource where they’re needed:

resources/_api_auth_properties.rb:

property :api_endpoint, String
property :api_key, String
property :api_retries, Integer

resources/mything.rb:

property :another_property, String
property :yet_another_property, String

use 'api_auth_properties'

action :create do
  # some create logic
end

The example above shows a resource partial that contains properties for use in multiple resources. You can also use resource partials to define helper methods that you want to use in your actions instead of defining the same helper methods in each action_class.

resources/_api_auth_helpers.rb:

def make_api_call(endpoint, value)
  # API call code here
end

resources/mything.rb:

property :another_property, String
property :yet_another_property, String

action :create do
  # some create logic
end

action_class do
  use 'api_auth_helpers'
end

after_resource

A new after_resource state has been added to resources that allows you to better control the resource state information reported to Chef Automate when a resource converges. If your custom resource uses the load_current_value helper, then this after state is calculated automatically. If you don’t utilize the load_current_value helper and would like fine grained control over the state information sent to Chef Automate, you can use a new load_after_resource helper to load the state of each property for reporting.

identity Improvements

A resource’s name property is now set to be the identity property by default and to have desired_state: false set by default. This eliminates the need to set identity: true, desired_state: false on these properties and better exposes identity data to handler and reporting.

compile_time property

The compile_time property is now defined for all custom resources, so there is no need to add your own compile-time logic to your resource.

Other Improvements

Up to 33% smaller on disk

We optimized the files that ship with Chef Infra Client and eliminated many unnecessary files from the installation, reducing the on-disk size of Chef Infra Client by up to 33%.

Windows Performance Improvements

We’ve optimized the Chef Infra Client for modern Windows releases and improved the performance on these systems.

Simpler Version Comparisons with node[‘platform_version’]

The node['platform_version'] attribute returned from Ohai can now be intelligently compared as a version instead of as a String or Integer. Previously, to compare the platform_version, many users would first convert the version String to a Float with node['platform_version']. This introduced problems on many platforms, such as macOS, where macOS 10.9 would appear to be a greater version number than 10.15. You can now directly compare the version without converting it first.

Greater than or equal comparison:

node['platform_version'] >= '10.15'

Comparison using Ruby’s pessimistic operator:

node['platform_version'] =~ '~> 10.15'

New helpers for recipes and resources

Several helpers introduced in Chef Infra Client 15.5 are now available for use in any resource or recipe. These helpers include:

sanitized_path

sanitize_path is a cross-platform method that returns the system’s path along with the Chef Infra Client Ruby bin dir / gem bin dir and common system paths such as /sbin and /usr/local/bin.

which(foo)

The which helper searches the system’s path and returns the first occurrence of a binary, similar to the which command on *nix systems. It also allows you to pass an extra_path value for additional directories to search.

which('systemctl')

which('my_app', extra_path: '/opt/my_app/bin')

eager_load_libraries metadata.rb setting

By default, Chef Infra Client eagerly loads all ruby files in each cookbook’s libraries directory at runtime. A new metadata.rb option eager_load_libraries has been introduced and allows you to control if and when a cookbook library is loaded. Depending on the construction of your libraries, this new option may greatly improve the runtime performance of your cookbook. With eager loading disabled, you may manually load libraries included in your cookbook using Ruby’s standard require method. Metadata.rb configuration options:

eager_load_libraries false # disable eager loading all libraries
eager_load_libraries 'helper_library.rb' # eager load just the file helper_library.rb
eager_load_libraries %w(helper_library_1.rb helper_library_2.rb) # eager load both helper_library_1.rb and helper_library_2.rb files

Note: Unless you are experiencing performance issues in your libraries, we advise against changing the loading behavior.

always_dump_stacktrace client.rb option

A new always_dump_stacktrace client.rb configuration option and command line option allows you to have any Ruby stacktraces from Chef Infra Client logged directly to the log file. This may help troubleshooting when used in conjunction with centralized logging systems such as Splunk. To enable this new option, run chef-client --always-dump-stacktrace or add the following to your client.rb:

always_dump_stacktrace true

Chef Vault Functionality Out of the Box

Chef Infra Client now ships with built-in Chef Vault functionality, so there’s no need to depend on the chef-vault cookbook or gem. Chef Vault helpers chef_vault_item, chef_vault, and chef_vault_item_for_environment are included, as well as the chef_vault_secret resource. Additionally, the Chef Vault knife commands are also available out of the box. We do not recommend new users adopt the Chef Vault workflow due to limitations with autoscaling new systems, so these resources should only be consumed by existing Chef Vault users.

Ruby 2.7

Chef Infra Client’s ruby installation has been updated to from Ruby 2.6 to Ruby 2.7, which includes many features available for use in resources and libraries.

See https://medium.com/rubyinside/whats-new-in-ruby-2-7-79c98b265502 for details on many of the new features.

Ohai 16 Improvements

Ohai has been improved to gather additional system configuration information for use when authoring recipes and resources.

filesystem2 Node Data available on Windows

In previous Chef Infra Clients we’ve introduced a modernized filesystem layout of Ohai data for many platforms. In Chef Infra Client 16.0, Windows now has this layout available in node['filesystem2']. In Chef Infra Client 17, it will replace node['filesystem'] to match all other platforms.

Extended Azure Metadata

The Azure Ohai plugin now gathers the latest version of the metadata provided by the Azure metadata endpoint. This greatly expands the information available on Azure instances. See Ohai PR 1427 for an example of the new data gathered.

New Ohai Plugins

New IPC and Interupts plugins have been added to Ohai. The IPC plugin exposes SysV IPC shmem information and interupts plugin exposes data from /proc/interrupts and /proc/irq. Thanks @jsvana and @davide125 for these new plugins.

Note: Both IPC and Interupts plugins are optional plugins, which are disabled by default. They can be enabled via your client.rb:

ohai.optional_plugins = [
  :IPC,
  :Interupts
]

Improved Linux Network Plugin Data

The Linux Network plugin has been improved to gather additional information from the ethtool utility. This includes the number of queues (ethtool -l), the coalesce parameters (ethtool -c), and information about the NIC driver (ethtool -i). Thanks @matt-c-clark for these improvements.

Windows DMI plugin

Windows systems now include a new DMI plugin which presents data in a similar format to the DMI plugin on *nix systems. This makes it easier to detect system information like manufacturer, serial number, or asset tag number in a cross-platform way.

New Platforms

Over the last quarter, we worked to greatly expand the platforms that we support with the addition of Chef Infra Client packages for Ubuntu 20.04 amd64, Amazon Linux 2 x86_64/aarch64, and Debian 10 amd64. With the release of Chef Infra Client 16, we expanded our platform support again with the following new platforms:

  • RHEL 8 aarch64
  • Ubuntu 20.04 aarch64
  • SLES 16 aarch64

Newly Introduced Deprecations

Several legacy Windows helpers have been deprecated as they will always return true when running on Chef Infra Client’s currently supported platforms. The helpers previously detected systems prior to Windows 2012 and systems running Windows Nano, which has been discontinued by Microsoft. These helpers were never documented externally so their usage is most likely minimal. A new Cookstyle rule has been introduced to detect the usage of older_than_win_2012_or_8?: ChefDeprecations/DeprecatedWindowsVersionCheck.

  • Chef::Platform.supports_msi?
  • Chef::Platform.older_than_win_2012_or_8?
  • Chef::Platform.supports_powershell_execution_bypass?
  • Chef::Platform.windows_nano_server?

Chef Infra Client 15.17.4

Chef InSpec 4.32

Updated Chef InSpec from 4.29.3 to 4.32.

New Features

  • Commands can now be set to timeout using the command resource or the --command-timeout option in the CLI. Commands timeout by default after one hour.
  • Added the --docker-url CLI option, which can be used to specify the URI to connect to the Docker Engine.
  • Added support for targeting Linux and Windows containers running on Docker for Windows.
  • Added ability to pass inputs to InSpec shell using input file and cli. For more information, see How can I set Inputs? in the InSpec documentation.

Bug Fixes

  • Hash inputs will now be loaded consistently and accessed as strings or symbols. (#5446)

Security

Ruby

We updated Ruby from 2.6.6 to 2.6.7 to resolve a large number of bugs as well as the following CVEs:

Chef Infra Client 15.16.7

Bug Fixes

  • Resolved failures in producing and promoting Habitat builds of Chef Infra Client.

Chef Infra Client 15.16.4

Bug Fixes

  • Minor internal build fixes.

Chef Infra Client 15.16.2

Fixes and Improvements

  • Improved license acceptance failure messaging if incorrect values are provided.
  • License acceptance values are no longer case sensitive.
  • Resolved several failures that could occur in the windows_certificate resource.
  • Improved handling of WinRM connections when bootstrapping Windows nodes.
  • Switched docker containers back to EL6 packages to prevent failures running the containers with Kitchen Dokken to test RHEL 6 systems.
  • Fixed non-0 exit codes in the Yum and DNF helper scripts which caused errors in system logs.
  • Fixed package failures in FreeBSD due to changes in pkgng exit codes.
  • Added support for client.d configuration files in chef-shell.

Chef InSpec

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.24.8 to 4.29.3.

New Features

  • The JSON metadata pass-through configuration has been moved from the Automate reporter to the JSON Reporter.
  • Added the option to filter out empty profiles from reports.
  • Exposed the conf_path, content, and params properties to the auditd_conf resource.
  • You can now directly refer to settings in the nginx_conf resource using the its syntax. Thanks @rgeissert!
  • Plugin settings can now be set programmatically. Thanks @tecracer-theinen!
  • OpenSSH Client on Windows can now be tested with the ssh_config and sshd_config resources. Thanks @rgeissert!

Bug Fixes

  • The --reporter-message-truncation option now also truncates the code_desc field, preventing failures when sending large reports to Automate.
  • Fixed skip_control to work on deeply nested profiles.
  • The ssh_config and sshd_config resources now correctly use the first value when a setting is repeated.
  • Fixed the crontab resource when passing a username to AIX.
  • Stopped a backtrace from occurring when using cmp to compare nil with a non-existing file.
  • The apt resource now correctly fetches all package repositories using the -name flag in an environment where ZSH is the user’s default shell.
  • The --controls option in inspec exec now correctly filters the controls by name.
  • Updates how InSpec profiles are created with GCP or AWS providers so they use inputs instead of attributes.
  • inspec exec will now fetch profiles via Git regardless of the name of the default branches now correctly use the first value when a setting is repeated.
  • Updated the oracledb_session to use more general invocation options. Thanks @pacopal!
  • Fixed an error with the http resource in Chef Infra Client by including faraday_middleware in the gemspec.
  • Fixed an incompatibility between parslet and toml in Chef Infra Client.
  • Improved programmatic plugin configuration.

Security

Upgraded OpenSSL to 1.0.2y, which resolves the following CVEs:

Platform Updates

With the release of macOS 11, we will no longer produce packages for macOS 10.13 systems. See our Platform End-of-Life Policy for details on the platform lifecycle.

Chef Infra Client 15.15.1

Bug Fixes

  • Resolve internal build failures

Chef Infra Client 15.15.0

Chef InSpec 4.24.8

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.22.22 to 4.24.8 with the following improvements:

  • An unset `HOME environment variable will not cause execution failures
  • You can use wildcards in platform-name and release in InSpec profiles
  • The support for arrays in the WMI resource, so it can return multiple objects
  • The package resource on Windows properly escapes package names
  • The grub_conf resource succeeds even if without a menuentry in the grub config
  • Loaded plugins won’t try to re-load themselves
  • A new mechanism marks inputs as sensitive: true and replaces their values with ***.
  • Use the --no-diff CLI option to suppress diff output for textual tests.
  • Control the order of controls in output, but not execution order, with the --sort_results_by=none|control|file|random CLI option.
  • Disable caching of inputs with a cache_inputs: true setting.

Chef Vault 4.1

We’ve updated the release of chef-vault bundled with Chef Infra Client to 4.1. Chef Vault 4.1 properly handles escape strings in secrets and greatly improves performance for users with large numbers of secrets. Thanks for the performance work @Annih!

Resource Improvements

cron_d

The cron_d resource now respects the use of the sensitive property. Thanks for this fix @axl89!

homebrew_cask

The homebrew_cask resource has been updated to work with the latest command syntax requirements in the brew command. Thanks for reporting this issue @bcg62!

locale

The allowed execution time for the locale-gen command in the locale resource has been extended to 1800 seconds to make sure the Chef Infra Client run doesn’t fail before the command completes on slower systems. Thanks for reporting this issue @janskarvall!

plist / macosx_service / osx_profile / macos_userdefaults

Parsing of plist files has been improved in the plist, macosx_service, osx_profile, and macos_userdefaults resources thanks to updates to the plist gem by @reitermarkus and @tboyko.

Security

  • The bundled Nokogiri Ruby gem has been updated to 1.11 resolve CVE-2020-26247.
  • openSSL has been updated to 1.0.2x to resolve CVE-2020-1971.

Chef Infra Client 15.14.0

Chef InSpec 4.22.22

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.22.1 to 4.22.22. This new release includes the following improvements:

  • Fix mysql_session stdout, stderr and exit_status parameters. Thanks @ramereth!
  • Add new windows_firewall and windows_firewall_rule resources. Thanks @tecracer-theinen!

Fixes and Improvements

  • The knife ssh command no longer hangs when connecting to Windows nodes over SSH.
  • Resolved several failures that could occur in the included chef-vault gem.

Resource Updates

hostname

The hostname resource has been updated to improve logging on Windows systems.

windows_feature

The windows_feature resource has been updated to allow installing features that have been removed if a source location is provided. Thanks for reporting this @stefanwb!

windows_font

The windows_font resource will no longer fail on newer releases of Windows if a font is already installed. Thanks for reporting this @bmiller08!

Platform Packages

  • We are once again building Chef Infra Client packages for RHEL 7 / SLES 12 on the S390x architecture. In addition to these packages, we’ve also added S390x packages for SLES 15.
  • We now produce packages for Apple’s upcoming macOS 11 Big Sur release.

Security

OpenSSL

OpenSSL has been updated to 1.0.2w which includes a fix for CVE-2020-1968.

CA Root Certificates

The included cacerts bundle in Chef Infra Client has been updated to the 7-22-2020 release. This new release removes 4 legacy root certificates and adds 4 additional root certificates.

Chef Infra Client 15.13.8

Chef InSpec 4.22.1

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.20.6 to 4.22.1. This new release includes the following improvements:

  • apt-cdrom repositories are now skipped when parsing out the list of apt repositories
  • Faulty profiles are now reported instead of causing a crash
  • Errors are no longer logged to stdout with the html2 reporter
  • macOS Big Sur is now correctly identified as macOS
  • macOS/BSD support added to the interface resource along with new ipv4_address, ipv4_addresses, ipv4_addresses_netmask, ipv4_cidrs, ipv6_addresses, and ipv6_cidrs properties

Fixes and Improvements

  • Support for legacy DSA host keys has been restored in knife ssh and knife bootstrap commands.
  • The collision warning error message when a cookbook includes a resource that now ships in Chef Infra Client has been improved to better explain the issue.
  • Package sizes have been reduced with fewer installed files on disk.
  • The archive_file resource now supports pzstd compressed files.

New Deprecations

Chef Infra Client 16.2 and later require provides when assigning a name to a custom resource. In order to prepare for Chef Infra Client 16, make sure to include both resource_name and provides in resources when specifying a custom name.

Chef Infra Client 15.12.22

Chef InSpec 4.20.6

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.18.114 to 4.2.0.6. This new release includes the following improvements:

  • Develop your own Chef InSpec Reporter plugins to control how Chef InSpec will report result data.
  • The inspec archive command packs your profile into a tar.gz file that includes the profile in JSON form as the inspec.json file.
  • Certain substrings within a .toml file no longer cause unexpected crashes.
  • Accurate InSpec CLI input parsing for numeric values and structured data, which were previously treated as strings. Numeric values are cast to an integer or float and YAML or JSON structures are converted to a hash or an array.
  • Suppress deprecation warnings on inspec exec with the --silence-deprecations option.

Resource Updates

archive_file

The archive_file resource has been updated with two important fixes. The resource will no longer fail with uninitialized constant errors under some scenarios. Additionally, the behavior of the mode property has been improved to prevent incorrect file modes from being applied to the decompressed files. Due to how file modes and Integer values are processed in Ruby, this resource will now produce a deprecation warning if integer values are passed. Using string values lets us accurately pass values such as ‘644’ or ‘0644’ without ambiguity as to the user’s intent. Thanks for reporting these issues @sfiggins and @hammerhead.

cron_access

The cron_access resource has been updated to support Solaris and AIX systems. Thanks @aklyachkin.

msu_package resource improvements

The msu_package resource has been improved to work better with Microsoft’s cumulative update packages. Newer releases of these cumulative update packages will not correctly install over the previous versions. We also extended the default timeout for installing MSU packages to 60 minutes. Thanks for reporting the timeout issue @danielfloyd.

powershell_package

The powershell_package resource has been updated to use TLS 1.2 when communicating with the PowerShell Gallery on Windows Server 2012-2016. Previously, this resource used the system default cipher suite which did not include TLS 1.2. The PowerShell Gallery now requires TLS 1.2 for all communication, which caused failures on Windows Server 2012-2016. Thanks for reporting this issue @Xorima.

snap_package

Multiple issues with the snap_package resource have been resolved, including an infinite wait that occurred and issues with specifying the package version or channel. Thanks @jaymzh.

zypper_repository

The zypper_repository resource has been updated to work with the newer release of GPG in openSUSE 15 and SLES 15. This prevents failures when importing GPG keys in the resource.

Knife bootstrap updates

  • Knife bootstrap will now warn when bootstrapping a system using a validation key. Users should instead use validatorless bootstrapping with knife bootstrap which generates node and client keys using the client key of the user bootstrapping the node. This method is far more secure as an org-wide validation key does not not need to be distributed or rotated. Users can switch to validatorless bootstrapping by removing any validation_key entries in their config.rb (knife.rb) file.
  • Resolved an error bootstrapping Linux nodes from Windows hosts
  • Improved information messages during the bootstrap process

SSH Improvements

The net-ssh library used by the knife ssh and knife bootstrap commands has been updated bringing improvements to SSH connectivity:

  • Support for additional key exchange and transport algorithms
  • Support algorithm subtraction syntax in the ssh_config file
  • Support empty lines and comments in known_hosts file

Initial macOS Big Sur Support

Chef Infra Client now correctly detects macOS Big Sur (11.0) beta as being platform “mac_os_x”. Chef Infra Client 15.12 has not been fully qualified for macOS Big Sur, but we will continue to validate against this release and provide any additional support updates.

Platform Packages

  • Debian 8 packages are no longer being produced as Debian 8 is now end-of-life.
  • We now produce Windows 8 packages

Chef Infra Client 15.11.8

Bug Fixes

  • Minor internal knife updates for future compatibility.

Chef Infra Client 15.11.3

Bootstrapping Bugfixes

This release of Chef Infra Client resolves multiple issues when using knife bootstrap to bootstrap new nodes to a Chef Infra Server:

  • Bootstrapping from a Windows host to a Linux host with an ED25519 ssh key no longer fails
  • Resolved failures in the Windows bootstrap script
  • Incorrect paths when bootstrapping Windows nodes have been resolved

Chef InSpec 4.18.114

Chef InSpec was updated from 4.18.104 to 4.18.114 with the following improvements:

  • Added new --reporter_message_truncation and --reporter_backtrace_inclusion reporter options to truncate messages and suppress backtraces.
  • Fixed a warning when an input is provided
  • Inputs and controls can now have the same name

Resource Improvements

windows_firewall

The windows_firewall resource has been updated to support firewall rules that are associated with more than one profile. Thanks @tecracer-theinen.

chocolatey_package

The chocolatey_package resource has been updated to properly handle quotes within the options property. Thanks for reporting this issue @dave-q.

Platform Support

Additional aarch64 Builds

Chef Infra Client is now tested on Debian 10, SLES 15, and Ubuntu 20.04 on the aarch64 architecture with packages available on the Chef Downloads Page.

Security Updates

openSSL

openSSL has been updated from 1.0.2u to 1.0.2v which does not address any particular CVEs, but includes multiple security hardening updates.

Chef Infra Client 15.10.12

Improvements

  • The systemd_unit resource now respects the sensitive property and will no longer output the contents of the unit file to logs if this is set.
  • A new arm? helper has been added which can be used in recipes and resources to determine if a system is on the ARM architecture.

Bug Fixes

  • Resolved a bug that prevented users from bootstrapping nodes using knife when specifying the --use_sudo_password.
  • Resolved a bug that prevented the --bootstrap-version flag from being honored when bootstrapping in knife.

Chef InSpec 4.18.104

  • Resolved a regression that prevented the service resource from working correctly on Windows. Thanks @Axuba
  • Implemented VMware and Hyper-V detection on Linux systems
  • Implemented VMware, Hyper-V, Virtualbox, KVM and Xen detection on Windows systems
  • Added helpers virtual_system? and physical_system?. Thanks @tecracer-theinen

Ohai 15.9

  • Improve the resiliency of the Shard plugin when dmidecode cannot be found on a system. Thanks @jaymzh
  • Fixed detection of Openstack guests via DMI data. Thanks @ramereth

Platform Support

Amazon Linux 2

Chef Infra Client is now tested on Amazon Linux 2 running on x86_64 and aarch64 with packages available on the Chef Downloads Page.

Chef Infra Client 15.9.17

Chef InSpec 4.18.100

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.18.85 to 4.18.100:

  • Resolved several failures in executing resources
  • Fixed auditd resource processing of action and list
  • Fixed platform detection when running in Habitat
  • “inspec schema” has been revised to be in the JSON Schema draft 7 format
  • Improved the functionality of the oracledb_session resource

Ohai 15.8

Ohai has been updated to 15.8.0 which includes a fix for failures that occurred in the OpenStack plugin (thanks @sawanoboly) and improved parsing of data in the optional_plugins config option (thanks @salzig).

Resource Improvements

build_essential

The build_essential resource has been updated to better detect if the Xcode CLI Tools package needs to be installed on macOS. macOS 10.15 (Catalina) is now supported with this update. Thank you @w0de for kicking this work off, @jazaval for advice on macOS package parsing, and Microsoft for their work in the macOS cookbook.

rhsm_errata / rhsm_errata_level

The rhsm_errata and rhsm_errata_level resources have been updated to properly function on RHEL 8 systems.

rhsm_register

The rhsm_register resource has a new property https_for_ca_consumer that enables using https connections during registration. Thanks for this improvement @jasonwbarnett. This resource has also been updated to properly function on RHEL 8.

windows_share

Resolved failures in the windows_share resource when setting the path property. Thanks for reporting this issue @Kundan22.

Platform Support

Ubuntu 20.04

Chef Infra Client is now tested on Ubuntu 20.04 (AMD64) with packages available on the Chef Downloads Page.

Ubuntu 18.04 aarch64

Chef Infra Client is now tested on Ubuntu 18.04 aarch64 with packages available on the Chef Downloads Page.

Windows 10

Our Windows 10 Chef Infra Client packages now receive an additional layer of testing to ensure they function as expected.

Security Updates

Ruby

Ruby has been updated from 2.6.5 to 2.6.6 to resolve the following CVEs:

  • CVE-2020-16255: Unsafe Object Creation Vulnerability in JSON (Additional fix)
  • CVE-2020-10933: Heap exposure vulnerability in the socket library

libarchive

libarchive has been updated from 3.4.0 to 3.4.2 to resolve multiple security vulnerabilities including the following CVEs:

  • CVE-2019-19221: archive_wstring_append_from_mbs in archive_string.c has an out-of-bounds read because of an incorrect mbrtowc or mbtowc call
  • CVE-2020-9308: archive_read_support_format_rar5.c in libarchive before 3.4.2 attempts to unpack a RAR5 file with an invalid or corrupted header

Chef Infra Client 15.8.23

New notify_group functionality

Chef Infra Client now includes a new notify_group feature that can be used to extract multiple common notifies out of individual resources to reduce duplicate code in your cookbooks and custom resources. Previously cookbook authors would often use a log resource to achieve a similar outcome, but using the log resource results in unnecessary Chef Infra Client log output. The notify_group method produces no additional logging, but fires all defined notifications when the :run action is set.

Example notify_group that stops, sleeps, and then starts service when a service config is updated:

service "crude" do
  action [ :enable, :start ]
end

chef_sleep "60" do
  action :nothing
end

notify_group "crude_stop_and_start" do
  notifies :stop, "service[crude]", :immediately
  notifies :sleep, "chef_sleep[60]", :immediately
  notifies :start, "service[crude]", :immediately
end

template "/etc/crude/crude.conf" do
  source "crude.conf.erb"
  variables node["crude"]
  notifies :run, "notify_group[crude_stop_and_start]", :immediately
end

Chef InSpec 4.18.85

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.18.39 to 4.18.85. This release includes a large number of bug fixes in addition to some great resource enhancements:

  • The service resource features new support for yocto-based linux distributions. Thank you to @michaellihs for this addition!
  • The package resource now includes support for FreeBSD. Thank you to @fzipi for this work!
  • We standardized the platform for the etc_hosts, virtualization, ini, and xml resources.
  • The oracledb_session resource works again due to a missing quote fix.
  • The groups resource on macOS no longer reports duplicates anymore. command.exist? now conforms to POSIX standards. Thanks to @PiQuer!
  • Changed the postfix_conf resource’s supported platform to the broader unix. Thank you to @fzipi for this fix!

New Cookbook Helpers

New helpers have been added to make writing cookbooks easier.

Platform Version Helpers

New helpers for checking platform versions have been added. These helpers return parsed version strings so there’s no need to convert the returned values to Integers or Floats before comparing them. Additionally, comparisons with version objects properly understand the order of versions so 5.11 will compare as larger than 5.9, whereas converting those values to Floats would result in 5.9 being larger than 5.11.

  • windows_nt_version returns the NT kernel version which often differs from Microsoft’s marketing versions. This helper offers a good way to find desktop and server releases that are based on the same codebase. For example, NT 6.3 is both Windows 8.1 and Windows 2012 R2.
  • powershell_version returns the version of PowerShell installed on the system.
  • platform_version returns the value of node[‘platform_version’].

Example comparison using windows_nt_version:

if windows_nt_version >= 10
  some_modern_windows_things
end

Cloud Helpers

The cloud helpers from chef-sugar have been ported to Chef Infra Client:

  • cloud? - if the node is running in any cloud, including internal clouds
  • ec2? - if the node is running in ec2
  • gce? - if the node is running in gce
  • rackspace? - if the node is running in rackspace
  • eucalyptus? - if the node is running under eucalyptus
  • linode? - if the node is running in linode
  • openstack? - if the node is running under openstack
  • azure? - if the node is running in azure
  • digital_ocean? - if the node is running in digital ocean
  • softlayer? - if the node is running in softlayer

Virtualization Helpers

The virtualization helpers from chef-sugar have been ported to Chef Infra Client and extended with helpers to detect hypervisor hosts, physical, and guest systems.

  • kvm? - if the node is a kvm guest
  • kvm_host? - if the node is a kvm host
  • lxc? - if the node is an lxc guest
  • lxc_host? - if the node is an lxc host
  • parallels?- if the node is a parallels guest
  • parallels_host?- if the node is a parallels host
  • vbox? - if the node is a virtualbox guest
  • vbox_host? - if the node is a virtualbox host
  • vmware? - if the node is a vmware guest
  • vmware_host? - if the node is a vmware host
  • openvz? - if the node is an openvz guest
  • openvz_host? - if the node is an openvz host
  • guest? - if the node is detected as any kind of guest
  • hypervisor? - if the node is detected as being any kind of hypervisor
  • physical? - the node is not running as a guest (may be a hypervisor or may be bare-metal)
  • vagrant? - attempts to identify the node as a vagrant guest (this check may be error-prone)

include_recipe? helper

chef-sugar’s include_recipe? has been added to Chef Infra Client providing a simple way to see if a recipe has been included on a node already.

Example usage in a not_if conditional:

execute 'install my_app'
  command '/tmp/my_app_install.sh'
  not_if { include_recipe?('my_app::install') }
end

Updated Resources

ifconfig

The ifconfig resource now supports the newer ifconfig release that ships in Debian 10.

mac_user

The mac_user resource, used when creating a user on Mac systems, has been improved to work better with macOS Catalina (10.15). The resource now properly looks up the numeric GID when creating a user, once again supports the system property, and includes a new hidden property which prevents the user from showing on the login screen. Thanks @chilcote for these fixes and improvements.

sysctl

The sysctl resource has been updated to allow the inclusion of descriptive comments. Comments may be passed as an array or as a string. Any comments provided are prefixed with ‘#’ signs and precede the sysctl setting in generated files.

An example:

sysctl 'vm.swappiness' do
  value 10
  comment [
     "define how aggressively the kernel will swap memory pages.",
     "Higher values will increase aggressiveness",
     "lower values decrease the amount of swap.",
     "A value of 0 instructs the kernel not to initiate swap",
     "until the amount of free and file-backed pages is less",
     "than the high water mark in a zone.",
     "The default value is 60."
    ]
end

which results in /etc/sysctl.d/99-chef-vm.swappiness.conf as follows:

 define how aggressively the kernel will swap memory pages.
 Higher values will increase aggressiveness
 lower values decrease the amount of swap.
 A value of 0 instructs the kernel not to initiate swap
 until the amount of free and file-backed pages is less
 than the high water mark in a zone.
 The default value is 60.
vm.swappiness = 10

Platform Support

  • Chef Infra Clients packages are now validated for Debian 10.

macOS Binary Signing

Each binary in the macOS Chef Infra Client installation is now signed to improve the integrity of the installation and ensure compatibility with macOS Catalina security requirements.

Chef Infra Client 15.7.32

Bug Fixes

  • Update cookbook validation code to resolve berks upload --skip-syntax-check not honoring the --skip-syntax-check flag.
  • Fix Chef::Cookbook::CookbookVersionLoader loader deprecations that were too aggressive and causing failures.

Chef Infra Client 15.7.31

Bug Fixes

  • Avoid load method deprecation warnings in knife.

Chef Infra Client 15.7.30

Updated Resources

archive_file

The archive_file resource will now only change ownership on files and directories that were part of the archive itself. This prevents changing permissions on important high level directories such as /etc or /bin when you extract a file into those directories. Thanks for this fix, @bobchaos.

cron and cron_d

The cron and cron_d resources now include a timeout property, which allows you to configure actions to perform when a job times out. This property accepts a hash of timeout configuration options:

  • preserve-status: true/false with a default of false
  • foreground: true/false with a default of false
  • kill-after: Integer for the timeout in seconds
  • signal: String or Integer to send to the process such as HUP

launchd

The launchd resource has been updated to properly capitalize HardResourceLimits. Thanks for this fix, @rb2k.

sudo

The sudo resource no longer fails on the second Chef Infra Client run when using a Cmnd_Alias. Thanks for reporting this issue, @Rudikza.

user

The user resource on AIX no longer forces the user to change the password after Chef Infra Client modifies the password. Thanks for this fix, @Triodes.

The user resource on macOS 10.15 has received several important fixes to improve logging and prevent failures.

windows_task

The windows_task resource is now idempotent when a system is joined to a domain and the job runs under a local user account.

x509_certificate

The x509_certificate resource now includes a new renew_before_expiry property that allows you to auto renew certificates a specified number of days before they expire. Thanks @julienhuon for this improvement.

Additional Recipe Helpers

We have added new helpers for identifying Windows releases that can be used in any part of your cookbooks.

windows_workstation?

Returns true if the system is a Windows Workstation edition.

windows_server?

Returns true if the system is a Windows Server edition.

windows_server_core?

Returns true if the system is a Windows Server Core edition.

Notable Changes and Fixes

  • knife upload and knife cookbook upload will now generate a metadata.json file from metadata.rb when uploading a cookbook to the Chef Infra Server.
  • A bug in knife bootstrap behavior that caused failures when bootstrapping Windows hosts from non-Windows hosts and vice versa has been resolved.
  • The existing system path is now preserved when bootstrapping Windows nodes. Thanks for this fix, @Xorima.
  • Ohai now properly returns the drive name on Windows and includes new drive_type fields to allow you to determine the type of attached disk. Thanks for this improvement @sshock.
  • Ohai has been updated to properly return DMI data to Chef Infra Client. Thanks for troubleshooting this, @zmscwx and @Sliim.

Platform Support

  • Chef Infra Clients packages are no longer produced for Windows 2008 R2 as this release reached its end of life on Jan 14th, 2020.
  • Chef Infra Client packages are no longer produced for RHEL 6 on the s390x platform. Builds will continue to be published for RHEL 7 on the s390x platform.

Security Updates

OpenSSL

OpenSSL has been updated to 1.0.2u to resolve CVE-2019-1551

Chef Infra Client 15.6.10

Updated Resources

apt_repository

The apt_repository resource now properly escapes repository URIs instead of quoting them. This prevents failures when using the apt-file command, which was unable to parse the quoted URIs. Thanks for reporting this @Seb-Solon

file

The file resource now shows the output of any failures when running commands specified in the verify property. This means you can more easily validate config files before potentially writing an incorrect file to disk. Chef Infra Client will shellout to any specified command and will show the results of failures for further troubleshooting.

user

The user resource on Linux systems now continues successfully when usermod returns an exit code of 12. Exit code 12 occurs when a user’s home directory is changed and the underlying directory already exists. Thanks @skippyj for this fix.

yum_repository

The yum_repository now properly formats the repository configuration when multiple baseurl values are present. Thanks @bugok for this fix.

Performance Improvements

This release of Chef Infra Client ships with several optimizations to our Ruby installation to improve the performance of loading the chef-client and knife commands. These improvements are particularly noticeable on non-SSD hosts and on Windows.

Smaller Install Footprint

We’ve further optimized our install footprint and reduced the size of /opt/chef by ~7% by removing unnecessary test files and libraries that shipped in previous releases.

filesystem2 Ohai Data on Windows

Ohai 15.6 includes new node['filesystem2'] data on Windows hosts. Filesystem2 presents filesystem data by both mountpoint and by device name. This data structure matches that of the filesystem plugin on Linux and other *nix operating systems. Thanks @jaymzh for this new data structure.

Chef Infra Client 15.5.17

Bug Fixes

  • Resolved build failures.

Chef Infra Client 15.5.16

Bug Fixes

  • Resolved build failures.

Chef Infra Client 15.5.15

The Chef Infra Client 15.5.15 release includes fixes for two regressions. A regression in the build_essential resource caused failures on rhel platforms and a second regression caused Chef Infra Client to fail when starting with enforce_path_sanity enabled. As part of this fix we’ve added a new property, raise_if_unsupported, to the build-essential resource. Instead of silently continuing, this property will fail a Chef Infra Client run if an unknown platform is encountered.

We’ve also updated the windows_package resource. The resource will now provide better error messages if invalid options are passed to the installer_type property and the checksum property will now accept uppercase SHA256 checksums.

Chef Infra Client 15.5.9

New Cookbook Helpers

Chef Infra Client now includes a new chef-utils gem, which ships with a large number of helpers to make writing cookbooks easier. Many of these helpers existed previously in the chef-sugar gem. We have renamed many of the named helpers for consistency, while providing backwards compatibility with existing chef-sugar names. Existing cookbooks written with chef-sugar should work unmodified with any of these new helpers. Expect a Cookstyle rule in the near future to help you update existing chef-sugar code to use the newer built-in helpers.

For more information all all of the new helpers available, see the chef-utils readme

Chefignore Improvements

We’ve reworked how chefignore files are handled in knife, which has allowed us to close out a large number of long outstanding bugs. knife will now traverse all the way up the directory structure looking for a chefignore file. This means you can place a chefignore file in each cookbook or any parent directory in your repository structure. Additionally, we have made fixes that ensure that commands like knife diff and knife cookbook upload always honor your chefignore files.

Windows Habitat Plan

Official Habitat packages of Chef Infra Client are now available for Windows. It has all the executables of the traditional omnibus packages, but in Habitat form. You can find it in the Habitat Builder under chef/chef-infra-client.

Performance Improvements

This release of Chef Infra Client ships with several optimizations to our Ruby installation that improve the performance of the chef-client and knife commands, especially on Windows systems. Expect to see more here in future releases.

Chef InSpec 4.18.39

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.17.17 to 4.18.38. This release includes a large number of bug fixes in addition to some great resource enhancements:

  • Inputs can now be used within a describe.one block
  • The service resource now includes a startname property for Windows and systemd services
  • The interface resource now includes a name property
  • The user resource now better supports Windows with the addition of passwordage, maxbadpasswords, and badpasswordattempts properties
  • The nginx resource now includes parsing support for wildcard, dot prefix, and regex
  • The iis_app_pool resource now handles empty app pools
  • The filesystem resource now supports devices with very long names
  • The apt better handles URIs and supports repos with an arch
  • The oracledb_session has received multiple fixes to make it work better
  • The npm resource now works under sudo on Unix and on Windows with a custom PATH

New Resources

chef_sleep

The chef_sleep resource can be used to sleep for a specified number of seconds during a Chef Infra Client run. This may be helpful to use with other commands that return a completed status before they are actually ready. In general, do not use this resource unless you truly need it.

Using with a Windows service that starts, but is not immediately ready:

service 'Service that is slow to start and reports as started' do
  service_name 'my_database'
  action :start
  notifies :sleep, chef_sleep['wait for service start']
end

chef_sleep 'wait for service start' do
  seconds 30
  action :nothing
end

Updated Resources

systemd_unit / service

The systemd_unit and service resources (when on systemd) have been updated to not re-enable services with an indirect status. Thanks @jaymzh for this fix.

windows_firewall

The windows_firewall resource has been updated to support passing in an array of profiles in the profile property. Thanks @Happycoil for this improvement.

Security Updates

libxslt

libxslt has been updated to 1.1.34 to resolve CVE-2019-13118.

Chef Infra Client 15.4.45

converge_if_changed Improvements

Chef Infra Client will now take into account any default values specified in custom resources when making converge determinations with the converge_if_changed helper. Previously, default values would be ignored, which caused necessary changes to be skipped. Note: This change may cause behavior changes for some users, but we believe this original behavior is an impacting bug for enough users to make it outside of a major release. Thanks @ jakauppila for reporting this.

Bootstrap Improvements

Several improvements have been made to the knife bootstrap command to make it more reliable and secure:

  • File creation is now wrapped in a umask to avoid potential race conditions
  • NameError and RuntimeError failures during bootstrap have been resolved
  • Undefined method 'empty?' for nil:NilClass during bootstrap have been resolved
  • Single quotes in attributes during bootstrap no longer result in bootstrap failures
  • The bootstrap command no longer appears in PS on the host while bootstrapping is running

knife supermarket list Improvements

The knife supermarket list command now includes two new options:

  • --sort-by [recently_updated recently_added most_downloaded most_followed]: Sort cookbooks returned from the Supermarket API
  • --owned_by: Limit returned cookbooks to a particular owner

Updated Resources

chocolatey_package

The chocolatey_package resource no longer fails when passing options with the options property. Thanks for reporting this issue @kenmacleod.

kernel_module

The kernel_module resource includes a new options property, which allows users to set module specific parameters and settings. Thanks @ramereth for this new feature.

Example of a kernel_module resource using the new options property:

  kernel_module 'loop' do
  options [ 'max_loop=4', 'max_part=8' ]
  end

remote_file

The remote_file resource has been updated to better display progress when using the show_progress resource. Thanks for reporting this issue @isuftin.

sudo

The sudo resource now runs sudo config validation against all of the sudo configuration files on the system instead of only the file being written. This allows us to detect configuration errors that occur when configs conflict with each other. Thanks for reporting this issue @drzewiec.

windows_ad_join

The windows_ad_join has a new :leave action for leaving an Active Directory domain and rejoining a workgroup. This new action also has a new workgroup_name property for specifying the workgroup to join upon leaving the domain. Thanks @jasonwbarnett for adding this new action.

Example of leaving a domain

windows_ad_join 'Leave the domain' do
  workgroup_name 'local'
  action :leave
end

windows_package

The windows_package resource no longer updates environmental variables before installing the package. This prevents potential modifications that may cause a package installation to fail. Thanks @jeremyhage for this fix.

windows_service

The windows_service resource no longer updates the service and triggers notifications if the case of the run_as_user property does not match the user set on the service. Thanks @jasonwbarnett for this fix.

windows_share

The windows_share resource is now fully idempotent by better validating the provided path property from the user. Thanks @Happycoil for this fix.

Security Updates

Ruby

Ruby has been updated from 2.6.4 to 2.6.5 in order to resolve the following CVEs:

  • CVE-2019-16255: A code injection vulnerability of Shell#[] and Shell#test
  • CVE-2019-16254: HTTP response splitting in WEBrick (Additional fix)
  • CVE-2019-15845: A NUL injection vulnerability of File.fnmatch and File.fnmatch?
  • CVE-2019-16201: Regular Expression Denial of Service vulnerability of WEBrick’s Digest access authentication

Chef Infra Client 15.3.14

Custom Resource Unified Mode

Chef Infra Client 15.3 introduces an exciting new way to easily write custom resources that mix built-in Chef Infra resources with Ruby code. Previously custom resources would use Chef Infra’s standard compile and converge phases, which meant that Ruby would be evaluated first and then the resources would be converged. This often results in confusing and undesirable behavior when you are trying to mix resources with Ruby logic. Many custom resource authors would attempt to get around this by forcing resources to run at compile time so that all the code in their resource would execute during the compile phase.

An example of forcing a resource to run at compile time:

resource_name 'foo' do
  action :nothing
end.run_action(:some_action)

With unified mode, you opt in to a single phase per resource where all Ruby and Chef Infra resources are executed at once. This makes it far easier to determine how your code will be evaluated and run. Additionally, you no longer need to force any resources to run at compile time, as all code is run in the compile phase. To enable this new mode just add unified_mode true to your resources like this:

property :Some_property, String

unified_mode true

action :create do
  # some code
end

Interval Mode Now Fails on Windows

Chef Infra Client 15.3 will now raise an error if you attempt to keep the chef-client process running long-term by enabling interval runs. Interval runs have already raised failures on non-Windows platforms and we’ve suggested that users move away from them on Windows for many years. The long-running chef-client process on Windows will load and reload cookbooks over each other in memory. This could produce a running state which is not a representation of the cookbook code that the authors wrote or tested, and behavior that may be wildly different depending on how long the chef-client process has been running and on the sequence that the cookbooks were uploaded.

Updated Resources

ifconfig

The ifconfig resource has been updated to properly support interfaces with a hyphen in their name. This is most commonly encountered with bridge interfaces that are named br-1234.

archive_file

The archive_file resource now supports archives in the RAR 5.0 format as well as zip files compressed using xz, lzma, ppmd8 and bzip2 compression.

user

macOS 10.14 / 10.15 support

The user resource now supports the creation of users on macOS 10.14 and 10.15 systems. The updated resource now complies with macOS TCC policies by using a user with admin privileges to create and modify users. The following new properties have been added for macOS user creation:

  • admin sets a user to be an admin.

  • admin_username and admin_password define the admin user credentials required for toggling SecureToken for a user. The value of ‘admin_username’ must correspond to a system user that is part of the ‘admin’ with SecureToken enabled in order to toggle SecureToken.

  • secure_token is a boolean property that sets the desired state for SecureToken. FileVault requires a SecureToken for full disk encryption.

  • secure_token_password is the plaintext password required to enable or disable secure_token for a user. If no salt is specified we assume the ‘password’ property corresponds to a plaintext password and will attempt to use it in place of secure_token_password if it is not set.

Password property is now sensitive

The password property is now set to sensitive to prevent the password from being shown in debug or failure logs.

gid property can now be a string

The gid property now allows specifying the user’s gid as a string. For example:

user 'tim' do
  gid '123'
end

Platform Support Updates

macOS 10.15 Support

Chef Infra Client is now validated against macOS 10.15 (Catalina) with packages now available at downloads.chef.io and via the Omnitruck API. Additionally, Chef Infra Client will no longer be validated against macOS 10.12.

AIX 7.2

Chef Infra Client is now validated against AIX 7.2 with packages now available at downloads.chef.io and via the Omnitruck API.

Chef InSpec 4.16

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.10.4 to 4.16.0 with the following changes:

  • A new postfix_conf has been added for inspecting Postfix configuration files.
  • A new plugins section has been added to the InSpec configuration file which can be used to pass secrets or other configurations into Chef InSpec plugins.
  • The service resource now includes a new startname property for determining which user is starting the Windows services.
  • The groups resource now properly gathers membership information on macOS hosts.

Security Updates

Ruby

Ruby has been updated from 2.6.3 to 2.6.4 in order to resolve CVE-2012-6708 and CVE-2015-9251.

openssl

openssl has been updated from 1.0.2s to 1.0.2t in order to resolve CVE-2019-1563 and CVE-2019-1547.

nokogiri

nokogiri has been updated from 1.10.2 to 1.10.4 in order to resolve CVE-2019-5477

Chef Infra Client 15.2.20

Updated Resources

dnf_package

The dnf_package resource has been updated to fully support RHEL 8.

kernel_module

The kernel_module now supports a :disable action. Thanks @tomdoherty.

rhsm_repo

The rhsm_repo resource has been updated to support passing a repo name of * in the :disable action. Thanks for reporting this issue @erinn.

windows_task

The windows_task resource has been updated to allow the day property to accept an Integer value.

zypper_package

The zypper_package package has been updated to properly upgrade packages if necessary based on the version specified in the resource block. Thanks @foobarbam for this fix.

Platform Support Updates

RHEL 8 Support Added

Chef Infra Client 15.2 now includes native packages for RHEL 8 with all builds now validated on RHEL 8 hosts.

SLES 11 EOL

Packages will no longer be built for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 as SLES 11 exited the ‘General Support’ phase on March 31, 2019. See Chef’s Platform End-of-Life Policy for more information on when Chef ends support for an OS release.

Ubuntu 14.04 EOL

Packages will no longer be built for Ubuntu 14.04 as Canonical ended maintenance updates on April 30, 2019. See Chef’s Platform End-of-Life Policy for more information on when Chef ends support for an OS release.

Ohai 15.2

Ohai has been updated to 15.2 with the following changes:

  • Improved detection of Openstack including proper detection of Windows nodes running on Openstack when fetching metadata. Thanks @jjustice6.
  • A new other_versions field has been added to the Packages plugin when the node is using RPM. This allows you to see all installed versions of packages, not just the latest version. Thanks @jjustice6.
  • The Linux Network plugin has been improved to not mark interfaces down if stp_state is marked as down. Thanks @josephmilla.
  • Arch running on ARM processors is now detected as the arm platform. Thanks @BackSlasher.

Chef InSpec 4.10.4

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.6.4 to 4.10.4 with the following changes:

  • Fix handling multiple triggers in the windows_task resource
  • Fix exceptions when resources are used with incompatible transports
  • Un-deprecate the be_running matcher on the service resource
  • Add resource sys_info.manufacturer and sys_info.model
  • Add ip6tables resource

Security Updates

bzip2

bzip2 has been updated from 1.0.6 to 1.0.8 to resolve CVE-2016-3189 and CVE-2019-12900.

Chef Infra Client 15.1.36

New Resources

chocolatey_feature

The chocolatey_feature resource allows you to enable and disable Chocolatey features. See the chocolatey_feature documentation for full usage information. Thanks @gep13 for this new resource.

Updated Resources

chocolatey_source

The chocolatey_source resource has been updated with new enable and disable actions, as well as admin_only and allow_self_service properties. Thanks @gep13 for this enhancement.

launchd

The launchd resource has been updated with a new launch_events property, which allows you to specify higher-level event types to be used as launch-on-demand event sources. Thanks @chilcote for this enhancement.

yum_package

The yum_package resource’s helper for interacting with the yum subsystem has been updated to always close out the rpmdb lock, even during failures. This may prevent the rpmdb becoming locked in some rare conditions. Thanks for reporting this issue, @lytao.

template

The template resource now provides additional information on failures, which is especially useful in ChefSpec tests. Thanks @brodock for this enhancement.

Target Mode Improvements

Our experimental Target Mode received a large number of updates in Chef Infra Client 15.1. Target Mode now reuses the connection to the remote system, which greatly speeds up the remote Chef Infra run. There is also now support for Target Mode in the systemd_unit, log, ruby_block, and breakpoint resources. Keep in mind that when using ruby_block with Target Mode that the Ruby code in the block will execute locally as there is not necessarily a Ruby runtime on the remote host.

Ohai 15.1

Ohai has been updated to 15.1 with the following changes:

  • The Shard plugin properly uses the machine’s machinename, serial, and uuid attributes to generate the shard value. The plugin also no longer throws an exception on macOS hosts. Thanks @michel-slm for these fixes.
  • The Virtualbox plugin has been enhanced to gather information on running guests, storage, and networks when VirtualBox is installed on a node. Thanks @freakinhippie for this new capability.
  • Ohai no longer fails to gather interface information on Solaris in some rare conditions. Thanks @devoptimist for this fix.

Chef InSpec 4.6.4

Chef InSpec has been updated from 4.3.2 to 4.6.4 with the following changes:

  • InSpec Attributes have now been renamed to Inputs to avoid confusion with Chef Infra attributes.
  • A new InSpec plugin type of Input has been added for defining new input types. See the InSpec Plugins documentation for more information on writing these plugins.
  • InSpec no longer prints errors to the stdout when passing --format json.
  • When fetching profiles from GitHub, the URL can now include periods.
  • The performance of InSpec startup has been improved.

Chef Infra Client 15.0.300

This release includes critical bugfixes for the 15.0 release:

  • Fix knife bootstrap over SSH when requiretty is configured on the host.
  • Added the --chef-license CLI flag to chef-apply and chef-solo commands.

Chef Infra Client 15.0.298

This release includes critical bugfixes for the 15.0 release:

  • Allow accepting the license on non-interactive Windows sessions
  • Resolve license acceptance failures on Windows 2012 R2
  • Improve some knife and chef-client help text
  • Properly handle session_timeout default value in knife bootstrap
  • Avoid failures due to Train::Transports::SSHFailed class not being loaded in knife bootstrap
  • Resolve failures using the ca_trust_file option with knife bootstrap

Chef Infra Client 15.0.293

Chef Client is now Chef Infra Client

Chef Client has a new name, but don’t worry, it’s the same Chef Client you’ve grown used to. You’ll notice new branding throughout the application, help, and documentation but the command line name of chef-client remains the same.

Chef EULA

Chef Infra Client requires an EULA to be accepted by users before it can run. Users can accept the EULA in a variety of ways:

  • chef-client --chef-license accept
  • chef-client --chef-license accept-no-persist
  • CHEF_LICENSE="accept" chef-client
  • CHEF_LICENSE="accept-no-persist" chef-client

Finally, if users run chef-client without any of these options, they will receive an interactive prompt asking for license acceptance. If the license is accepted, a marker file will be written to the filesystem unless accept-no-persist is specified. Once this marker file is persisted, users no longer need to set any of these flags.

See our Frequently Asked Questions document for more information on the EULA and license acceptance.

New Features / Functionality

Target Mode Prototype

Chef Infra Client 15 adds a prototype for a new method of executing resources called Target Mode. Target Mode allows a Chef Infra Client run to manage a remote system over SSH or another protocol supported by the Train library. This support includes platforms that we currently support like Ubuntu Linux, but also allows for configuring other architectures and platforms, such as switches that do not have native builds of Chef Infra Client. Target Mode maintains a separate node object for each target and allows you to manage that node using existing patterns that you currently use.

As of this release, only the execute resource and guards are supported, but modifying existing resources or writing new resources to support Target Mode is relatively easy. Using Target Mode is as easy as running chef-client --target hostname. The authentication credentials should be stored in your local ~/.chef/credentials file with the hostname of the target node as the profile name. Each key/value pair is passed to Train for authentication.

Data Collection Ground-Up Refactor

Chef Infra Client’s Data Collection subsystem is used to report node changes during client runs to Chef Automate or other reporting systems. For Chef Infra Client 15, we performed a ground-up rewrite of this subsystem, which greatly improves the data reported to Chef Automate and ensures data is delivered even in the toughest of failure conditions.

copy_properties_from in Custom Resources

A new copy_properties_from method for custom resources allows you copy properties from your custom resource into other resources you are calling, so you can avoid unnecessarily repeating code.

To inherit all the properties of another resource:

resource_name :my_resource

property :mode, String, default: '777'
property :owner, String, default: 'app_user'
property :group, String, default: 'admins'

directory '/etc/myapp' do
  copy_properties_from new_resource
  recursive true
end

To selectively inherit certain properties from a resource:

resource_name :my_resource

property :mode, String, default: '777'
property :owner, String, default: 'app_user'
property :group, String, default: 'admins'

directory '/etc/myapp' do
  copy_properties_from(new_resource, :owner, :group, :mode)
  mode '755'
  recursive true
end

ed25519 SSH key support

Our underlying SSH implementation has been updated to support the new ed25519 SSH key format. This means you will be able to use knife bootstrap and knife ssh on hosts that only support this new key format.

Allow Using –delete-entire-chef-repo in Chef Local Mode

Chef Solo’s --delete-entire-chef-repo option has been extended to work in Local Mode as well. Be warned that this flag does exactly what it states, and when used incorrectly, can result in loss of work.

New Resources

archive_file resource

Use the archive_file resource to decompress multiple archive formats without the need for compression tools on the host.

See the archive_file documentation for more information.

windows_uac resource

Use the windows_uac resource to configure UAC settings on Windows hosts.

See the windows_uac documentation for more information.

windows_dfs_folder resource

Use the windows_dfs_folder resource to create and delete Windows DFS folders.

See the windows_dfs_folder documentation for more information.

windows_dfs_namespace resources

Use the windows_dfs_namespace resource to create and delete Windows DFS namespaces.

See the windows_dfs_namespace documentation for more information.

windows_dfs_server resources

Use the windows_dfs_server resource to configure Windows DFS server settings.

See the windows_dfs_server documentation for more information.

windows_dns_record resource

Use the windows_dns_record resource to create or delete DNS records.

See the windows_dns_record documentation for more information.

windows_dns_zone resource

Use the windows_dns_zone resource to create or delete DNS zones.

See the windows_dns_zone documentation for more information.

snap_package resource

Use the snap_package resource to install snap packages on Ubuntu hosts.

See the snap_package documentation for more information.

Resource Improvements

windows_task

The windows_task resource now supports the Start When Available option with a new start_when_available property.

locale

The locale resource now allows setting all possible LC_* environmental variables.

directory

The directory resource now property supports passing deny_rights :write on Windows nodes.

windows_service

The windows_service resource has been improved to prevent accidentally reverting a service back to default settings in a subsequent definition.

This example will no longer result in the MyApp service reverting to default RunAsUser:

windows_service 'MyApp' do
  run_as_user 'MyAppsUser'
  run_as_password 'MyAppsUserPassword'
  startup_type :automatic
  delayed_start true
  action [:configure, :start]
end

...

windows_service 'MyApp' do
  startup_type :automatic
  action [:configure, :start]
end

Ruby 2.6.3

Chef now ships with Ruby 2.6.3. This new version of Ruby improves performance and includes many new features to make more advanced Chef usage easier. See https://www.rubyguides.com/2018/11/ruby-2-6-new-features/ for a list of some of the new functionality.

Ohai Improvements

Improved Linux Platform / Platform Family Detection

Platform and platform_family detection on Linux has been rewritten to utilize the latest config files on modern Linux distributions before falling back to slower and fragile legacy detection methods. Ohai will now begin by parsing the contents of /etc/os-release for OS information if available. This feature improves the reliability of detection on modern distros and allows detection of new distros as they are released.

With this change, we now detect sles_sap as a member of the suse platform_family. Additionally, this change corrects our detection of the platform_version on Cisco Nexus switches where previously the build number was incorrectly appended to the version string.

Improved Virtualization Detection

Hypervisor detection on multiple platforms has been updated to use DMI data and a single set of hypervisors. This greatly improves the detection of hypervisors on Windows, BSD and Solaris platforms. It also means that as new hypervisor detection is added in the future, we will automatically support the majority of platforms.

Fix Windows 2016 FQDN Detection

Ohai 14 incorrectly detected a Windows 2016 node’s fqdn as the node’s hostname. Ohai 15 now correctly reports the FQDN value.

Improved Memory Usage

Ohai now uses less memory due to internal optimization of how we track plugin information.

FIPS Detection Improvements

The FIPS plugin now uses the built-in FIPS detection in Ruby for improved detection.

New Deprecations

knife cookbook site deprecated in favor of knife supermarket

The knife cookbook site command has been deprecated in favor of the knife supermarket command. knife cookbook site will now produce a warning message. In Chef Infra Client 16, we will remove the knife cookbook site command entirely.

locale LC_ALL property

The LC_ALL property in the locale resource has been deprecated as the usage of this environmental variable is not recommended by distribution maintainers.

Breaking Changes

Knife Bootstrap

Knife bootstrap has been entirely rewritten. Native support for Windows bootstrapping is now a part of the main knife bootstrap command. This marks the deprecation of the knife-windows plugin’s bootstrap behavior. This change also addresses CVE-2015-8559: The knife bootstrap command in chef leaks the validator.pem private RSA key to /var/log/messages.

Important: knife bootstrap can bootstrap all supported versions of Chef Infra Client. Older versions may continue to work as far back as 12.20.

In order to accommodate a combined bootstrap that supports both SSH and WinRM, some CLI flags have been added, removed, or changed. Using the changed options will result in deprecation warnings, but knife bootstrap will accept those options unless otherwise noted. Using removed options will cause the command to fail.

New Flags

FlagDescription
–max-wait SECONDSMaximum time to wait for initial connection to be established.
–winrm-basic-auth-onlyPerform only Basic Authentication to the target WinRM node.
–connection-protocol PROTOCOLConnection protocol to use. Valid values are ‘winrm’ and ‘ssh’. Default is ‘ssh’.
–connection-userUser to authenticate as, regardless of protocol.
–connection-passwordPassword to authenticate as, regardless of protocol.
–connection-portPort to connect to, regardless of protocol.
–ssh-verify-host-key VALUEVerify host key. Default is ‘always’. Valid values are ‘accept’, ‘accept_new’, ‘accept_new_or_local_tunnel’, and ’never’.

Changed Flags

FlagNew OptionNotes
–[no-]host-key-verify–ssh-verify-host-key VALUESee above for valid values.
–forward-agent–ssh-forward-agent
–session-timeout MINUTES–session-timeout SECONDSNew for ssh, existing for winrm. The unit has changed from MINUTES to SECONDS for consistency with other timeouts.
–ssh-password–connection-password
–ssh-port–connection-portknife[:ssh_port] config setting remains available.
–ssh-user–connection-userknife[:ssh_user] config setting remains available.
–ssl-peer-fingerprint–winrm-ssl-peer-fingerprint
–prerelease–channel CHANNELThis now allows you to specify the channel that Chef Infra Client gets installed from. Valid values are stable, current, and unstable. ‘current’ has the same effect as using the old –prerelease.
–winrm-authentication-protocol=PROTO–winrm-auth-method=AUTH-METHODValid values: plaintext, kerberos, ssl, negotiate
–winrm-password–connection-password
–winrm-port–connection-portknife[:winrm_port] config setting remains available.
–winrm-ssl-verify-mode MODE–winrm-no-verify-certMode is not accepted. When flag is present, SSL cert will not be verified. Same as original mode of ‘verify_none’. [1]
–winrm-transport TRANSPORT–winrm-sslUse this flag if the target host is accepts WinRM connections over SSL. [1]
–winrm-user–connection-userknife[:winrm_user] config setting remains available.
–winrm-session-timeout–session-timeoutNow available for bootstrapping over SSH as well

[1] These flags do not have an automatic mapping of old flag -> new flag. The new flag must be used.

Removed Flags

FlagNotes
–kerberos-keytab-fileThis option existed but was not implemented.
–winrm-codepageThis was used under knife-windows because bootstrapping was performed over a cmd shell. It is now invoked from powershell, so this option is no longer used.
–winrm-shellThis option was ignored for bootstrap.
–install-as-serviceInstalling Chef Infra Client as a service is not supported.

Usage Changes

Instead of specifying protocol with -o, it is also possible to prefix the target hostname with the protocol in URL format. For example:

knife bootstrap example.com -o ssh
knife bootstrap ssh://example.com
knife bootstrap example.com -o winrm
knife bootstrap winrm://example.com

Chef Infra Client packages remove /opt/chef before installation

Upon upgrading Chef Infra Client packages, the /opt/chef directory is removed. This ensures any chef_gem installed gem versions and other modifications to /opt/chef will removed to prevent upgrade issues. Due to technical details with rpm script execution order, the implementation involves a a pre-installation script that wipes /opt/chef before every install, and is done consistently this way on every package manager.

Users who are properly managing customizations to /opt/chef through Chef recipes would not be affected, because their customizations will still be installed by the new package.

You will see a warning that the /opt/chef directory will be removed during the package installation process.

powershell_script now allows overriding the default flags

We now append powershell_script user flags to the default flags rather than the other way around, which made user flags override the defaults. This is the correct behavior, but it may cause scripts to execute differently than in previous Chef Infra Client releases.

Package provider allow_downgrade is now true by default

We reversed the default behavior to allow_downgrade true for our package providers. To override this setting to prevent downgrades, use the allow_downgrade false flag. This behavior change will mostly affect users of the rpm and zypper package providers.

In this example, the code below should now read as asserting that the package foo must be version 1.2.3 after that resource is run.:

package "foo" do
  version "1.2.3"
end

The code below is now what is necessary to specify that foo must be version 1.2.3 or higher. Note that the yum provider supports syntax like package "foo > 1.2.3", which should be used and is preferred over using allow_downgrade.

package "foo" do
  allow_downgrade false
  version "1.2.3"
end

Node Attributes deep merge nil values

Writing a nil to a precedence level in the node object now acts like any other value and can be used to override values back to nil.

For example:

chef (15.0.53)> node.default["foo"] = "bar"
 => "bar"
chef (15.0.53)> node.override["foo"] = nil
 => nil
chef (15.0.53)> node["foo"]
 => nil

In prior versions of chef-client, the nil set in the override level would be completely ignored and the value of node["foo"] would have been “bar”.

http_disable_auth_on_redirect now enabled

The Chef config http_disable_auth_on_redirect has been changed from false to true. In Chef Infra Client 16, this config option will be removed altogether and Chef Infra Client will always disable auth on redirect.

knife cookbook test removal

The knife cookbook test command has been removed. This command would often report non-functional cookbooks as functional, and has been superseded by functionality in other testing tools such as cookstyle, foodcritic, and chefspec.

ohai resource’s ohai_name property removal

The ohai resource contained a non-functional ohai_name property, which has been removed.

knife status –hide-healthy flag removal

The knife status --hide-healthy flag has been removed. Users should run knife status --hide-by-mins MINS instead.

Cookbook shadowing in Chef Solo Legacy Mode Removed

Previously, if a user provided multiple cookbook paths to Chef Solo that contained cookbooks with the same name, Chef Solo would combine these into a single cookbook. This merging of two cookbooks often caused unexpected outcomes and has been removed.

Removal of unused route resource properties

The route resource contained multiple unused properties that have been removed. If you previously set networking, networking_ipv6, hostname, domainname, or domain, they would be ignored. In Chef Infra Client 15, setting these properties will throw an error.

FreeBSD pkg provider removal

Support for the FreeBSD pkg package system in the freebsd_package resource has been removed. FreeBSD 10 replaced the pkg system with pkg-ng system, so this removal only impacts users of EOL FreeBSD releases.

require_recipe removal

The legacy require_recipe method in recipes has been removed. This method was replaced with include_recipe in Chef Infra Client 10, and a FoodCritic rule has been warning to update cookbooks for multiple years.

Legacy shell_out methods removed

In Chef Infra Client 14, many of the more obscure shell_out methods used in LWRPs and custom resources were combined into the standard shell_out and shell_out! methods. The legacy methods were infrequently used and Chef Infra Client 14/Foodcritic both contained deprecation warnings for these methods. The following methods will now throw an error: shell_out_compact, shell_out_compact!, shell_out_compact_timeout, shell_out_compact_timeout!, shell_out_with_systems_locale, and shell_out_with_systems_locale!.

knife bootstrap –identity_file removal

The knife bootstrap --identity_file flag has been removed. This flag was deprecated in Chef Infra Client 12, and users should now use the --ssh-identity-file flag instead.

knife user support for Chef Infra Server < 12 removed

The knife user command no longer supports the open source Chef Infra Server version prior to 12.

attributes in metadata.rb

Chef Infra Client no longer processes attributes in the metadata.rb file. Attributes could be defined in the metadata.rb file as a form of documentation, which would be shown when running knife cookbook show COOKBOOK_NAME. Often, these attribute definitions would become out of sync with the attributes in the actual attributes files. Chef Infra Client 15 will no longer show these attributes when running knife cookbook show COOKBOOK_NAME and will instead throw a warning message upon upload. Foodcritic has warned against the use of attributes in the metadata.rb file since April 2017.

Node attributes array bugfix

Chef Infra Client 15 includes a bugfix for incorrect node attribute behavior involving a rare usage of arrays, which may impact users who depend on the incorrect behavior.

Previously, you could set an attribute like this:

node.default["foo"] = []
node.default["foo"] << { "bar" => "baz }

This would result in a Hash, instead of a VividMash, inserted into the AttrArray, so that:

node.default["foo"][0]["bar"] # gives the correct result
node.default["foo"][0][:bar]  # does not work due to the sub-Hash not
                              # converting keys

The new behavior uses a Mash so that the attributes will work as expected.

Ohai’s system_profile plugin for macOS removed

We removed the system_profile plugin because it incorrectly returned data on modern macOS systems. If you relied on this plugin, you’ll want to update recipes to use node['hardware'] instead, which correctly returns the same data, but in a more easily consumed format. Removing this plugin speeds up Ohai and Chef Infra Client by ~3 seconds, and dramatically reduces the size of the node object on the Chef Infra Server.

Ohai’s Ohai::Util::Win32::GroupHelper class has been removed

We removed the Ohai::Util::Win32::GroupHelper helper class from Ohai. This class was intended for use internally in several Windows plugins, but it was never marked private in the codebase. If any of your Ohai plugins rely on this helper class, you will need to update your plugins for Ohai 15.

Audit Mode

Chef Infra Client’s Audit mode was introduced in 2015 as a beta that needed to be enabled via client.rb. Its functionality has been superseded by Chef InSpec and has been removed.

Ohai system_profiler plugin removal

The system_profiler plugin, which ran on macOS systems, has been removed. This plugin took longer to run than all other plugins on macOS combined, and no longer produced usable information on modern macOS releases. If you’re looking for similar information, it can now be found in the hardware plugin.

Ohai::Util::Win32::GroupHelper helper removal

The deprecated Ohai::Util::Win32::GroupHelper helper has been removed from Ohai. Any custom Ohai plugins using this helper will need to be updated.

Ohai::System.refresh_plugins method removal

The refresh_plugins method in the Ohai::System class has been removed as it has been unused for multiple major Ohai releases. If you are programmatically using Ohai in your own Ruby application, you will need to update your code to use the load_plugins method instead.

Ohai Microsoft VirtualPC / VirtualServer detection removal

The Virtualization plugin will no longer detect systems running on the circa ~2005 VirtualPC or VirtualServer hypervisors. These hypervisors were long ago deprecated by Microsoft and support can no longer be tested.

Chef Infra Client 14.15.6

Updated Resources

ifconfig

The ifconfig resource has been updated to properly support interfaces with a hyphen in their name. This is most commonly encountered with bridge interfaces that are named br-1234. Additionally, the ifconfig resource now supports the latest ifconfig binaries found in OS releases such as Debian 10.

windows_task

The windows_task resource now supports the Start When Available option with a new start_when_available property. Issues that prevented the resource from being idempotent on Windows 2016 and 2019 hosts have also been resolved.

Platform Support

New Platforms

Chef Infra Client is now tested against the following platforms with packages available on downloads.chef.io:

  • Ubuntu 20.04
  • Ubuntu 18.04 aarch64
  • Debian 10

Retired Platforms

  • Chef Infra Clients packages are no longer produced for Windows 2008 R2 as this release reached its end of life on Jan 14th, 2020.
  • Chef Infra Client packages are no longer produced for RHEL 6 on the s390x platform.

Security Updates

OpenSSL

OpenSSL has been updated to 1.0.2u to resolve CVE-2019-1551

Ruby

Ruby has been updated from 2.5.7 to 2.5.8 to resolve the following CVEs:

  • CVE-2020-16255: Unsafe Object Creation Vulnerability in JSON (Additional fix)
  • CVE-2020-10933: Heap exposure vulnerability in the socket library

Chef Infra Client 14.14.29

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed an error with the service and systemd_unit resources which would try to re-enable services with an indirect status.
  • The systemd_unit resource now logs at the info level.
  • Fixed knife config when it returned a TypeError: no implicit conversion of nil into String error.

Security Updates

libxslt

libxslt has been updated to 1.1.34 to resolve CVE-2019-13118.

Chef Infra Client 14.14.25

Bug Fixes

  • Resolved a regression introduced in Chef Infra Client 14.14.14 that broke installation of gems in some scenarios
  • Fixed Habitat packaging of chef-client artifacts
  • Fixed crash in knife when displaying a missing profile error message
  • Fixed knife subcommand –help not working as intended for some commands
  • Fixed knife ssh interactive mode exit error
  • Fixed for :day option not accepting integer value in the windows_task resource
  • Fixed for user resource not handling a GID if it is specified as a string
  • Fixed the ifconfig resource to support interfaces with a - in the name

Chef Infra Client 14.14.14

Platform Updates

Newly Supported Platforms

The following platforms are now packaged and tested for Chef Infra Client:

  • Red Hat 8
  • FreeBSD 12
  • macOS 10.15
  • Windows 2019
  • AIX 7.2

Deprecated Platforms

The following platforms have reached EOL status and are no longer packaged or tested for Chef Infra Client:

  • FreeBSD 10
  • macOS 10.12
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11
  • Ubuntu 14.04

See Chef’s Platform End-of-Life Policy for more information on when Chef ends support for an OS release.

Updated Resources

dnf_package

The dnf_package resource has been updated to fully support RHEL 8.

zypper_package

The zypper_package resource has been updated to properly update packages when using the :upgrade action.

remote_file

The remote_file resource now properly shows download progress when the show_progress property is set to true.

Improvements

Custom Resource Unified Mode

Chef Infra Client 14.14 introduces an exciting new way to easily write custom resources that mix built-in Chef Infra resources with Ruby code. Previously, custom resources would use Chef Infra’s standard compile and converge phases, which meant that Ruby would be evaluated first and then the resources would be converged. This often results in confusing and undesirable behavior when you are trying to mix resources with Ruby logic. Many custom resource authors would attempt to get around this by forcing resources to run at compile time so that all the code in their resource would execute during the compile phase.

An example of forcing a resource to run at compile time:

resource_name 'foo' do
  action :nothing
end.run_action(:some_action)

With unified mode, you opt in to a single phase per resource where all Ruby and Chef Infra resources are executed at once. This makes it far easier to determine how your code will be evaluated and run. Additionally, you no longer need to force any resources to run at compile time, as all code is run in the compile phase. To enable this new mode just add unified_mode true to your resources like this:

property :Some_property, String

unified_mode true

action :create do
  # some code
end

New Options for installing Ruby Gems From metadata.rb

Chef Infra Client allows gems to be specified in the cookbook metadata.rb, which can be problematic in some environments. When a cookbook is running in an airgapped environment, Chef Infra Client attempts to connect to rubygems.org even if the gem is already on the system. There are now two additional configuration options that can be set in your client.rb config: - gem_installer_bundler_options: This allows setting additional bundler options for the install such as –local to install from local cache. Example: ["–local", “–clean”]. - skip_gem_metadata_installation: If set to true skip gem metadata installation if all gems are already installed.

SLES / openSUSE 15 detection

Ohai now properly detects SLES and openSUSE 15.x. Thanks for this fix @balasankarc.

Performance Improvements

We have improved the performance of Chef Infra Client by resolving bundler errors in our packaging.

Bootstrapping Chef Infra Client 15 will no fail

Knife now fails with a descriptive error message when attempting to bootstrap nodes with Chef Infra Client 15. You will need to bootstrap these nodes using Knife from Chef Infra Client 15.x. We recommend performing this bootstrap from Chef Workstation, which includes the Knife CLI in addition to other useful tools for managing your infrastructure with Chef Infra.

Security Updates

Ruby

Ruby has been updated from 2.5.5 to 2.5.7 in order to resolve the following CVEs:

openssl

openssl has been updated from 1.0.2s to 1.0.2t in order to resolve CVE-2019-1563 and CVE-2019-1547.

nokogiri

nokogiri has been updated from 1.10.2 to 1.10.4 in order to resolve CVE-2019-5477.

Chef Infra Client 14.13.11

Updated Resources

directory

The directory has been updated to properly set the deny_rights permission on Windows. Thanks @merlinjim for reporting this issue.

service

The service resource is now idempotent on SLES 11 systems. Thanks @gsingla294 for reporting this issue.

cron

The cron resource has been updated to advise users to use the specify properties rather than passing values in as part of the environment property. This avoids a situation where a user could pass the differing values in both locations and receive unexpected results.

The link resource includes improved logging upon failure to help you debug what has failed. Thanks @jaymzh for this improvement.

template

The template resource now includes additional information when templating failures, which is particularly useful in ChefSpec. Thanks @brodock for this improvement.

delete_resource Fix

The delete_resource helper now works properly when the resource you are attempting to delete has multiple providers. Thanks @artem-sidorenko for this fix.

Helpers Help Everywhere

Various helpers have been moved into Chef Infra Client’s universal class, which makes them available anywhere in your cookbook, not just recipes. If you’ve ever been confused why something like search, powershell_out, or data_bag_item didn’t work somewhere in your code, that should be resolved now.

Deprecations

The CHEF-25 deprecation for resource collisions between cookbooks and resources in Chef Infra Client has been removed. Instead you will see a log warning that a collision has occurred, which advises you to update your run_list or cookbooks.

Updated Components

  • openssl 1.0.2r -> 1.0.2s (bugfix only release)
  • cacerts 2019-01-23 -> 2019-05-15

Chef Infra Client 14.12.9

License Acceptance Placeholder Flag

In preparation for Chef Infra Client 15.0 we’ve added a placeholder --chef-license flag to the chef-client command. This allows you to use the new --chef-license flag on both Chef Infra Client 14.12.9+ and 15+ notes without producing errors on Chef Infra Client 14.

Important Bug Fixes

  • Blacklisting and whitelisting default and override level attributes is once again possible.
  • You may now encrypt a previously unencrypted data bag.
  • Resolved a regression introduced in Chef Infra Client 14.12.3 that resulted in errors when managing Windows services

Chef Infra Client 14.12.3

Updated Resources

windows_service

The windows_service resource no longer resets credentials on a service when using the :start action without the :configure action. Thanks @jasonwbarnett for fixing this.

windows_certificate

The windows_certificate resource now imports nested certificates while importing P7B certs.

Updated Components

  • nokogiri 1.10.1 -> 1.10.2
  • ruby 2.5.3 -> 2.5.5
  • InSpec 3.7.1 -> 3.9.0
  • The unused windows-api gem is no longer bundled with Chef on Windows hosts

Chef Infra Client 14.11.21

Updated Resources

chocolatey_package

The chocolatey_package resource now uses the provided options to fetch information on available packages, which allows installation packages from private sources. Thanks @astoltz for reporting this issue.

openssl_dhparam

The openssl_dhparam resource now supports updating the dhparam file’s mode on subsequent chef-client runs. Thanks @anewb for the initial work on this fix.

mount

The mount resource now properly adds a blank line between entries in fstab to prevent mount failures on AIX.

windows_certificate

The windows_certificate resource now supports importing Base64 encoded CER certificates and nested P7B certificates. Additionally, private keys in PFX certificates are now imported along with the certificate.

windows_share

The windows_share resource has improved logic to compare the desired share path vs. the current path, which prevents the resource from incorrectly converging during each Chef run. Thanks @Xorima for this fix.

windows_task

The windows_task resource now properly clears out arguments that are no longer present when updating a task. Thanks @nmcspadden for reporting this.

InSpec 3.7.1

InSpec has been updated from 3.4.1 to 3.7.1. This new release contains improvements to the plugin system, a new config file system, and improvements to multiple resources. Additionally, profile attributes have also been renamed to inputs to prevent confusion with Chef attributes, which weren’t actually related in any way.

Updated Components

  • bundler 1.16.1 -> 1.17.3
  • libxml2 2.9.7 -> 2.9.9
  • ca-certs updated to 2019-01-22 for new roots

Security Updates

OpenSSL

OpenSSL has been updated to 1.0.2r in order to resolve CVE-2019-1559

RubyGems

RubyGems has been updated to 2.7.9 in order to resolve the following CVEs:

  • CVE-2019-8320: Delete directory using symlink when decompressing tar
  • CVE-2019-8321: Escape sequence injection vulnerability in verbose
  • CVE-2019-8322: Escape sequence injection vulnerability in gem owner
  • CVE-2019-8323: Escape sequence injection vulnerability in API response handling
  • CVE-2019-8324: Installing a malicious gem may lead to arbitrary code execution
  • CVE-2019-8325: Escape sequence injection vulnerability in errors

Chef Infra Client 14.10.9

Updated Resources

windows_certificate

The windows_certificate resource is now fully idempotent and properly imports private keys. Thanks @Xorima for reporting these issues.

apt_repository

The apt_repository resource no longer creates .gpg directory in the user’s home directory owned by root when installing repository keys. Thanks @omry for reporting this issue.

git

The git resource no longer displays the URL of the repository if the sensitive property is set.

InSpec 3.4.1

InSpec has been updated from 3.2.6 to 3.4.1. This new release adds new aws_billing_report / aws_billing_reports resources, resolves multiple bugs, and includes tons of under the hood improvements.

New Deprecations

knife cookbook site

Since Chef Infra Client 13, knife cookbook site has actually called the knife supermarket command under the hood. In Chef Infra Client 16 (April 2020), we will remove the knife cookbook site command in favor of knife supermarket.

Audit Mode

Chef Infra Client’s Audit mode was introduced in 2015 as a beta that needed to be enabled via client.rb. Its functionality has been superseded by InSpec and we will be removing this beta feature in Chef Infra Client 15 (April 2019).

Cookbook Shadowing

Cookbook shadowing was deprecated in 0.10 and will be removed in Chef Infra Client 15 (April 2019). Cookbook shadowing allowed combining cookbooks within a mono-repo, so long as the cookbooks in question had the same name and were present in both the cookbooks directory and the site-cookbooks directory.

Chef Infra Client 14.9.13

Updated Resources

group

On Windows hosts, the group resource now supports setting the comment field via a new comment property.

homebrew_cask

Two issues, which caused homebrew_cask to converge on each Chef Infra Client run, have been resolved. Thanks @jeroenj for this fix. Additionally, the resource will no longer fail if the cask_name property is specified.

homebrew_tap

The homebrew_tap resource no longer fails if the tap_name property is specified.

openssl_x509_request

The openssl_x509_request resource now properly writes out the CSR file if the path property is specified. Thank you @cpjones for reporting this issue.

powershell_package_source

powershell_package_source now suppresses warnings, which prevented properly loading the resource state, and resolves idempotency issues when both the name and source_name properties were specified. Thanks @Happycoil for this fix.

sysctl

The sysctl resource now allows slashes in the key or block name. This allows keys such as net/ipv4/conf/ens256.401/rp_filter to be used with this resource.

windows_ad_join

Errors joining the domain are now properly suppressed from the console and logs if the sensitive property is set to true. Thanks @Happycoil for this improvement.

windows_certificate

The delete action now longer fails if a certificate does not exist on the system. Additionally, certificates with special characters in their passwords will no longer fail. Thank you for reporting this @chadmccune.

windows_printer

The windows_printer resource no longer fails when creating or deleting a printer if the device_id property is specified.

windows_task

Non-system users can now run tasks without a password being specified.

Minimal Ohai Improvements

The ohai init_package plugin is now included as part of the minimal_ohai plugins set, which allows resources such as timezone to continue to function if Chef is running with the minimal number of ohai plugins.

Ruby 2.6 Support

Chef Infra Client 14.9 now supports Ruby 2.6.

InSpec 3.2.6

InSpec has been updated from 3.0.64 to 3.2.6 with improved resources for auditing. See the InSpec changelog for additional details on this new version.

powershell_exec Runtimes Bundled

The necessary VC++ runtimes for the powershell_exec helper are now bundled with Chef Infra Client to prevent failures on hosts that lacked the runtimes.

Chef Infra Client 14.8.12

Updated Resources

apt_package

The apt_package resource now supports using the allow_downgrade property to enable downgrading of packages on a node in order to meet a specified version. Thank you @whiteley for requesting this enhancement.

apt_repository

An issue was resolved in the apt_repository resource that caused the resource to fail when importing GPG keys on newer Debian releases. Thank you @EugenMayer for this fix.

dnf_package / yum_package

Initial support has been added for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. Thank you @pixdrift for this fix.

gem_package

gem_package now supports installing gems into Ruby 2.6 or later installations.

windows_ad_join

windows_ad_join now uses the UPN format for usernames, which prevents some failures authenticating to the domain.

windows_certificate

An issue was resolved in the :acl_add action of the windows_certificate resource, which caused the resource to fail. Thank you @shoekstra for reporting this issue.

windows_feature

The windows_feature resource now allows for the installation of DISM features that have been fully removed from a system. Thank you @zanecodes for requesting this enhancement.

windows_share

Multiple issues were resolved in windows_share, which caused the resource to either fail or update the share state on every Chef Infra Client run. Thank you @chadmccune for reporting several of these issues and @derekgroh for one of the fixes.

windows_task

A regression was resolved that prevented ChefSpec from testing the windows_task resource in Chef Infra Client 14.7. Thank you @jjustice6 for reporting this issue.

Ohai 14.8

Improved Virtualization Detection

Hyper-V Hypervisor Detection

Detection of Linux guests running on Hyper-V has been improved. In addition, Linux guests on Hyper-V hypervisors will also now detect their hypervisor’s hostname. Thank you @safematix for contributing this enhancement.

Example node['virtualization'] data:

{
  "systems": {
    "hyperv": "guest"
  },
  "system": "hyperv",
  "role": "guest",
  "hypervisor_host": "hyper_v.example.com"
}

LXC / LXD Detection

On Linux systems running lxc or lxd containers, the lxc/lxd virtualization system will now properly populate the node['virtualization']['systems'] attribute.

BSD Hypervisor Detection

BSD-based systems can now detect guests running on KVM and Amazon’s hypervisor without the need for the dmidecode package.

New Platform Support

  • Ohai now properly detects the openSUSE 15.X platform. Thank you @megamorf for reporting this issue.
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop now identified as platform_family ‘suse’
  • XCP-NG is now identified as platform ‘xcp’ and platform_family ‘rhel’. Thank you @heyjodom for submitting this enhancement.
  • Mangeia Linux is now identified as platform ‘mangeia’ and platform_family ‘mandriva’
  • Antergos Linux now identified as platform_family ‘arch’
  • Manjaro Linux now identified as platform_family ‘arch’

Security Updates

OpenSSL

OpenSSL has been updated to 1.0.2q in order to resolve:

  • Microarchitecture timing vulnerability in ECC scalar multiplication CVE-2018-5407
  • Timing vulnerability in DSA signature generation (CVE-2018-0734)

Chef Infra Client 14.7.17

New Resources

windows_firewall_rule

Use the windows_firewall_rule resource create or delete Windows Firewall rules.

See the windows_firewall_rule documentation for more information.

Thank you Schuberg Philis for transferring us the windows_firewall cookbook and to @Happycoil for porting it to chef-client with a significant refactoring.

windows_share

Use the windows_share resource create or delete Windows file shares.

See the windows_share documentation for more information.

windows_certificate

Use the windows_certificate resource add, remove, or verify certificates in the system or user certificate stores.

See the windows_certificate documentation for more information.

Updated Resources

dmg_package

The dmg_package resource has been refactored to improve idempotency and properly support accepting a DMG’s EULA with the accept_eula property.

kernel_module

Kernel_module now only runs the initramfs update once per Chef run to greatly speed up chef-client runs when multiple kernel_module resources are used. Thank you @tomdoherty for this improvement.

mount

The supports property once again allows passing supports data as an array. This matches the behavior present in Chef Infra Client 12.

timezone

macOS support has been added to the timezone resource.

windows_task

A regression in Chef Infra Client 14.6’s windows_task resource which resulted in tasks being created with the “Run only when user is logged on” option being set when created with a specific user other than SYSTEM, has been resolved.

Chef Infra Client 14.6.47

Smaller Package and Install Size

Both Chef packages and on disk installations have been greatly reduced in size by trimming unnecessary installation files. This has reduced our package size on macOS/Linux by ~50% and Windows by ~12%. With this change Chef Infra Client 14 is now smaller than a legacy Chef Infra Client 10 package.

New Resources

timezone

Chef now includes the timezone resource from @dragonsmith’s timezone_lwrp cookbook. This resource supports setting a Linux node’s timezone. Thank you @dragonsmith for allowing us to include this out of the box in Chef.

Example:

timezone 'UTC'

Updated Resources

windows_task

The windows_task resource has been updated to support localized system users and groups on non-English nodes. Thanks @jugatsu for making this possible.

user

The user resource now includes a new full_name property for Windows hosts, which allows specifying a user’s full name.

Example:

user 'jdoe' do
  full_name 'John Doe'
end

zypper_package

The zypper_package resource now includes a new global_options property. This property can be used to specify one or more options for the zypper command line that are global in context.

Example:

package 'sssd' do
   global_options '-D /tmp/repos.d/'
end

InSpec 3.0

InSpec has been updated to version 3.0 with addition resources, exception handling, and a new plugin system. See https://blog.chef.io/2018/10/16/announcing-inspec-3-0/ for details.

macOS Mojave (10.14)

Chef is now tested against macOS Mojave, and packages are now available at downloads.chef.io.

Important Bugfixes

  • Multiple bugfixes in Chef Vault have been resolved by updating chef-vault to 3.4.2
  • Invalid yum package names now gracefully fail
  • windows_ad_join now properly executes. Thank you @cpjones01 for reporting this.
  • rhsm_errata_level now properly executes. Thank you @freakinhippie for this fix.
  • registry_key now properly writes out the correct value when sensitive is specified. Thank you @josh-barker for this fix.
  • locale now properly executes on RHEL 6 and Amazon Linux 201X.

Ohai 14.6

Filesystem Plugin on AIX and Solaris

AIX and Solaris now ship with a filesystem2 plugin that updates the filesystem data to match that of Linux, macOS, and BSD hosts. This new data structure makes accessing filesystem data in recipes easier and especially improves the layout and depth of data on ZFS filesystems. In Chef Infra Client 15 (April 2019) we will begin writing this same format of data to the existing node['filesystem'] namespace. In Chef Infra Client 16 (April 2020) we will remove the node['filesystem2'] namespace, completing the transition to the new format. Thank you @jaymzh for continuing the updates to our filesystem plugins with this change.

macOS Improvements

The system_profile plugin has been improved to skip over unnecessary data, which reduces macOS node sizes on the Chef Infra Server. Additionally the CPU plugin has been updated to limit what sysctl values it polls, which prevents hanging on some system configurations.

SLES 15 Detection

SLES 15 is now correctly detected as the platform “suse” instead of “sles”. This matches the behavior of SLES 11 and 12 hosts.

New Deprecations

system_profile Ohai plugin removal

The system_profile plugin will be removed from Chef/Ohai 15 in April 2019. This plugin does not correctly return data on modern Mac systems. Additionally the same data is provided by the hardware plugin, which has a format that is simpler to consume. Removing this plugin will reduce Ohai return by ~3 seconds and greatly reduce the size of the node object on the Chef server.

Security Updates

Ruby 2.5.3

Ruby has been updated to from 2.5.1 to 2.5.3 to resolve multiple CVEs and bugs:

Chef Infra Client 14.5.33

This release resolves a regression that caused the windows_ad_join resource to fail to run. It also makes the following additional fixes:

  • The ohai resource’s unused ohai_name property has been deprecated. This will be removed in Chef Infra Client 15.0.
  • Error messages in the windows_feature resources have been improved.
  • The windows_service resource will no longer log potentially sensitive information if the sensitive property is used.

Thanks to @cpjones01, @kitforbes, and @dgreeninger for their help with this release.

Chef Infra Client 14.5.27

New Resources

We’ve added new resources to Chef Infra Client 14.5. Cookbooks using these resources will continue to take precedent until the Chef Infra Client 15.0 release

windows_workgroup

Use the windows_workgroup resource to join or change a Windows host workgroup.

See the windows_workgroup documentation for more information.

Thanks @derekgroh for contributing this new resource.

locale

Use the locale resource to set the system’s locale.

See the locale documentation for more information.

Thanks @vincentaubert for contributing this new resource.

Updated Resources

windows_ad_join

windows_ad_join now includes a new_hostname property for setting the hostname for the node upon joining the domain.

Thanks @derekgroh for contributing this new property.

InSpec 2.2.102

InSpec has been updated from 2.2.70 to 2.2.102. This new version includes the following improvements:

  • Support for using ERB templating within the .yml files
  • HTTP basic auth support for fetching dependent profiles
  • A new global attributes concept
  • Better error handling with Automate reporting
  • Vendor command now vendors profiles when using path://

Ohai 14.5

Windows Improvements

Detection for the root_group attribute on Windows has been simplified and improved to properly support non-English systems. With this change, we’ve also deprecated the Ohai::Util::Win32::GroupHelper helper, which is no longer necessary. Thanks to @jugatsu for putting this together.

We’ve also added a new encryption_status attribute to volumes on Windows. Thanks to @kmf for suggesting this new feature.

Configuration Improvements

The timeout period for communicating with OpenStack metadata servers can now be configured with the openstack_metadata_timeout config option. Thanks to @sawanoboly for this improvement.

Ohai now properly handles relative paths to config files when running on the command line. This means commands like ohai -c ../client.rb will now properly use your config values.

Security updates

Rubyzip

The rubyzip gem has been updated to 1.2.2 to resolve CVE-2018-1000544

Chef Infra Client 14.4.56

Knife configuration profile management commands

Several new commands have been added under knife config to help manage multiple profiles in your credentials file.

knife config get-profile displays the active profile.

knife config use-profile PROFILE sets the workstation-level default profile. You can still override this setting with the --profile command line option or the $CHEF_PROFILE environment variable.

knife config list-profiles displays all your available profiles along with summary information on each.

$ knife config get-profile
staging
$ knife config use-profile prod
Set default profile to prod
$ knife config list-profiles
 Profile  Client  Key               Server
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 staging  myuser  ~/.chef/user.pem  https://example.com/organizations/staging
*prod     myuser  ~/.chef/user.pem  https://example.com/organizations/prod

Thank you @coderanger for this contribution.

New Resources

The following new previous resources were added to Chef Infra Client 14.4. Cookbooks with the same resources will continue to take precedent until the Chef Infra Client 15.0 release

cron_d

Use the cron_d resource to manage cron definitions in /etc/cron.d. This is similar to the cron resource, but it does not use the monolithic /etc/crontab. file.

cron_access

Use the cron_access resource to manage the /etc/cron.allow and /etc/cron.deny files. This resource previously shipped in the cron community cookbook and has fully backwards compatibility with the previous cron_manage definition in that cookbook.

openssl_x509_certificate

Use the openssl_x509_certificate resource to generate signed or self-signed, PEM-formatted x509 certificates. If no existing key is specified, the resource automatically generates a passwordless key with the certificate. If a CA private key and certificate are provided, the certificate will be signed with them. This resource previously shipped in the openssl cookbook as openssl_x509 and is fully backwards compatible with the legacy resource name.

Thank you @juju482 for updating this resource!

openssl_x509_request

Use the openssl_x509_request resource to generate PEM-formatted x509 certificates requests. If no existing key is specified, the resource automatically generates a passwordless key with the certificate.

Thank you @juju482 for contributing this resource.

openssl_x509_crl

Use the openssl_x509_crll resource to generate PEM-formatted x509 certificate revocation list (CRL) files.

Thank you @juju482 for contributing this resource.

openssl_ec_private_key

Use the openssl_ec_private_key resource to generate ec private key files. If a valid ec key file can be opened at the specified location, no new file will be created.

Thank you @juju482 for contributing this resource.

openssl_ec_public_key

Use the openssl_ec_public_key resource to generate ec public key files given a private key.

Thank you @juju482 for contributing this resource.

Resource improvements

windows_package

The windows_package resource now supports setting the sensitive property to avoid showing errors if a package install fails.

sysctl

The sysctl resource will now update the on-disk sysctl.d file even if the current sysctl value matches the desired value.

windows_task

The windows_task resource now supports setting the task priority of the scheduled task with a new priority property. Additionally windows_task now supports managing the behavior of task execution when a system is on battery using new disallow_start_if_on_batteries and stop_if_going_on_batteries properties.

ifconfig

The ifconfig resource now supports setting the interface’s VLAN via a new vlan property on RHEL platform_family and setting the interface’s gateway via a new gateway property on RHEL/Debian platform_family.

Thank you @tomdoherty for this contribution.

route

The route resource now supports additional RHEL platform_family systems as well as Amazon Linux.

systemd_unit

The systemd_unit resource now supports specifying options multiple times in the content hash. Instead of setting the value to a string you can now set it to an array of strings.

Thank you @dbresson for this contribution.

Security Updates

OpenSSL

OpenSSL updated to 1.0.2p to resolve:

Chef Infra Client 14.3.37

New Preview Resources Concept

This release of Chef introduces the concept of Preview Resources. Preview resources behave the same as a standard resource built into Chef, except Chef will load a resource with the same name from a cookbook instead of the built-in preview resource.

What does this mean for you? It means we can introduce new resources in Chef without breaking existing behavior in your infrastructure. For instance if you have a cookbook with a resource named manage_everything and a future version of Chef introduced a preview resource named manage_everything you will continue to receive the resource from your cookbook. That way outside of a major release your won’t experience a potentially breaking behavior change from the newly included resource.

Then when we perform our yearly major release we’ll remove the preview designation from all resources, and the built in resources will take precedence over resources with the same names in cookbooks.

New Resources

chocolatey_config

Use the chocolatey_config resource to add or remove Chocolatey configuration keys."

Actions

  • set - Sets a Chocolatey config value.
  • unset - Unsets a Chocolatey config value.

Properties

  • config_key - The name of the config. We’ll use the resource’s name if this isn’t provided.
  • value - The value to set.

chocolatey_source

Use the chocolatey_source resource to add or remove Chocolatey sources.

Actions

  • add - Adds a Chocolatey source.
  • remove - Removes a Chocolatey source.

Properties

  • source_name - The name of the source to add. We’ll use the resource’s name if this isn’t provided.
  • source - The source URL.
  • bypass_proxy - Whether or not to bypass the system’s proxy settings to access the source.
  • priority - The priority level of the source.

powershell_package_source

Use the powershell_package_source resource to register a PowerShell package repository.

Actions

  • register - Registers and updates the PowerShell package source.
  • unregister - Unregisters the PowerShell package source.

Properties

  • source_name - The name of the package source.
  • url - The url to the package source.
  • trusted - Whether or not to trust packages from this source.
  • provider_name - The package management provider for the source. It supports the following providers: ‘Programs’, ‘msi’, ‘NuGet’, ‘msu’, ‘PowerShellGet’, ‘psl’ and ‘chocolatey’.
  • publish_location - The url where modules will be published to for this source. Only valid if the provider is ‘PowerShellGet’.
  • script_source_location - The url where scripts are located for this source. Only valid if the provider is ‘PowerShellGet’.
  • script_publish_location - The location where scripts will be published to for this source. Only valid if the provider is ‘PowerShellGet’.

kernel_module

Use the kernel_module resource to manage kernel modules on Linux systems. This resource can load, unload, blacklist, install, and uninstall modules.

Actions

  • install - Load kernel module, and ensure it loads on reboot.
  • uninstall - Unload a kernel module and remove module config, so it doesn’t load on reboot.
  • blacklist - Blacklist a kernel module.
  • load - Load a kernel module.
  • unload - Unload kernel module

Properties

  • modname - The name of the kernel module.
  • load_dir - The directory to load modules from.
  • unload_dir - The modprobe.d directory.

ssh_known_hosts_entry

Use the ssh_known_hosts_entry resource to add an entry for the specified host in /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts or a user’s known hosts file if specified.

Actions

  • create - Create an entry in the ssh_known_hosts file.
  • flush - Immediately flush the entries to the config file. Without this the actual writing of the file is delayed in the Chef run so all entries can be accumulated before writing the file out.

Properties

  • host - The host to add to the known hosts file.
  • key - An optional key for the host. If not provided this will be automatically determined.
  • key_type - The type of key to store.
  • port - The server port that the ssh-keyscan command will use to gather the public key.
  • timeout - The timeout in seconds for ssh-keyscan.
  • mode - The file mode for the ssh_known_hosts file.
  • owner- The file owner for the ssh_known_hosts file.
  • group - The file group for the ssh_known_hosts file.
  • hash_entries - Hash the hostname and addresses in the ssh_known_hosts file for privacy.
  • file_location - The location of the ssh known hosts file. Change this to set a known host file for a particular user.

New knife config get command

The knife config get command has been added to help with debugging configuration issues with knife and other tools that use the knife.rb file.

With no arguments, it will display all options you’ve set:

$ knife config get
Loading from configuration file /Users/.../.chef/knife.rb
chef_server_url: https://...
client_key:      /Users/.../.chef/user.pem
config_file:     /Users/.../.chef/knife.rb
log_level:       warn
log_location:    STDERR
node_name:       ...
validation_key:

You can also pass specific keys to only display those knife config get node_name client_key, or use --all to display everything (including options that are using the default value).

Simplification of shell_out APIs

The following helper methods have been deprecated in favor of the single shell_out helper:

  • shell_out_with_systems_locale
  • shell_out_with_timeout
  • shell_out_compact
  • shell_out_compact_timeout
  • shell_out_with_systems_locale!
  • shell_out_with_timeout!
  • shell_out_compact!
  • shell_out_compact_timeout!

The functionality of shell_out_with_systems_locale has been implemented using the default_env: false option that removes the PATH and locale mangling that has been the default behavior of shell_out.

The functionality of shell_out_compact has been folded into shell_out. The shell_out API when called with varargs has its arguments flatted, compacted and coerced to strings. This style of calling is encouraged over using strings and building up commands using join(" ") since it avoids shell interpolation and edge conditions in the construction of spaces between arguments. The varargs form is still not supported on Windows.

The functionality of shell_out*timeout has also been folded into shell_out. Users writing Custom Resources should be explicit for Chef-14: shell_out!("whatever", timeout: new_resource.timeout) which will become automatic in Chef-15.

Silencing deprecation warnings

While deprecation warnings have been great for the Chef community to ensure cookbooks are kept up-to-date and to prepare for major version upgrades, sometimes you just can’t fix a deprecation right now. This is often compounded by the recommendation to enable treat_deprecation_warnings_as_errors mode in your Test Kitchen integration tests, which doesn’t understand the difference between deprecations from community cookbooks and those from your own code.

Two new options are provided for silencing deprecation warnings: silence_deprecation_warnings and inline chef:silence_deprecation comments.

The silence_deprecation_warnings configuration value can be set in your client.rb or solo.rb config file, either to true to silence all deprecation warnings or to an array of deprecations to silence. You can specify which to silence either by the deprecation key name (e.g. "internal_api"), the numeric deprecation ID (e.g. 25 or "CHEF-25"), or by specifying the filename and line number where the deprecation is being raised from (e.g. "default.rb:67").

An example of setting the silence_deprecation_warnings option in your client.rb or solo.rb:

silence_deprecation_warnings %w{deploy_resource chef-23 recipes/install.rb:22}

or in your kitchen.yml:

provisioner:
  name: chef_solo
  solo_rb:
    treat_deprecation_warnings_as_errors: true
    silence_deprecation_warnings:
    - deploy_resource
    - chef-23
    - recipes/install.rb:22

You can also silence deprecations using a comment on the line that is raising the warning:

erl_call 'something' do # chef:silence_deprecation

We advise caution in the use of this feature, as excessive or prolonged silencing can lead to difficulty upgrading when the next major release of Chef comes out.

Misc Windows improvements

  • A new skip_publisher_check property has been added to the powershell_package resource
  • windows_feature_powershell now supports Windows 2008 R2
  • The mount resource now supports the mount_point property on Windows
  • windows_feature_dism no longer errors when specifying the source
  • Resolved idempotency issues in the windows_task resource and prevented setting up a task with bad credentials
  • windows_service no longer throws Ruby deprecation warnings

Newly Introduced Deprecations

CHEF-26: Deprecation of old shell_out APIs

As noted above, this release of Chef unifies our shell_out helpers into just shell_out and shell_out!. Previous helpers are now deprecated and will be removed in Chef Infra Client 15.

See CHEF-26 Deprecation Page for details.

Legacy FreeBSD pkg provider

Chef Infra Client 15 will remove support for the legacy FreeBSD pkg format. We will continue to support the pkgng format introduced in FreeBSD 10.

Chef Infra Client 14.2.0

ssh-agent support for user keys

You can now use ssh-agent to hold your user key when using knife. This allows storing your user key in an encrypted form as well as using ssh -A agent forwarding for running knife commands from remote devices.

You can enable this by adding ssh_agent_signing true to your knife.rb or ssh_agent_signing = true in your credentials file.

To encrypt your existing user key, you can use OpenSSL:

( openssl rsa -in user.pem -pubout && openssl rsa -in user.pem -aes256 ) > user_enc.pem
chmod 600 user_enc.pem

This will prompt you for a passphrase for to use to encrypt the key. You can then load the key into your ssh-agent by running ssh-add user_enc.pem. Make sure you add the ssh_agent_signing to your configuration, and update your client_key to point at the new, encrypted key (and once you’ve verified things are working, remember to delete your unencrypted key file).

default_env Property in Execute Resource

The shell_out helper has been extended with a new option default_env to allow disabling Chef from modifying PATH and LOCALE environmental variables as it shells out. This new option defaults to true (modify the env), preserving the previous behavior of the helper.

The execute resource has also been updated with a new property default_env that allows utilizing this the ENV sanity functionality in shell_out. The new property defaults to false, but it can be set to true in order to ensure a sane PATH and LOCALE when shelling out. If you find that binaries cannot be found when using the execute resource, default_env set to true may resolve those issues.

Small Size on Disk

Chef now bundles the inspec-core and train-core gems, which omit many cloud dependencies not needed within the Chef client. This change reduces the install size of a typical system by ~22% and the number of files within that installation by ~20% compared to Chef Infra Client 14.1. Enjoy the extra disk space.

Virtualization detection on AWS

Ohai now detects the virtualization hypervisor amazonec2 when running on Amazon’s new C5/M5 instances.

Chef Infra Client 14.1.12

This release resolves a number of regressions in 14.1.1:

  • git resource: don’t use --prune-tags as it’s really new.
  • rhsm_repo resource: now works
  • apt_repository resource: use the repo_name property to name files
  • windows_task resource: properly handle commands with arguments
  • windows_task resource: handle creating tasks as the SYSTEM user
  • remote_directory resource: restore the default for the overwrite property

Ohai 14.1.3

  • Properly detect FIPS environments
  • shard plugin: work in FIPS compliant environments
  • filesystem plugin: Handle BSD platforms

Chef Infra Client 14.1.1

Windows Task

The windows_task resource has been entirely rewritten. This resolves a large number of bugs, including being able to correctly set the start time of tasks, proper creation and deletion of tasks, and improves Chef’s validation of tasks. The rewrite will also solve the idempotency problems that users have reported.

build_essential

The build_essential resource no longer requires a name, similar to the apt_update resource.

Ignore Failure

The ignore_failure property takes a new argument, :quiet, to suppress the error output when the resource does in fact fail.

This release of Chef Infra Client 14 resolves a number of regressions in 14.0

  • On Windows, the installer now correctly re-extracts files during repair mode
  • Fix a number of issues relating to use with Red Hat Satellite
  • Git fetch now prunes remotes before running
  • Fix locking and unlocking packages with apt and zypper
  • Ensure we don’t request every remote file when running with lazy loading enabled
  • The sysctl resource correctly handles missing keys when used with ignore_error
  • –recipe-url apparently never worked on Windows. Now it does.

Security Updates

ffi Gem

  • CVE-2018-1000201: DLL loading issue which can be hijacked on Windows OS

Ohai 14.1

Configurable DMI Whitelist

The whitelist of DMI IDs is now user configurable using the additional_dmi_ids configuration setting, which takes an Array.

Shard plugin

The Shard plugin has been returned to a default plugin rather than an optional one. To ensure we work in FIPS environments, the plugin will use SHA256 rather than MD5 in those environments.

SCSI plugin

A new plugin to enumerate SCSI devices has been added. This plugin is optional.

Platform Additions

Chef Infra Client packages are now produced for Ubuntu 18.04 and Debian 9 platforms.

Chef Infra Client 14.0.202

This release of Chef Infra Client 14 resolves several regressions in the Chef Infra Client 14.0 release.

  • Resources contained in cookbooks would be used instead of built-in Chef Infra Client resources causing older resources to run
  • Resources failed due to a missing property_is_set? and resources methods
  • yum_package changed the order of disablerepo and enablerepo options
  • Depsolving large numbers of cookbooks with chef zero/local took a very long time

Chef Infra Client 14.0.190

New Resources

Chef Infra Client 14 includes a large number of resources ported from community cookbooks. These resources have been tested, improved, and had their functionality expanded. With these new resources in the Chef Infra Client itself, the need for external cookbook dependencies and dependency management has been greatly reduced.

build_essential

Use the build_essential resource to install packages required for compiling C software from source. This resource was ported from the build-essential community cookbook.

Note: This resource no longer configures msys2 on Windows systems.

chef_handler

Use the chef_handler resource to install or uninstall Chef reporting/exception handlers. This resource was ported from the chef_handler community cookbook.

dmg_package

Use the dmg_package resource to install a dmg ‘package’. The resource will retrieve the dmg file from a remote URL, mount it using hdiutil, copy the application (.app directory) to the specified destination (/Applications), and detach the image using hdiutil. The dmg file will be stored in the Chef::Config[:file_cache_path]. This resource was ported from the dmg community cookbook.

homebrew_cask

Use the homebrew_cask resource to install binaries distributed via the Homebrew package manager. This resource was ported from the homebrew community cookbook.

homebrew_tap

Use the homebrew_tap resource to add additional formula repositories to the Homebrew package manager. This resource was ported from the homebrew community cookbook.

hostname

Use the hostname resource to set the system’s hostname, configure hostname and hosts config file, and re-run the Ohai hostname plugin so the hostname will be available in subsequent cookbooks. This resource was ported from the chef_hostname community cookbook.

macos_userdefaults

Use the macos_userdefaults resource to manage the macOS user defaults system. The properties of this resource are passed to the defaults command, and the parameters follow the convention of that command. See the defaults(1) man page for details on how the tool works. This resource was ported from the mac_os_x community cookbook.

ohai_hint

Use the ohai_hint resource to pass hint data to Ohai to aid in configuration detection. This resource was ported from the ohai community cookbook.

openssl_dhparam

Use the openssl_dhparam resource to generate dhparam.pem files. If a valid dhparam.pem file is found at the specified location, no new file will be created. If a file is found at the specified location but it is not a valid dhparam file, it will be overwritten. This resource was ported from the openssl community cookbook.

openssl_rsa_private_key

Use the openssl_rsa_private_key resource to generate RSA private key files. If a valid RSA key file can be opened at the specified location, no new file will be created. If the RSA key file cannot be opened, either because it does not exist or because the password to the RSA key file does not match the password in the recipe, it will be overwritten. This resource was ported from the openssl community cookbook.

openssl_rsa_public_key

Use the openssl_rsa_public_key resource to generate RSA public key files given a RSA private key. This resource was ported from the openssl community cookbook.

rhsm_errata

Use the rhsm_errata resource to install packages associated with a given Red Hat Subscription Manager Errata ID. This is helpful if packages to mitigate a single vulnerability must be installed on your hosts. This resource was ported from the redhat_subscription_manager community cookbook.

rhsm_errata_level

Use the rhsm_errata_level resource to install all packages of a specified errata level from the Red Hat Subscription Manager. For example, you can ensure that all packages associated with errata marked at a ‘Critical’ security level are installed. This resource was ported from the redhat_subscription_manager community cookbook.

rhsm_register

Use the rhsm_register resource to register a node with the Red Hat Subscription Manager or a local Red Hat Satellite server. This resource was ported from the redhat_subscription_manager community cookbook.

rhsm_repo

Use the rhsm_repo resource to enable or disable Red Hat Subscription Manager repositories that are made available via attached subscriptions. This resource was ported from the redhat_subscription_manager community cookbook.

rhsm_subscription

Use the rhsm_subscription resource to add or remove Red Hat Subscription Manager subscriptions for your host. This can be used when a host’s activation_key does not attach all necessary subscriptions to your host. This resource was ported from the redhat_subscription_manager community cookbook.

sudo

Use the sudo resource to add or remove individual sudo entries using sudoers.d files. Sudo version 1.7.2 or newer is required to use the sudo resource, as it relies on the #includedir directive introduced in version 1.7.2. This resource does not enforce installation of the required sudo version. Supported releases of Ubuntu, Debian, SuSE, and RHEL (6+) all support this feature. This resource was ported from the sudo community cookbook.

swap_file

Use the swap_file resource to create or delete swap files on Linux systems, and optionally to manage the swappiness configuration for a host. This resource was ported from the swap community cookbook.

sysctl

Use the sysctl resource to set or remove kernel parameters using the sysctl command line tool and configuration files in the system’s sysctl.d directory. Configuration files managed by this resource are named 99-chef-KEYNAME.conf. If an existing value was already set for the value it will be backed up to the node and restored if the :remove action is used later. This resource was ported from the sysctl community cookbook.

Note: This resource no longer backs up existing key values to the node when changing values as we have done in the sysctl cookbook previously. The resource has also been renamed from sysctl_param to sysctl with backwards compatibility for the previous name.

windows_ad_join

Use the windows_ad_join resource to join a Windows Active Directory domain and reboot the node. This resource is based on the win_ad_client resource in the win_ad community cookbook, but is not backwards compatible with that resource.

windows_auto_run

Use the windows_auto_run resource to set applications to run at logon. This resource was ported from the windows community cookbook.

windows_feature

Use the windows_feature resource to add, remove or delete Windows features and roles. This resource calls the windows_feature_dism or windows_feature_powershell resources depending on the specified installation method and defaults to dism, which is available on both Workstation and Server editions of Windows. This resource was ported from the windows community cookbook.

Note: These resources received significant refactoring in the 4.0 version of the windows cookbook (March 2018). windows_feature resources now fail if the installation of invalid features is requested and support for installation via server servermanagercmd.exe has been removed. If you are using a windows cookbook version less than 4.0 you may need to update cookbooks for Chef Infra Client 14.

windows_font

Use the windows_font resource to install or remove font files on Windows. By default, the font is sourced from the cookbook using the resource, but a URI source can be specified as well. This resource was ported from the windows community cookbook.

windows_printer

Use the windows_printer resource to setup Windows printers. Note that this doesn’t currently install a printer driver. You must already have the driver installed on the system. This resource was ported from the windows community cookbook.

windows_printer_port

Use the windows_printer_port resource to create and delete TCP/IPv4 printer ports on Windows. This resource was ported from the windows community cookbook.

windows_shortcut

Use the windows_shortcut resource to create shortcut files on Windows. This resource was ported from the windows community cookbook.

windows_workgroup

Use the windows_workgroup resource to join a Windows Workgroup and reboot the node. This resource is based on the windows_ad_join resource.

Custom Resource Improvements

We’ve expanded the Chef Language for custom resources with new functionality to better document your resources and help users with errors and upgrades. Many resources in Chef itself are now using this new functionality, and you’ll see more updated to take advantage of this it in the future.

Deprecations in Cookbook Resources

Chef Infra Client 14 provides new primitives that allow you to deprecate resources or properties with the same functionality used for deprecations in Chef Infra Client resources. This allows you make breaking changes to enterprise or community cookbooks with friendly notifications to downstream cookbook consumers directly in the Chef run.

Deprecate the foo_bar resource in a cookbook:

deprecated "The foo_bar resource has been deprecated and will be removed in the next major release of this cookbook scheduled for 12/25/2018!"

property :thing, String, name_property: true

action :create do
 # you'd probably have some actual chef code here
end

Deprecate the thing2 property in a resource

property :thing2, String, deprecated: 'The thing2 property has been deprecated and will be removed in the next major release of this cookbook scheduled for 12/25/2018!'

Rename a property with a deprecation warning for users of the old property name

deprecated_property_alias 'thing2', 'the_second_thing', 'The thing2 property was renamed the_second_thing in the 2.0 release of this cookbook. Please update your cookbooks to use the new property name.'

Platform Deprecations

Chef Infra Client packages are no longer produced for OS X 10.10 in accordance with Chef’s EOL policy.

validation_message

Validation messages allow you give the user a friendly error message when any validation on a property fails.

Provide a friendly message when a regex fails:

property :repo_name, String, regex: [/^[^\/]+$/], validation_message: "The repo_name property cannot contain a forward slash '/'",

Resource Documentation

You can now include documentation that describes how a resource is to be used. Expect this data to be consumed by Chef and other tooling in future releases.

A resource which includes description and introduced values in the resource, actions, and properties:

description 'The apparmor_policy resource is used to add or remove policy files from a cookbook file'
introduced '14.1'

property :source_cookbook, String,
         description: 'The cookbook to source the policy file from'
property :source_filename, String,
         description: 'The name of the source file if it differs from the apparmor.d file being created'

action :add do
  description 'Adds an apparmor policy'

  # you'd probably have some actual chef code here
end

Improved Resources

Many existing resources now include new actions and properties that expand their functionality.

apt_package

apt_package includes a new overwrite_config_files property. Setting this new property to true is equivalent to passing -o Dpkg::Options::="--force-confnew" to apt, and allows you to install packages that prompt the user to overwrite config files. Thanks @ccope for this new property.

env

The env resource has been renamed to windows_env as it only supports the Windows platform. Existing cookbooks using env will continue to function, but should be updated to use the new name.

ifconfig

ifconfig includes a new family property for setting the network family on Debian systems. Thanks @martinisoft for this new property.

registry_key

The sensitive property can now be used in registry_key to suppress the output of the key’s data from logs and error messages. Thanks @shoekstra for implementing this.

powershell_package

powershell_package includes a new source property to allow specifying the source of the package. Thanks @Happycoil for this new property.

systemd_unit

systemd_unit includes the following new actions:

  • preset - Restore the preset enable/disable configuration for a unit
  • revert - Revert to a vendor’s version of a unit file
  • reenable - Reenable a unit file

Thanks @nathwill for these new actions.

windows_service

windows_service now includes actions for fully managing services on Windows, in addition to the previous actions for starting/stopping/enabling services.

  • create - Create a new service
  • delete - Delete an existing service
  • configure - Reconfigure an existing service

Thanks @jasonwbarnett for these new actions

route

route includes a new comment property.

Thanks Thomas Doherty for adding this new property.

Expanded Configuration Detection

Ohai has been expanded to collect more information than ever. This should make writing cross-platform and cross cloud cookbooks simpler.

Windows Kernel information

The kernel plugin now reports the following information on Windows:

  • node['kernel']['product_type'] - Workstation vs. Server editions of Windows
  • node['kernel']['system_type'] - What kind of hardware are we installed on (Desktop, Mobile, Workstation, Enterprise Server, etc.)
  • node['kernel']['server_core'] - Are we on Windows Server Core edition?

Cloud Detection

Ohai now detects the Scaleway cloud and provides additional configuration information for systems running on Azure.

Virtualization / Container Detection

In addition to detecting if a system is a Docker host, we now provide a large amount of Docker configuration information available at node['docker']. This includes the release of Docker, installed plugins, network config, and the number of running containers.

Ohai also now properly detects LXD containers and macOS guests running on VirtualBox / VMware. This data is available in node['virtualization']['systems'].

Optional Ohai Plugins

Ohai now includes the ability to mark plugins as optional, which skips those plugins by default. This allows us to ship additional plugins, which some users may find useful, but not all users want that data collected in the node object on a Chef server. The change introduces two new configuration options; run_all_plugins which runs everything including optional plugins, and optional_plugins which allows you to run plugins marked as optional.

By default we will now be marking the lspci, sessions shard and passwd plugins as optional. Passwd has been particularly problematic for nodes attached to LDAP or AD where it attempts to write the entire directory’s contents to the node. If you previously disabled this plugin via Ohai config, you no longer need to. Hurray!

Other Changes

Ruby 2.5

Ruby has been updated to version 2.5 bringing a 10% performance improvement and improved functionality.

InSpec 2.0

InSpec has been updated to the 2.0 release. InSpec 2.0 brings compliance automation to the cloud, with new resource types specifically built for AWS and Azure clouds. Along with these changes are major speed improvements and quality of life updates. Please visit https://docs.chef.io/inspec/ for more information.

Policyfile Hoisting

Many users of Policyfiles rely on “hoisting” to provide group specific attributes. This approach was formalized in the poise-hoist extension, and is now included in Chef Infra Client 14.

To hoist an attribute, the user provides a default attribute structure in their Policyfile similar to:

default['staging']['myapp']['title'] = "My Staging App" default['production']['myapp']['title'] = "My App"

and then accesses the node attribute in their cookbook as:

node['myapp']['title']

The correct attribute is then provided based on the policy_group of the node, so with a policy_group of staging the attribute would contain “My Staging App”.

yum_package rewrite

yum_package received a ground up rewrite that greatly improves both the performance and functionality while also resolving a dozen existing issues. It introduces a new caching method that runs for the duration of the chef-client process. This caching method speeds up each package install and takes 1/2 the memory of the previous yum-dump.py process.

yum_package should now take any argument that yum install does and operate the same way, including version constraints “foo < 1.2.3” and globs “foo-1.2*” along with arches “foo.i386” and in combinations

Package with a version constraint:

yum_package "foo < 1.2.3"

Installing a package via what it provides:

yum_package "perl(Git)"

powershell_exec Mixin

Since our supported Windows platforms can all run .NET Framework 4.0 and PowerShell 4.0 we have taken time to add a new helper that will allow for faster and safer interactions with the system PowerShell. You will be able to use the powershell_exec mixin in most places where you would have previously used powershell_out. For comparison, a basic benchmark test to return the $PSVersionTable 100 times completed 7.3X faster compared to the powershell_out method. The majority of the time difference is because of less time spent in invocation. So we believe it has big future potential where multiple calls to PowerShell are required inside (for example) a custom resource. Many core Chef resources will be updated to use this new mixin in future releases.

Logging Improvements

Chef now includes a new log level of :trace in addition to the existing :info, :warn, and :debug levels. With the introduction of trace level logging we’ve moved a large amount of logging that is more useful for Chef developers from debug to trace. This makes it easier for Chef Cookbook developers to use debug level to get useful information.

Security Updates

OpenSSL

OpenSSL has been updated to 1.0.2o to resolve CVE-2018-0739

Ruby

Ruby has been updated to 2.5.1 to resolve the following vulnerabilities:

Breaking Changes

This release completes the deprecation process for many of the deprecations that were warnings throughout the Chef Infra Client 12 and Chef Infra Client 13 releases.

erl_call Resource

The erl_call resource was deprecated in Chef Infra Client 13.7 and has been removed.

deploy Resource

The deploy resource was deprecated in Chef Infra Client 13.6 and been removed. If you still require this resource, it is available in the new deploy_resource cookbook at https://supermarket.chef.io/cookbooks/deploy_resource

Windows 2003 Support

Support for Windows 2003 has been removed from both Chef Infra Client and Ohai, improving the performance of Chef Infra Client on Windows hosts.

knife deprecations

  • knife bootstrap options --distro and --template_file flags were deprecated in Chef Infra Client 12 and have now been removed.
  • knife help functionality that read legacy Chef manpages has been removed as the manpages had not been updated and were often quite wrong. Running knife help will now simply show the help menu.
  • knife index rebuild has been removed as reindexing Chef Infra Server was only necessary on releases prior to Chef Infra Server 11.
  • The knife ssh --identity-file flag was deprecated and has been removed. Users should use the --ssh_identity_file flag instead.
  • knife ssh csshx was deprecated in Chef Infra Client 10 and has been removed. Users should use knife ssh cssh instead.

Chef Solo -r flag

The Chef Solo -r flag has been removed as it was deprecated and replaced with the --recipe-url flag in Chef Infra Client 12.

node.set and node.set_unless attribute levels removal

node.set and node.set_unless were deprecated in Chef Infra Client 12 and have been removed in Chef Infra Client 14. To replicate this same functionality users should use node.normal and node.normal_unless, although we highly recommend reading our attribute documentation to make sure normal is in fact the your desired attribute level.

chocolatey_package :uninstall Action

The chocolatey_package resource in the chocolatey cookbook supported an :uninstall action. When this resource was moved into the Chef Infra Client we allowed this action with a deprecation warning. This action is now removed.

Property names not using new_resource.NAME

Previously if a user wrote a custom resource with a property named foo they could reference it throughout the resource using the name foo. This caused multiple edge cases where the property name could conflict with resources or methods in Chef Infra Client. Properties now must be referenced as new_resource.foo. This was already the case when writing LWRPs.

epic_fail

The original name for the ignore_failure property in resource was epic_fail. The legacy name has been removed.

Legacy Mixins

Several legacy mixins mostly used in older HWRPs have been removed. Usage of these mixins has resulted in deprecation warnings for several years and they are rarely used in cookbooks available on the Supermarket.

  • Chef::Mixin::LanguageIncludeAttribute
  • Chef::Mixin::RecipeDefinitionDSLCore
  • Chef::Mixin::LanguageIncludeRecipe
  • Chef::Mixin::Language
  • Chef::DSL::Recipe::FullDSL

cloud_v2 and filesystem2 Ohai Plugins

In Chef Infra Client 13 the cloud_v2 plugin replaced data at node['cloud'] and filesystem2 replaced data at node['filesystem']. For compatibility with cookbooks that were previously using the “v2” data we continued to write data to both locations (ie: both node[‘filesystem’] and node[‘filesystem2’]). We now no longer write data to the “v2” locations which greatly reduces the amount of data we need to store on the Chef Infra Server.

Ipscopes Ohai Plugin Removed

The ipscopes plugin has been removed as it duplicated data already present in the network plugins and required the user to install an additional gem into the Chef installation.

Ohai libvirt attributes moved

The libvirt Ohai plugin now writes data to node['libvirt'] instead of writing to various locations in node['virtualization']. This plugin required installing an additional gem into the Chef installation and thus was infrequently used.

Ohai Plugin V6 Support Removed

In 2014 we introduced Ohai v7 with a greatly improved plugin format. With Chef Infra Client 14 we no longer support loading of the legacy “v6” plugin format.

Newly-disabled Ohai Plugins

As mentioned above we now support an optional flag for Ohai plugins and have marked the sessions, lspci, and passwd plugins as optional, which disables them by default. If you need one of these plugins you can include them using optional_plugins.

optional_plugins in the client.rb file:

optional_plugins [ "lspci", "passwd" ]

Chef Infra Client 13.12.14

Bug Fixes

  • The mount provider now properly adds blank lines between fstab entries on AIX
  • Ohai now reports itself as Ohai well communicating with GCE metadata endpoints
  • Property deprecations in custom resources no longer result in an error. Thanks for reporting this martinisoft
  • mixlib-archive has been updated to prevent corruption of archives on Windows systems

Updated Components

  • libxml2 2.9.7 -> 2.9.9
  • ca-certs updated to 2019-01-22 for new roots
  • nokogiri 1.8.5 -> 1.10.1

Security Updates

OpenSSL

OpenSSL has been updated to 1.0.2r in order to resolve CVE-2019-1559 and CVE-2018-5407

RubyGems

RubyGems has been updated to 2.7.9 in order to resolve the following CVEs:

  • CVE-2019-8320: Delete directory using symlink when decompressing tar
  • CVE-2019-8321: Escape sequence injection vulnerability in verbose
  • CVE-2019-8322: Escape sequence injection vulnerability in gem owner
  • CVE-2019-8323: Escape sequence injection vulnerability in API response handling
  • CVE-2019-8324: Installing a malicious gem may lead to arbitrary code execution
  • CVE-2019-8325: Escape sequence injection vulnerability in errors

Chef Infra Client 13.12.3

Smaller Package and Install Size

We trimmed unnecessary installation files, greatly reducing the sizes of both Chef Infra Client packages and on disk installations. MacOS/Linux/FreeBSD packages are ~50% smaller and Windows are ~12% smaller. Chef Infra Client 13 is now smaller than a legacy Chef Infra Client 10 package.

macOS Mojave (10.14)

Chef Infra Client is now tested against macOS Mojave and packages are now available at downloads.chef.io.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15

  • Ohai now properly detects SLES 15
  • The Chef package will no longer remove symlinks to chef-client and ohai when upgrading on SLES 15

Updated Chef-Vault

Updating chef-vault to 3.4.2 resolved multiple bugs.

Faster Windows Installations

Improved Windows installation speed by skipping unnecessary steps when Windows Installer 5.0 or later is available.

Ohai 13.12

macOS Improvements

  • sysctl commands have been modified to gather only the bare minimum required data, which prevents sysctl hanging in some scenarios
  • Extra data has been removed from the system_profile plugin, reducing the amount of data stored on the chef-server for each node

New Deprecations

system_profile Ohai plugin removal

The system_profile plugin will be removed from Chef Infra Client/Ohai 15 in April, 2019. This plugin incorrectly returns data on modern Mac systems. Further, the hardware plugin returns the same data in a more readily consumable format. Removing this plugin reduces the speed of the Ohai return by ~3 seconds and also greatly reduces the node object size on the Chef Infra Server

ohai_name property in ohai resource

The ohai resource’s unused ohai_name property has been deprecated. This will be removed in Chef Infra Client 15.0.

Security Updates

Ruby 2.4.5

Ruby has been updated to from 2.4.4 to 2.4.5 to resolve multiple CVEs as well as bugs:

Chef Infra Client 13.11.3

Sensitive Properties on Windows

  • windows_service no longer logs potentially sensitive information when a service is setup
  • windows_package now respects the sensitive property to avoid logging sensitive data in the event of a package installation failure

Other Fixes

  • remote_directory now properly loads files in the root of a cookbook’s files directory
  • osx_profile now uses the full path the profiles CLI tool to avoid running other binaries of the same name in a users path
  • package resources that don’t support the allow_downgrade property will no longer fail
  • knife bootstrap windows error messages have been improved

Security Updates

OpenSSL

Rubyzip

Chef Infra Client 13.10.4

Bug Fixes

  • Don’t error if a local file does not exist when attempting to install a windows_package.
  • Resolve errors unpacking recipes from a tarball.

Chef Infra Client 13.10.0

Bug Fixes

  • Resolves a duplicate logging getting created when redirecting stdout
  • Using –recipe-url with a local file on Windows no longer fails
  • Service resource no longer throws Ruby deprecation warnings on Windows

Ohai 13.10 Improvements

  • Correctly identify the platform_version on the final release of Amazon Linux 2.0
  • Detect nodes with the DMI data of “OpenStack Compute” as being OpenStack nodes

Security Updates

ffi Gem

  • CVE-2018-1000201: DLL loading issue which can be hijacked on Windows OS

Chef Infra Client 13.9.4

Platform Updates

As Debian 7 is now end of life we will no longer produce Debian 7 Chef Infra Client packages.

Ifconfig on Ubuntu 18.04

Incompatibilities with Ubuntu 18.04 in the ifconfig resource have been resolved.

Ohai Updated to 13.9.1

Virtualization detection on AWS

Ohai now detects the virtualization hypervisor amazonec2 when running on Amazon’s new C5/M5 instances.

Configurable DMI Whitelist

The whitelist of DMI IDs is now user configurable using the additional_dmi_ids configuration setting, which takes an Array.

Filesystem2 on BSD

The Filesystem2 functionality has been backported to BSD systems to provide a consistent filesystem format.

Security Updates

Ruby updated to 2.4.4

  • CVE-2017-17742: HTTP response splitting in WEBrick
  • CVE-2018-6914: Unintentional file and directory creation with directory traversal in tempfile and tmpdir
  • CVE-2018-8777: DoS by large request in WEBrick
  • CVE-2018-8778: Buffer under-read in String#unpack
  • CVE-2018-8779: Unintentional socket creation by poisoned NUL byte in UNIXServer and UNIXSocket
  • CVE-2018-8780: Unintentional directory traversal by poisoned NUL byte in Dir
  • Multiple vulnerabilities in RubyGems

Nokogiri updated to 1.8.2

  • Behavior in libxml2 has been reverted which caused CVE-2018-8048 (loofah gem), CVE-2018-3740 (sanitize gem), and CVE-2018-3741 (rails-html-sanitizer gem).

OpenSSL updated to 1.0.2o

  • CVE-2018-0739: Constructed ASN.1 types with a recursive definition could exceed the stack.

Chef Infra Client 13.9.1

  • On Windows, the installer now correctly re-extracts files during repair mode
  • The mount resource will now not create duplicate entries when the device type differs
  • Ensure we don’t request every remote file when running with lazy loading enabled
  • Don’t crash when getting the access rights for Windows system accounts

Custom Resource Improvements

We’ve expanded the DSL for custom resources with new functionality to better document your resources and help users with errors and upgrades. Many resources in Chef itself are now using this new functionality, and you’ll see more updated to take advantage of this it in the future.

Deprecations in Cookbook Resources

Chef Infra Client 13 provides new primitives that allow you to deprecate resources or properties with the same functionality used for deprecations in Chef Infra Client resources. This allows you make breaking changes to enterprise or community cookbooks with friendly notifications to downstream cookbook consumers directly in the Chef run.

Deprecate the foo_bar resource in a cookbook:

deprecated "The foo_bar resource has been deprecated and will be removed in the next major release of this cookbook scheduled for 12/25/2018!"

property :thing, String, name_property: true

action :create do
 # you'd probably have some actual chef code here
end

Deprecate the thing2 property in a resource

property :thing2, String, deprecated: 'The thing2 property has been deprecated and will be removed in the next major release of this cookbook scheduled for 12/25/2018!'

Rename a property with a deprecation warning for users of the old property name

deprecated_property_alias 'thing2', 'the_second_thing', 'The thing2 property was renamed the_second_thing in the 2.0 release of this cookbook. Please update your cookbooks to use the new property name.'

validation_message

Validation messages allow you give the user a friendly error message when any validation on a property fails.

Provide a friendly message when a regex fails:

property :repo_name, String, regex: [/^[^\/]+$/], validation_message: "The repo_name property cannot contain a forward slash '/'",

Resource Documentation

You can now include documentation that describes how a resource is to be used. Expect this data to be consumed by Chef and other tooling in future releases.

A resource which includes description and introduced values in the resource, actions, and properties:

description 'The apparmor_policy resource is used to add or remove policy files from a cookbook file'
 introduced '14.1'

 property :source_cookbook, String,
         description: 'The cookbook to source the policy file from'
 property :source_filename, String,
         description: 'The name of the source file if it differs from the apparmor.d file being created'

 action :add do
   description 'Adds an apparmor policy'

   # you'd probably have some actual chef code here
 end

Ohai Improvements

  • Fix uptime parsing on AIX
  • Fix Softlayer cloud detection
  • Use the current Azure metadata endpoint
  • Correctly detect macOS guests on VMware and VirtualBox

Platform Additions

Chef Infra Client packages are now produced for Ubuntu 18.04 and Debian 9 platforms.

Chef Infra Client 13.8.5

This is a small bug fix release to resolve two issues we found in the 13.8 release:

  • chef-client run failures due to a failure in a newer version of the FFI gem on RHEL 6.x and 7.x
  • knife failures when running knife cookbook site install to install a deprecated cookbook that has no replacement

Chef Infra Client 13.8.3

This is a small bug fix release that updates Ohai to properly detect and poll SoftLayer metadata now that SoftLayer no longer supports TLS 1.0/1.1. This update is only necessary if you’re running on Softlayer.

Chef Infra Client 13.8.0

Revert attributes changes from 13.7

Per https://discourse.chef.io/t/regression-in-chef-client-13-7-16/12518/1 , there was a regression in how arrays and hashes were handled in 13.7. In 13.8, we’ve reverted to the same code as 13.6.

Continuing work on windows_task

13.8 has better validation for the idle_time property, when using the on_idle frequency.

Security Updates

Chef Infra Client 13.7.16

The windows_task Resource should be better behaved

We’ve spent a considerable amount of time testing and fixing the windows_task resource to ensure that it is properly idempotent and correct in more situations.

Credentials handling

Previously, the knife CLI used knife.rb or config.rb to handle credentials. This didn’t do a great job when interacting with multiple Chef servers, leading to the need for tools like knife_block. We’ve added support for a credentials file that can contain configuration for many Chef servers (or organizations), and we’ve made it easy to indicate which account you mean to use.

New deprecations

erl_call Resource

We introduced erl_call to help us to manage CouchDB servers back in the olden times of Chef. Since then, we’ve noticed that no-one uses it, and so erl_call will be removed in Chef Infra Client 14. Foodcritic rule [FC105(http://www.foodcritic.io/#FC105) has been introduced to detect usage of erl_call.

epic_fail

The original name for the ignore_failure property in resources was epic_fail. Our documentation hasn’t referred to epic_fail for years and out of the 3500 cookbooks on the Supermarket only one uses epic_fail. In Chef Infra Client 14 we will remove the epic_fail property entirely. Foodcritic rule FC107 has been introduced to detect usage of epic_fail.

Legacy Mixins

In Chef Infra Client 14 several legacy mixins will be removed. Usage of these mixins has resulted in deprecation warnings for several years. They were traditionally used in some HWRPs, but are rarely found in code available on the Supermarket. Foodcritic rules FC097, FC098, FC099, FC100, and FC102 have been introduced to detect these mixins:

  • Chef::Mixin::LanguageIncludeAttribute
  • Chef::Mixin::RecipeDefinitionDSLCore
  • Chef::Mixin::LanguageIncludeRecipe
  • Chef::Mixin::Language
  • Chef::DSL::Recipe::FullDSL

:uninstall action in chocolatey_package

The chocolatey cookbook’s chocolatey_package resource originally contained an :uninstall action. When chocolatey_package was moved into core Chef we made :uninstall an alias for :remove. In Chef Infra Client 14 :uninstall will no longer be a valid action. Foodcritic rule FC103 has been introduced to detect the usage of the :uninstall action.

Bug Fixes

  • Resolved a bug where knife commands that prompted on Windows would never display the prompt
  • Fixed hiding of sensitive resources when converge_if_changed was used
  • Fixed scenarios where services would fail to start on Solaris

Security Updates

Ohai 13.7

Network Tunnel Information

The Network plugin on Linux hosts now gathers additional information on tunnels

LsPci Plugin

The new LsPci plugin provides a node[:pci] hash with information about the PCI bus based on lspci. Only runs on Linux.

EC2 C5 Detection

The EC2 plugin has been updated to properly detect the new AWS hypervisor used in the C5 instance types

mdadm

The mdadm plugin has been updated to properly handle arrays with more than 10 disks and to properly handle journal and spare drives in the disk counts

Chef Infra Client 13.6.4

Bug Fixes

  • Resolved a regression in 13.6.0 that prevented upgrading packages on Debian/Ubuntu when the package name contained a tilde.

Security Updates

Chef Infra Client 13.6.0

deploy Resource Is Deprecated

The deploy resource (and its alter ego deploy_revision) have been deprecated, to be removed in Chef Infra Client 14. This is being done because this resource is considered overcomplicated and error-prone in the modern Chef ecosystem. A compatibility cookbook will be available to help users migrate during the Chef Infra Client 14 release cycle. See the deprecation documentation for more information.

zypper_package supports package downgrades

zypper_package now supports downgrading installed packages with the allow_downgrade property.

InSpec updated to 1.42.3

Reserve certain Data Bag names

It’s no longer possible to create data bags named node, role, client, or environment. Existing data bags will continue to work as before.

Properly use yum on RHEL 7

If both dnf and yum were installed, in some circumstances the yum provider might choose to run dnf, which is not what we intended it to do. It now properly runs yum, all the time.

Ohai 13.6

Critical Plugins

Users can now specify a list of plugins which are critical. Critical plugins will cause Ohai to fail if they do not run successfully (and thus cause a Chef run using Ohai to fail). The syntax for this is:

ohai.critical_plugins << :Filesystem

Filesystem now has a allow_partial_data configuration option

The Filesystem plugin now has a allow_partial_data configuration option. If set, the filesystem will return whatever data it can even if some commands it ran failed.

Rackspace detection on Windows

Windows nodes running on Rackspace will now properly detect themselves as running on Rackspace without a hint file.

Package data on Amazon Linux

The Packages plugin now supports gathering packages data on Amazon Linux

Deprecation updates

In Ohai 13 we replaced the filesystem and cloud plugins with the filesystem2 and cloud_v2 plugins. To maintain compatibility with users of the previous V2 plugins we write data to both locations. We had originally planned to continue writing data to both locations until Chef Infra Client 15. Instead due to the large amount of duplicate node data this introduces we are updating OHAI-11 and OHAI-12 deprecations to remove node[‘cloud_v2’] and node[‘filesystem2’] with the release of Chef Infra Client 14 in April 2018.

Chef Infra Client 13.5.3

  • The mount resource’s password property is now marked as sensitive. Passwords passed to mount won’t show up in logs.
  • The windows_task resource now correctly handles start_day Previously, the resource would accept any date that was formatted correctly in the local locale, unlike the Windows cookbook and Windows itself. We now support only the MM/DD/YYYY format, in keeping with the Windows cookbook.
  • InSpec updated to 1.39.1.

Ohai 13.5

Correctly detect IPv6 routes ending in ::

Previously we would ignore routes that ended ::, and now we properly detect them.

Plugin run time is now measured

Debug logs will show the length of time each plugin takes to run, making debugging of long ohai runs easier.

Chef Infra Client 13.4.24

  • Fix windows_task resource to be idempotent when specifying start_time and start_day.
  • Allow specifying gateway in the route resource on RHEL and CentOS platforms.
  • Fix dsc_script resource to be idempotent with WMF 5.

Security

This release includes Ruby 2.4.2 to fix the following CVEs:

Chef Infra Client 13.4.19

Security release of RubyGems

Chef Infra Client 13.4 includes RubyGems 2.6.13 to fix the following CVEs:

Ifconfig provider on Red Hat now supports additional properties

It is now possible to set ETHTOOL_OPTS, BONDING_OPTS, MASTER and SLAVE properties on interfaces on Red Hat compatible systems. See https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Deployment_Guide/s1-networkscripts-interfaces.html for further information

Properties

  • ethtool_opts
    Ruby types: String
    **Platforms:*- Fedora, RHEL, Amazon Linux A string containing arguments to ethtool. The string will be wrapped in double quotes, so ensure that any needed quotes in the property are surrounded by single quotes

  • bonding_opts
    Ruby types: String
    **Platforms:*- Fedora, RHEL, Amazon Linux A string containing configuration parameters for the bonding device.

  • master
    Ruby types: String
    **Platforms:*- Fedora, RHEL, Amazon Linux The channel bonding interface that this interface is linked to.

  • slave
    Ruby types: String
    **Platforms:*- Fedora, RHEL, Amazon Linux Whether the interface is controlled by the channel bonding interface defined by master, above.

Chef Vault is now included

Chef Infra Client 13.4 now includes the chef-vault gem, making it easier for users of chef-vault to use their encrypted items.

Windows remote_file resource with alternate credentials

The remote_file resource now supports the use of credentials on Windows when accessing a remote UNC path on Windows such as \\myserver\myshare\mydirectory\myfile.txt. This allows access to the file at that path location even if the Chef client process identity does not have permission to access the file. The new properties remote_user, remote_domain, and remote_password may be used to specify credentials with access to the remote file so that it may be read.

Note: This feature is mainly used for accessing files between two nodes in different domains and having different user accounts. In case the two nodes are in same domain, remote_file resource does not need remote_user and remote_password specified because the user has the same access on both systems through the domain.

Properties

The following properties are new for the remote_file resource:

  • remote_user
    Ruby types: String
    Windows only: The user name of a user with access to the remote file specified by the source property. Default value: nil. The user name may optionally be specified with a domain, i.e. domain\user or user@my.dns.domain.com via Universal Principal Name (UPN) format. It can also be specified without a domain simply as user if the domain is instead specified using the remote_domain attribute. Note that this property is ignored if source is not a UNC path. If this property is specified, the remote_password property *must- be specified.

  • remote_password
    *Ruby types- String
    Windows only: The password of the user specified by the remote_user property. Default value: nil. This property is mandatory if remote_user is specified and may only be specified if remote_user is specified. The sensitive property for this resource will automatically be set to true if remote_password is specified.

  • remote_domain
    *Ruby types- String
    Windows only: The domain of the user user specified by the remote_user property. Default value: nil. If not specified, the user and password properties specified by the remote_user and remote_password properties will be used to authenticate that user against the domain in which the system hosting the UNC path specified via source is joined, or if that system is not joined to a domain it will authenticate the user as a local account on that system. An alternative way to specify the domain is to leave this property unspecified and specify the domain as part of the remote_user property.

Examples

Accessing file from a (different) domain account

remote_file "E://domain_test.txt"  do
  source  "\\\\myserver\\myshare\\mydirectory\\myfile.txt"
  remote_domain "domain"
  remote_user "username"
  remote_password "password"
end

OR

remote_file "E://domain_test.txt"  do
  source  "\\\\myserver\\myshare\\mydirectory\\myfile.txt"
  remote_user "domain\\username"
  remote_password "password"
end

Accessing file using a local account on the remote machine

remote_file "E://domain_test.txt"  do
  source  "\\\\myserver\\myshare\\mydirectory\\myfile.txt"
  remote_domain "."
  remote_user "username"
  remote_password "password"
end

OR

remote_file "E://domain_test.txt"  do
  source  "\\\\myserver\\myshare\\mydirectory\\myfile.txt"
  remote_user ".\\username"
  remote_password "password"
end

windows_path resource

windows_path resource has been moved to core chef from windows cookbook. Use the windows_path resource to manage the path environment variable on Microsoft Windows.

Actions

  • :add - Add an item to the system path
  • :remove - Remove an item from the system path

Properties

  • path - Name attribute. The name of the value to add to the system path

Examples

Add Sysinternals to the system path

windows_path 'C:\Sysinternals' do
  action :add
end

Remove 7-Zip from the system path

windows_path 'C:\7-Zip' do
  action :remove
end

Ohai 13.4

Windows EC2 Detection

Detection of nodes running in EC2 has been greatly improved and should now detect nodes 100% of the time including nodes that have been migrated to EC2 or were built with custom AMIs.

Azure Metadata Endpoint Detection

Ohai now polls the new Azure metadata endpoint, giving us additional configuration details on nodes running in Azure

Sample data now available under azure:

{
  "metadata": {
    "compute": {
      "location": "westus",
      "name": "timtest",
      "offer": "UbuntuServer",
      "osType": "Linux",
      "platformFaultDomain": "0",
      "platformUpdateDomain": "0",
      "publisher": "Canonical",
      "sku": "17.04",
      "version": "17.04.201706191",
      "vmId": "8d523242-71cf-4dff-94c3-1bf660878743",
      "vmSize": "Standard_DS1_v2"
    },
    "network": {
      "interfaces": {
        "000D3A33AF03": {
          "mac": "000D3A33AF03",
          "public_ipv6": [

          ],
          "public_ipv4": [
            "52.160.95.99",
            "23.99.10.211"
          ],
          "local_ipv6": [

          ],
          "local_ipv4": [
            "10.0.1.5",
            "10.0.1.4",
            "10.0.1.7"
          ]
        }
      },
      "public_ipv4": [
        "52.160.95.99",
        "23.99.10.211"
      ],
      "local_ipv4": [
        "10.0.1.5",
        "10.0.1.4",
        "10.0.1.7"
      ],
      "public_ipv6": [

      ],
      "local_ipv6": [

      ]
    }
  }
}

Package Plugin Supports Arch Linux

The Packages plugin has been updated to include package information on Arch Linux systems.

Chef Infra Client 13.3.42

Chef can now create symlinks without privilege escalation, which allows for the creation of symlinks on Windows 10 Creator Update.

nokogiri Gem

The nokogiri gem is once again bundled with the omnibus install of Chef

zypper_package Options

It is now possible to pass additional options to the zypper in the zypper_package resource. This can be used to pass any zypper CLI option

Example

zypper_package 'foo' do
  options '--user-provided'
end

windows_task Improvements

The windows_task resource now properly allows updating the configuration of a scheduled task when using the :create action. Additionally the previous :change action from the windows cookbook has been aliased to :create to provide backwards compatibility.

apt_preference Resource

The apt_preference resource has been ported from the apt cookbook. This resource allows for the creation of APT preference files controlling which packages take priority during installation.

Further information regarding apt-pinning is available via https://wiki.debian.org/AptPreferences and https://manpages.debian.org/stretch/apt/apt_preferences.5.en.html

Actions

  • :add: creates a preferences file under /etc/apt/preferences.d
  • :remove: Removes the file, therefore unpin the package

Properties

  • package_name: name attribute. The name of the package
  • glob: Pin by glob() expression or regexp surrounded by /.
  • pin: The package version/repository to pin
  • pin_priority: The pinning priority aka “the highest package version wins”

Examples

Pin libmysqlclient16 to version 5.1.49-3:

apt_preference 'libmysqlclient16' do
  pin          'version 5.1.49-3'
  pin_priority '700'
end

Unpin libmysqlclient16:

apt_preference 'libmysqlclient16' do
  action :remove
end

Pin all packages from dotdeb.org:

apt_preference 'dotdeb' do
  glob         '*'
  pin          'origin packages.dotdeb.org'
  pin_priority '700'
end

zypper_repository Resource

The zypper_repository resource allows for the creation of Zypper package repositories on SUSE Enterprise Linux and openSUSE systems. This resource maintains full compatibility with the resource in the existing zypper cookbooks

Actions

  • :add - adds a repo
  • :delete - removes a repo

Properties

  • repo_name - repository name if different from the resource name (name property)
  • type - the repository type. default: ‘NONE’
  • description - the description of the repo that will be shown in zypper repos
  • baseurl - the base url of the repo
  • path - the relative path from the baseurl
  • mirrorlist - the url to the mirrorlist to use
  • gpgcheck - should we gpg check the repo (true/false). default: true
  • gpgkey - location of repo key to import
  • priority - priority of the repo. default: 99
  • autorefresh - should the repository be automatically refreshed (true/false). default: true
  • keeppackages - should packages be saved (true/false). default: false
  • refresh_cache - should package cache be refreshed (true/false). default: true
  • enabled - should this repository be enabled (true/false). default: true
  • mode - the file mode of the repository file. default: “0644”

Examples

Add the Apache repository for openSUSE Leap 42.2

zypper_repository 'apache' do
  baseurl 'http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Apache'
  path '/openSUSE_Leap_42.2'
  type 'rpm-md'
  priority '100'
end

Ohai 13.3

Additional Platform Support

Ohai now properly detects the F5 Big-IP platform and platform_version.

  • platform: bigip
  • platform_family: rhel

Chef Infra Client 13.2.20

Properly send policyfile data

When sending events back to the Chef Infra Server, we now correctly expand the run_list for nodes that use Policyfiles. This allows Automate to correctly report the node.

Reconfigure between runs when daemonized

When Chef performs a reconfigure, it re-reads the configuration files. It also re-opens its log files, which facilitates log file rotation.

Chef normally will reconfigure when sent a HUP signal. As of this release if you send a HUP signal while it is converging, the reconfigure happens at the end of the run. This is avoids potential Ruby issues when the configuration file contains additional Ruby code that is executed. While the daemon is sleeping between runs, sending a SIGHUP will still cause an immediate reconfigure.

Additionally, Chef now always performs a reconfigure after every run when daemonized.

New deprecations

Explicit property methods

https://docs.chef.io/deprecations_namespace_collisions

In Chef Infra Client 14, custom resources will no longer assume property methods are being called on new_resource, and instead require the resource author to be explicit.

Ohai 13.2

Ohai 13.2 has been a fantastic release in terms of community involvement with new plugins, platform support, and critical bug fixes coming from community members. A huge thank you to msgarbossa, albertomurillo, jaymzh, and davide125 for their work.

New Features

Systemd Paths Plugin

A new plugin has been added to expose system and user paths from systemd-path (see https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-path.html for details).

Linux Network, Filesystem, and Mdadm Plugin Resilience

The Network, Filesystem, and Mdadm plugins have been improved to greatly reduce failures to collect data. The Network plugin now better finds the binaries it requires for shelling out, filesystem plugin utilizes data from multiple sources, and mdadm handles arrays in bad states.

Zpool Plugin Platform Expansion

The Zpool plugin has been updated to support BSD and Linux in addition to Solaris.

RPM version parsing on AIX

The packages plugin now correctly parses RPM package name / version information on AIX systems.

Additional Platform Support

Ohai now properly detects the Clear and ClearOS Linux distributions.

Clear Linux

  • platform: clearlinux
  • platform_family: clearlinux

ClearOS

  • platform: clearos
  • platform_family: rhel

New Deprecations

Removal of IpScopes plugin. (OHAI-13)

https://docs.chef.io/deprecations_ohai_ipscopes

In Chef/Ohai 14 (April 2018) we will remove the IpScopes plugin. The data returned by this plugin is nearly identical to information already returned by individual network plugins and this plugin required the installation of an additional gem into the Chef installation. We believe that few users were installing the gem and users would be better served by the data returned from the network plugins.

Chef Infra Client 13.1.31

Socketless local mode by default

For security reasons we are switching Local Mode to use socketless connections by default. This prevents potential attacks where an unprivileged user or process connects to the internal Zero server for the converge and changes data.

If you use Chef Provisioning with Local Mode, you may need to pass --listen to chef-client.

New Deprecations

Removal of support for Ohai version 6 plugins (OHAI-10)

https://docs.chef.io/deprecations_ohai_v6_plugins

In Chef/Ohai 14 (April 2018) we will remove support for loading Ohai v6 plugins, which we deprecated in Ohai 7/Chef Infra Client 11.12.

Chef Infra Client 13.0.118

Bug Fixes

  • Resolve a regression that prevented installing gems on Windows in 13.0.113.
  • Resolve a regression that prevented passing options to the yum_package resource in 13.0.113.
  • Resolved a regression that made cookbooks uploaded from Chef Infra Client 13.0.113 incompatible with early Chef Infra Client releases.
  • Fixed detection failures in the Ohai OpenStack and Eucalyptus plugins.

Chef Infra Client 13.0.113

It is now possible to blacklist node attributes

Blacklist Attributes

Warning

When attribute blacklist settings are used, any attribute defined in a blacklist will not be saved and any attribute that is not defined in a blacklist will be saved. Each attribute type is blacklisted independently of the other attribute types. For example, if automatic_attribute_blacklist defines attributes that will not be saved, but normal_attribute_blacklist, default_attribute_blacklist, and override_attribute_blacklist are not defined, then all normal attributes, default attributes, and override attributes will be saved, as well as the automatic attributes that were not specifically excluded through blacklisting.

Attributes that should not be saved by a node may be blacklisted in the client.rb file. The blacklist is a Hash of keys that specify each attribute to be filtered out.

Attributes are blacklisted by attribute type, with each attribute type being blacklisted independently. Each attribute type—automatic, default, normal, and override—may define blacklists by using the following settings in the client.rb file:

SettingDescription
automatic_attribute_blacklistA hash that blacklists automatic attributes, preventing blacklisted attributes from being saved. For example: ['network/interfaces/eth0']. Default value: nil, all attributes are saved. If the array is empty, all attributes are saved.
default_attribute_blacklistA hash that blacklists default attributes, preventing blacklisted attributes from being saved. For example: ['filesystem/dev/disk0s2/size']. Default value: nil, all attributes are saved. If the array is empty, all attributes are saved.
normal_attribute_blacklistA hash that blacklists normal attributes, preventing blacklisted attributes from being saved. For example: ['filesystem/dev/disk0s2/size']. Default value: nil, all attributes are saved. If the array is empty, all attributes are saved.
override_attribute_blacklistA hash that blacklists override attributes, preventing blacklisted attributes from being saved. For example: ['map - autohome/size']. Default value: nil, all attributes are saved. If the array is empty, all attributes are saved.

Warning

The recommended practice is to use only automatic_attribute_blacklist for blacklisting attributes. This is primarily because automatic attributes generate the most data, but also that normal, default, and override attributes are typically much more important attributes and are more likely to cause issues if they are blacklisted incorrectly.

For example, automatic attribute data similar to:

{
  "filesystem" => {
    "/dev/disk0s2" => {
      "size" => "10mb"
    },
    "map - autohome" => {
      "size" => "10mb"
    }
  },
  "network" => {
    "interfaces" => {
      "eth0" => {...},
      "eth1" => {...},
    }
  }
}

To blacklist the filesystem attributes and allow the other attributes to be saved, update the client.rb file:

automatic_attribute_blacklist ['filesystem']

When a blacklist is defined, any attribute of that type that is not specified in that attribute blacklist will be saved. So based on the previous blacklist for automatic attributes, the filesystem and map - autohome attributes will not be saved, but the network attributes will.

For attributes that contain slashes (/) within the attribute value, such as the filesystem attribute '/dev/diskos2', use an array. For example:

automatic_attribute_blacklist [['filesystem','/dev/diskos2']]

RubyGems provider sources behavior changed.

The behavior of gem_package and chef_gem is now to always apply the Chef::Config[:rubygems_url] sources, which may be a String uri or an Array of Strings. If additional sources are put on the resource with the source property those are added to the configured :rubygems_url sources.

This should enable easier setup of rubygems mirrors particularly in “airgapped” environments through the use of the global config variable. It also means that an admin may force all rubygems.org traffic to an internal mirror, while still being able to consume external cookbooks which have resources which add other mirrors unchanged (in a non-airgapped environment).

In the case where a resource must force the use of only the specified source(s), then the include_default_source property has been added -* setting it to false will remove the Chef::Config[:rubygems_url] setting from the list of sources for that resource.

The behavior of the clear_sources property is now to only add --clear-sources and has no magic side effects on the source options.

Ruby version upgraded to 2.4.1

We’ve upgraded to the latest stable release of the Ruby programming language. See the Ruby 2.4.0 Release Notes for an overview of what’s new in the language.

Resource can now declare a default name

The core apt_update resource can now be declared without any name argument, no need for apt_update "this string doesn't matter but why do i have to type it?".

This can be used by any other resource by just overriding the name property and supplying a default:

property :name, String, default: ""

Notifications to resources with empty strings as their name is also supported via either the bare resource name (apt_update – matches what the user types in the DSL) or with empty brackets (apt_update[] – matches the resource notification pattern).

The knife ssh command applies the same fuzzifier as knife search node

A bare name to knife search node will search for the name in tags, roles, fqdn, addresses, policy_name or policy_group fields and will match when given partial strings (available since Chef Infra Client 11). The knife ssh search term has been similarly extended so that the search API matches in both cases. The node search fuzzifier has also been extracted out to a fuzz option to Chef::Search::Query for re-use elsewhere.

Cookbook root aliases

Rather than attributes/default.rb, cookbooks can now use attributes.rb in the root of the cookbook. Similarly for a single default recipe, cookbooks can use recipe.rb in the root of the cookbook.

knife ssh supports gateways with ssh key authentication

The new gateway_identity_file option allows the operator to specify the key to access ssh gateways with.

Windows Task resource added

The windows_task resource has been ported from the windows cookbook. Use the windows_task resource to create, delete or run a Windows scheduled task. Requires Windows Server 2008 due to API usage.

Note: :change action has been removed from windows_task resource. :create action can be used to update an existing task.

Solaris SMF services can now be started recursively

It is now possible to load Solaris services recursively, by ensuring the new options property of the service resource contains -r.

The guard interpreter for powershell_script is PowerShell, again

When writing not_if or only_if statements, by default we now run those statements using powershell, rather than forcing the user to set guard_interpreter each time.

Zypper GPG checks by default

Zypper now defaults to performing gpg checks of packages.

The InSpec gem is now shipped by default

The inspec and train gems are shipped by default in the chef omnibus package, making it easier for users in airgapped environments to use InSpec.

Properly support managing Sys-V services on Debian systemd hosts

Chef now properly supports managing sys-v services on hosts running systemd. Previously Chef would incorrectly attempt to fallback to Upstart even if upstart was not installed.

New default encrypted databag format

The default encrypted databag format is now 3.0, which was introduced in Chef Infra Client 12.0. Encrypted databag version 3.0 format uses the aes-256-gcm cipher for enhanced security. All nodes using encrypted data bags in your environment will need to be upgraded to Chef Infra Client 12.0 or later before creating encrypted data bags in this new format.

Backwards Compatibility Breaks

Resource Cloning has been removed

When Chef compiles resources, it will no longer attempt to merge the properties of previously compiled resources with the same name and type in to the new resource. See the deprecation page for further information.

It is an error to specify both default and name_property on a property

Chef Infra Client 12 made this work by picking the first option it found, but it was always an error and has now been disallowed.

The path property of the execute resource has been removed

It was never implemented in the provider, so it was always a no-op to use it, the remediation is to simply delete it.

Using the command property on any script resource (including bash, etc) is now a hard error

This was always a usage mistake. The command property was used internally by the script resource and was not intended to be exposed to users. Users should use the code property instead (or use the command property on an execute resource to execute a single command).

Omitting the code property on any script resource (including bash, etc) is now a hard error

It is possible that this was being used as a no-op resource, but the log resource is a better choice for that until we get a null resource added. Omitting the code property or mixing up the code property with the command property are also common usage mistakes that we need to catch and error on.

The chef_gem resource defaults to not run at compile time

The compile_time true flag may still be used to force compile time.

The Chef::Config[:chef_gem_compile_time] config option has been removed

In order to for community cookbooks to behave consistently across all users this optional flag has been removed.

The supports[:manage_home] and supports[:non_unique] API has been removed

The remediation is to set the manage_home and non_unique properties directly.

creates without cwd is a hard error

Using relative paths in the creates property of an execute resource with specifying a cwd is now a hard error Without a declared cwd the relative path was (most likely?) relative to wherever chef-client happened to be invoked which is not deterministic or easy to intuit behavior.

Chef::PolicyBuilder::ExpandNodeObject#load_node has been removed

This change is most likely to only affect internals of tooling like chefspec if it affects anything at all.

PolicyFiles failback

PolicyFile failback to create non-policyfile nodes on Chef Infra Server < 12.3 has been removed. PolicyFile users on Chef Infra Client 13 should be using Chef Infra Server 12.3 or higher.

Cookbooks with self dependencies are no longer allowed

The remediation is removing the self-dependency depends line in the metadata.

Removed supports API from Chef::Resource

Retained only for the service resource (where it makes some sense) and for the mount resource.

Removed retrying of non-StandardError exceptions for Chef::Resource

Exceptions not descending from StandardError (e.g. LoadError, SecurityError, SystemExit) will no longer trigger a retry if they are raised during the execution of a resources with a non-zero retries setting.

Removed deprecated method_missing access from the Chef::Node object

Previously, the syntax node.foo.bar could be used to mean node["foo"]["bar"], but this API had sharp edges where methods collided with the core ruby Object class (e.g. node.class) and where it collided with our own ability to extend the Chef::Node API. This method access has been deprecated for some time, and has been removed in Chef-13.

Changed declare_resource API

Dropped the create_if_missing parameter that was immediately supplanted by the edit_resource API (most likely nobody ever used this) and converted the created_at parameter from an optional positional parameter to a named parameter. These changes are unlikely to affect any cookbook code.

Node deep-duping fixes

The node.to_hash/node.to_h and node.dup APIs have been fixed so that they correctly deep-dup the node data structure including every string value. This results in a mutable copy of the immutable merged node structure. This is correct behavior, but is now more expensive and may break some poor code (which would have been buggy and difficult to follow code with odd side effects before).

For example:

node.default["foo"] = "fizz"
n = node.to_hash   # or node.dup
n["foo"] << "buzz"

before this would have mutated the original string in-place so that node["foo"] and node.default["foo"] would have changed to “fizzbuzz” while now they remain “fizz” and only the mutable n["foo"] copy is changed to “fizzbuzz”.

Freezing immutable merged attributes

Since Chef Infra Client 11 merged node attributes have been intended to be immutable but the merged strings have not been frozen. In Chef Infra Client 13, in the process of merging the node attributes strings and other simple objects are dup’d and frozen. In order to get a mutable copy, you can now correctly use the node.dup or node.to_hash methods, or you should mutate the object correctly through its precedence level like node.default["some_string"] << "appending_this".

The Chef::REST API has been removed

It has been fully replaced with Chef::ServerAPI in chef-client code.

Properties overriding methods now raise an error

Defining a property that overrides methods defined on the base ruby Object or on Chef::Resource itself can cause large amounts of confusion. A simple example is property :hash which overrides the Object#hash method which will confuse ruby when the Custom Resource is placed into the Chef::ResourceCollection which uses a Hash internally which expects to call Object#hash to get a unique id for the object. Attempting to create property :action would also override the Chef::Resource#action method which is unlikely to end well for the user. Overriding inherited properties is still supported.

chef-shell now supports solo and legacy solo modes

Running chef-shell -s or chef-shell --solo will give you an experience consistent with chef-solo. chef-shell --solo-legacy-mode will give you an experience consistent with chef-solo --legacy-mode.

The deprecated code has been removed. All providers and resources should now be using Chef >= 12.0 provides syntax.

Remove sort option for the Search API

This option has been unimplemented on the server side for years, so any use of it has been pointless.

Remove Chef::ShellOut

This was deprecated and replaced a long time ago with mixlib-shellout and the shell_out mixin.

Remove method_missing from the Chef Infra Language

The core of chef hasn’t used this to implement the Chef Infra Language since 12.5.1 and its unlikely that any external code depended upon it.

Simplify Chef Infra Language wiring

Support for actions with spaces and hyphens in the action name has been dropped. Resources and property names with spaces and hyphens most likely never worked in Chef-12. UTF-8 characters have always been supported and still are.

easy_install resource has been removed

The Python easy_install package installer has been deprecated for many years, so we have removed support for it. No specific replacement for pip is being included with Chef at this time, but a pip-based python_package resource is available in the poise-python cookbooks.

Removal of run_command and popen4 APIs

All the APIs in chef/mixlib/command have been removed. They were deprecated by mixlib-shellout and the shell_out mixin API.

Iconv has been removed from the ruby libraries and chef omnibus build

The ruby Iconv library was replaced by the Encoding library in ruby 1.9.x and since the deprecation of ruby 1.8.7 there has been no need for the Iconv library but we have carried it forwards as a dependency since removing it might break some chef code out there which used this library. It has now been removed from the ruby build. This also removes LGPLv3 code from the omnibus build and reduces build headaches from porting iconv to every platform we ship chef-client on.

This will also affect nokogiri, but that gem natively supports UTF-8, UTF-16LE/BE, ISO-8851-1(Latin-1), ASCII and “HTML” encodings. Users who really need to write something like Shift-JIS inside of XML will need to either maintain their own nokogiri installs or will need to convert to using UTF-8.

Deprecated cookbook metadata has been removed

The recommends, suggests, conflicts, replaces and grouping metadata fields are no longer supported, and have been removed, since they were never used. Chef will ignore them in existing metadata.rb files, but we recommend that you remove them. This was proposed in RFC 85.

All unignored cookbook files will now be uploaded.

We now treat every file under a cookbook directory as belonging to a cookbook, unless that file is ignored with a chefignore file. This is a change from the previous behavior where only files in certain directories, such as recipes or templates, were treated as special. This change allows chef to support new classes of files, such as Ohai plugins or InSpec tests, without having to make changes to the cookbook format to support them.

DSL-based custom resources and providers no longer get module constants

Up until now, creating a mycook/resources/thing.rb would create a Chef::Resources::MycookThing name to access the resource class object. This const is no longer created for resources and providers. You can access resource classes through the resolver API like:

Chef::Resource.resource_for_node(:mycook_thing, node)

Accessing a provider class is a bit more complex, as you need a resource against which to run a resolution like so:

Chef::ProviderResolver.new(node, find_resource!("mycook_thing[name]"), :nothing).resolve

Default values for resource properties are frozen

A resource declaring something like:

property :x, default: {}

will now see the default value set to be immutable. This prevents cases of modifying the default in one resource affecting others. If you want a per-resource mutable default value, define it inside a lazy{} helper like:

property :x, default: lazy { {} }

ResourceCollection and notifications

Resources which later modify their name during creation will have their name changed on the ResourceCollection and notifications

some_resource "name_one" do
  name "name_two"
end

The fix for sending notifications to multipackage resources involved changing the API which inserts resources into the resource collection slightly so that it no longer directly takes the string which is typed into the DSL but reads the (possibly coerced) name off of the resource after it is built. The end result is that the above resource will be named some_resource[name_two] instead of some_resource[name_one]. Note that setting the name (not the name_property, but actually renaming the resource) is very uncommon. The fix is to simply name the resource correctly in the first place (some_resource "name_two" do ...)

use_inline_resources is always enabled

The use_inline_resources provider mode is always enabled when using the action :name do ... end syntax. You can remove the use_inline_resources line.

knife cookbook site vendor has been removed

Please use knife cookbook site install instead.

knife cookbook create has been removed

Please use chef generate cookbook from ChefDK instead.

Verify commands no longer support “%{file}”

Chef has always recommended %{path}, and %{file} has now been removed.

The partial_search recipe method has been removed

The partial_search method has been fully replaced by the filter_result argument to search, and has now been removed.

The logger and formatter settings are more predictable

The default now is the formatter. There is no more automatic switching to the logger when logging or when output is sent to a pipe. The logger needs to be specifically requested with --force-logger or it will not show up.

The --force-formatter option does still exist, although it will probably be deprecated in the future.

If your logfiles switch to the formatter, you need to include --force-logger for your daemonized runs.

Redirecting output to a file with chef-client > /tmp/chef.out now captures the same output as invoking it directly on the command line with no redirection.

Path Sanity disabled by default and modified

The chef client itself no long modifies its ENV['PATH'] variable directly. When using the shell_out API now, in addition to setting up LANG/LANGUAGE/LC_ALL variables that API will also inject certain system paths and the ruby bindir and gemdirs into the PATH (or Path on Windows). The shell_out_with_systems_locale API still does not mangle any environment variables. During the Chef-13 lifecycle changes will be made to prep Chef-14 to switch so that shell_out by default behaves like shell_out_with_systems_locale. A new flag will get introduced to call shell_out(..., internal: [true|false]) to either get the forced locale and path settings (“internal”) or not. When that is introduced in Chef Infra Client 13.x the default will be true (backwards-compat with 13.0) and that default will change in 14.0 to ‘false’.

The PATH changes have also been tweaked so that the ruby bindir and gemdir PATHS are prepended instead of appended to the PATH. Some system directories are still appended.

Some examples of changes:

  • which ruby in 12.x will return any system ruby and fall back to the embedded ruby if using omnibus
  • which ruby in 13.x will return any system ruby and will not find the embedded ruby if using omnibus
  • shell_out_with_systems_locale("which ruby") behaves the same as which ruby above
  • shell_out("which ruby") in 12.x will return any system ruby and fall back to the embedded ruby if using omnibus
  • shell_out("which ruby") in 13.x will always return the omnibus ruby first (but will find the system ruby if not using omnibus)

The PATH in shell_out can also be overridden:

  • shell_out("which ruby", env: { "PATH" => nil }) - behaves like shell_out_with_systems_locale()
  • shell_out("which ruby", env: { "PATH" => [...include PATH string here...] }) - set it arbitrarily however you need

Since most providers which launch custom user commands use shell_out_with_systems_locale (service, execute, script, etc) the behavior will be that those commands that used to be having embedded omnibus paths injected into them no longer will. Generally this will fix more problems than it solves, but may causes issues for some use cases.

Default guard clauses (not_if/only_if) do not change the PATH or other env vars

The implementation switched to shell_out_with_systems_locale to match execute resource, etc.

Chef Infra Client will now exit using the RFC062 defined exit codes

Chef Infra Client will only exit with exit codes defined in RFC 062. This allows other tooling to respond to how a Chef run completes. Attempting to exit Chef Infra Client with an unsupported exit code (either via Chef::Application.fatal! or Chef::Application.exit!) will result in an exit code of 1 (GENERIC_FAILURE) and a warning in the event log.

When Chef Infra Client is running as a forked process on unix systems, the standardized exit codes are used by the child process. To actually have Chef Infra Client return the standard exit code, client_fork false will need to be set in Chef Infra Client’s configuration file.

Chef Infra Client 12.22.5

Bug Fixes

  • Prevented failures in cookbooks that need to support both Chef Infra Client 12.x and 13.x by removing the legacy state property that is now removed in 13.x.

Resource Updates

ifconfig

The ifconfig resource has been updated to support Ubuntu 18.04.

Chef Infra Client 12.22.3

This release fixes an issue in our Windows security support code that would occasionally cause heap corruption on Windows. This would manifest as Chef Infra Client runs that terminated without any logging or errors. Since the issue was located within the common get_account_right method, this could affect a number of different recipes, but was most often seen when using the windows_service resource.

Chef Infra Client 12.22.1

Security Updates

Ruby

Ruby has been updated from 2.3.5 to 2.3.6 to resolve CVE-2017-17405.

libxml2

The libxml2 library has been updated from 2.9.5 to 2.9.7 to resolve CVE-2017-15412

System Configuration Detection

EC2 detection on C5/M5

Ohai now provides EC2 metadata configuration information on the new C5/M5 instance types running on Amazon’s new hypervisor.

LsPci Plugin

The new Ohai LsPci plugin provides a node[:pci] hash with information about the PCI bus based on lspci. Only runs on Linux.

Docker Detection

The virtualization plugin has been updated to properly detect when running on Docker CE

Chef Infra Client 12.21.31

Bug Fixes

  • The Ohai Mdadm plugin now supports arrays with more than 10 disks

Platform Support

Red Hat Enterprise Linux on AArch64

We now produce packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux on AArch64.

Security

OpenSSL 1.0.2n

OpenSSL has been updated from 1.0.2j to 1.0.2n to resolve the following CVEs:

libxml 2.9.5

The libxml2 library has been updated from 2.9.4 to 2.9.5 to resolve the following CVEs:

libxslt 1.1.30

The libxslt library has been updated from 1.1.29 to 1.1.30 to resolve the following CVEs:

libyaml 0.1.7

The libyaml library has been updated from 0.1.6 to 0.1.7 to resolve CVE-2014-9130

Chef Infra Client 12.21.26

Bug Fixes

  • Restore compatibility with Ruby 2.2.
  • Resolve failures to detect the ip address on some Solaris systems.

Security

Rubygems

Rubygems has been updated from 2.6.13 to 2.6.14, fixing 4 CVEs:

Ohai Critical Plugins Functionality

Users can now specify a list of plugins which are critical for the Chef run. Critical plugins will cause Ohai to fail if they do not run successfully (and thus cause a Chef run using Ohai to fail). The syntax for this is:

ohai.critical_plugins << :Filesystem

Chef Infra Client 12.21.20

Resource Updates

dnf_package / package

The dnf_package resource and the DNF Provider for the package resource have been improved to better run only when DNF is present on the system.

dsc_script

The dsc_script resource logging has been improved.

Chef Infra Client 12.21.14

Bug Fixes

  • Fix the apt_repository now now correctly checks APT key fingerprints on newer systems

Chef Infra Client 12.21.12

Resource Updates

dsc_script

The dsc_script resource now supports Windows Management Framework 5.

Security

Ruby 2.3.5

Ruby has been updated from 2.3.4 to 2.3.5 to resolve the following CVEs:

Chef Infra Client 12.21.10

Bug Fixes

  • Ensure the dnf_package resource is only used on systems RHEL 8 and later.
  • Attribute performance has been improved when utilizing large numbers of merged attributes.

Security

Rubygems 2.6.13

Rubygems has been updated from 2.6.12 to 2.6.13 to resolve the following CVEs:

Chef Infra Client 12.21.4

Bug Fixes

  • Chef Infra Client now properly sends expanded run list events on nodes using PolicyFiles.

Chef Infra Client 12.21.3

Bug Fixes

  • Improve the resource reporters ability to determine identity and state properties in resources to prevent failures.
  • Update Ruby from 2.3.1 to 2.3.4 to resolve a large number of bugs.
  • Fix segfaults installing gems on Windows systems.

Chef Infra Client 12.21.1

On Debian prefer Systemd to Upstart

On Debian systems, packages that support systemd will often ship both an old style init script and a systemd unit file. When this happened, Chef Infra Client would incorrectly choose Upstart rather than systemd as the service provider. Chef Infra Client will now prefer systemd where available.

Handle the ‘supports’ property better

Chef Infra Client 13 removed the supports property from core resources. Chef Infra Client 12 was incorrectly giving a deprecation notice for another property called support, which prevented users from properly testing their cookbooks for upgrades.

Don’t crash if downgrading from Chef Infra Client 13 to 12

On systems where Chef Infra Client 13 had been run, Chef Infra Client 12 would crash as the on-disk cookbook format has changed. Chef Infra Client 12 now correctly ignores the unexpected files.

Provide better information during failures

When Chef Infra Client fails, the output now includes details about the platform and version of Chef Infra Client that was running, so that a bug report has more detail.

Chef Infra Client 12.20.3

Server Enforced Recipe

This release adds support for Server Enforced Recipe, as described in RFC 896 and implemented in Chef Infra Server 12.15. Complete release documentation of this feature will be coming soon.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixes issue where the apt_repository resource couldn’t identify key fingerprints when gnupg 2.1.x was used.

Chef Infra Client 12.19.36

Bug Fixes

  • Resolve a regression in 12.19.33 that prevented setting the options property the apt_package resource.

Chef Infra Client 12.19.33

knife ssh / knife bootstrap ed25519 support

The knife bootstrap and knife ssh commands now support ed25519 SSH keys.

Windows alternate user identity execute support

The execute resource and similar resources such as script, batch, and powershell_script now support the specification of credentials on Windows so that the resulting process is created with the security identity that corresponds to those credentials.

Note: When Chef Infra Client is running as a service, this feature requires that the user that Chef Infra Client runs as has ‘SeAssignPrimaryTokenPrivilege’ (aka ‘SE_ASSIGNPRIMARYTOKEN_NAME’) user right. By default only LocalSystem and NetworkService have this right when running as a service. This is necessary even if the user is an Administrator.

This right can be added and checked in a recipe using this example:

 Add 'SeAssignPrimaryTokenPrivilege' for the user
Chef::ReservedNames::Win32::Security.add_account_right('<user>', 'SeAssignPrimaryTokenPrivilege')

 Check if the user has 'SeAssignPrimaryTokenPrivilege' rights
Chef::ReservedNames::Win32::Security.get_account_right('<user>').include?('SeAssignPrimaryTokenPrivilege')

Properties

The following properties are new or updated for the execute, script, batch, and powershell_script resources and any resources derived from them:

user

Ruby Type: String The user name of the user identity with which to launch the new process. The user name may optionally be specified with a domain, i.e. domain\user or user@my.dns.domain.com via Universal Principal Name (UPN) format. It can also be specified without a domain simply as user if the domain is instead specified using the domain attribute. On Windows only, if this property is specified, the password property must be specified.

password

Ruby types String Windows only: The password of the user specified by the user property. This property is mandatory if user is specified on Windows and may only be specified if user is specified. The sensitive property for this resource will automatically be set to true if password is specified.

domain

Ruby types String Windows only: The domain of the user specified by the user property. If not specified, the user name and password specified by the user and password properties will be used to resolve that user against the domain in which the system running Chef client is joined, or if that system is not joined to a domain it will resolve the user as a local account on that system. An alternative way to specify the domain is to leave this property unspecified and specify the domain as part of the user property.

Usage

The following examples explain how alternate user identity properties can be used in the execute resources:

powershell_script 'create powershell-test file' do
  code <<-EOH
  $stream = [System.IO.StreamWriter] "#{Chef::Config[:file_cache_path]}/powershell-test.txt"
  $stream.WriteLine("In #{Chef::Config[:file_cache_path]}...word.")
  $stream.close()
  EOH
  user 'username'
  password 'password'
end

execute 'mkdir test_dir' do
  cwd Chef::Config[:file_cache_path]
  domain "domain-name"
  user "user"
  password "password"
end

script 'create test_dir' do
  interpreter "bash"
  code  "mkdir test_dir"
  cwd Chef::Config[:file_cache_path]
  user "domain-name\\username"
  password "password"
end

batch 'create test_dir' do
  code "mkdir test_dir"
  cwd Chef::Config[:file_cache_path]
  user "username@domain-name"
  password "password"
end

Bug Fixes

  • Systemd unit files are now verified before being installed.
  • Ensure that the Windows Administrator group can access the chef-solo nodes directory
  • When loading a cookbook in Chef Solo, use metadata.json in preference to metadata.rb

Packaging Updates

Cisco NX-OS and IOS XR

As of version 12.19, Chef Infra Client packages for Cisco NX-OS and IOS XR platforms will no longer be produced.

System Configuration Detection

Cumulus Linux Platform

Cumulus Linux will now be detected as platform cumulus instead of debian and the platform_version will be properly set to the Cumulus Linux release.

Virtualization Detection

Windows / Linux / BSD guests running on the Veertu hypervisors will now be detected

Windows guests running on Xen and Hyper-V hypervisors will now be detected

New Sysconf Plugin

A new plugin parses the output of the sysconf command to provide information on the underlying system.

AWS Account ID

The EC2 plugin now fetches the AWS Account ID in addition to previous instance metadata

GCC Detection

GCC detection has been improved to collect additional information, and to not prompt for the installation of Xcode on macOS systems

New deprecations

Ohai::Config removed

sigar gem based plugins removed

run_command and popen4 helper methods removed

libvirt plugin attributes moved

Windows CPU plugin attribute changes

DigitalOcean plugin attribute changes

Chef Infra Client 12.18.31

Windows Scheduled Task Execution

You can now specify Chef Infra Client to run as a scheduled task directly in the install MSI.

Resource Updates

chocolatey_package

The chocolatey_package resource has been updated to allow specifying the acceptable return codes with a new returns property.

package

The package resource has been updated to support installation via DNF on Fedora hosts as well as upcoming RHEL releases that ship with DNF by default.

New deprecations

Chef Infra Client 12.17.44

The following items are new for Chef Infra Client 12.17 and/or are changes from previous versions. The short version:

  • Added msu_package resource
  • Added alias unmount to umount action for mount resource
  • Can now delete multiple nodes/clients in knife
  • Haskell language plugin added to Ohai

msu_package resource

The msu_package resource installs or removes Microsoft Update(MSU) packages on Microsoft Windows machines. Here are some examples:

Using local path in source

msu_package 'Install Windows 2012R2 Update KB2959977'