Chef doesn't offer a omnibus chef-client for raspberry pi yet. This knife bootstrap script helps get around that by offering you a few methods to get a Raspberry Pi ready chef-client.

There are bootstrap scripts to support both raspbian-wheezy and raspbian-jessie. The commands below replace the release codename with the OS running on your Raspberry Pi. If for some reason you do not wish to run ssh in the subshell, just replace it manually.

For example: Replace <lsb_codename_here> in raspbian-<lsb_codename_here>-gems.erb with the output of lsb_release -c -s on your Pi.

Before you start check the following:

• your chef workstation environment is setup and ready with knife
• your pi is on the network and you can login as root
• have some patience - this will take a while - especially the ruby-build route

This script has been tested against raspbian-wheezy, and raspbian-jessie but should likely work gracefully for other Debian-based Linux systems.

The older raspbian-wheezy will use ruby-build to build a ruby and then install chef into /opt/chef. This will take a long time

The raspbian-jessie has some options to get ruby and chef: compile with ruby-build, prebuilt bundle, or adding a new apt repository to get ruby2.3. The default is my to build it. Prefix your knife bootstrap like OPT=prebuilt knife bootstrap with the following options:

• OPT=build - Default: Uses ruby-build to build a new ruby
• Slow: This will take a long time
• OPT=prebuilt - Same as above, only it comes from a prebuilt tar.gz bundle by dayne.
• Fast: Only do this if you are Dayne or trust me
• OPT=stretch - Adds the stretch apt repository to pi and installs ruby-2.3 from apt
• Fast: Do this if you don't mind new apt repo on your pi

knife bootstrap -t raspbian-$(ssh root@<address_of_your_pi> \ 
                     'lsb_release -c -s')-gems.erb -x root address_of_your_pi

Or to sudo in via pi user if you don't have root access

knife bootstrap -t raspbian-$(ssh root@<address_of_your_pi> \
        'lsb_release -c -s')-gems.erb --ssh-user pi --sudo address_of_your_pi

• ruby-build installed in /usr/local/bin
• /opt/chef with a ruby (wheezy: 2.2, jessie: 2.3) compiled from ruby-build
  • Or possibly ruby from stretch repo if you choose that option for jessie.
• pi's clock will be synchronized and pi running ntpd (network time protocol daemon).
• /usr/local/bin/chef-client to run chef-client with right path for Chef & ruby.

Note: I have a short attention span and waiting for ruby to compile on a pi is boring. You have option of using my prebuilt /opt/chef if you want using that OPT=prebuilt flag on the jessie bootstrap.

A full on example of a knife command that applies a Chef recipe. Using my own d-base recipe and taking advantage of my pre-built /opt/chef

OPT=prebuilt knife bootstrap -t raspbian-jessiegems.erb -u pi -x \
              -N NODE_NAME --run-list 'recipe[d-base::default]' ADDRESS_OF_PI

• @tinoschroeter : Tino Schröter as original author
• @dayne : dayne updated and evolved to support Chef 12
• @in-bto : ino-bto for trusted certs forwarding to client node
• @Edubits: Edubits updated to Jessie
• @trinitronx: trinitronx Merged support for both Wheezy and Jessie
• @marcusbooyah: marcusbooyah Tested and fixed bugs in OPT=stretch