How to Install Chef Server on Ubuntu Linux

This brief tutorial shows students and new users how to install Chef automated server on Ubuntu 20.04 | 18.04.

Chef is a popular configuration management tool that allows IT admins to automate the deployment, management, and secure maintenance of IT resources across an environment.

Chef has three components: Chef Workstation or Desktop, Chef Server, and Chef Client/Node.

We discussed how to install the Check Workstation here.

The chef server is the center of the operation. It stores manage and provide configuration settings to all Chef components.

The previous post showed you how to install the Chef workstation. This post shows you how to install the Chef server, its central repository that manages all components.

To get started with installing the Chef server, follow the steps below:

Prepare Ubuntu

Before installing the Chef server, you’ll want to update Ubuntu and install some basic tools to download Chef packages. To do that, run the commands below:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install curl wget

After that, set the Ubuntu server hostname. For this post, we’re going to use chef.example.com as the server hostname.

Run the commands below to set it.

sudo hostnamectl set-hostname chef.example.com

You may also configure its host record in the /etc/hosts file.

sudo nano /etc/hosts

Then add a line to reference the server IP.

192.168.1.1     chef.example.com

Save the file and exit.

Download and Install Chef Automate

Now that the Ubuntu server is prepared, use the commands below to download the Chef server packages. You can visit this download site to find the latest version to download.

cd /tmp
wget https://packages.chef.io/files/stable/chef-server/13.0.17/ubuntu/18.04/chef-server-core_13.0.17-1_amd64.deb

After downloading the server packages, run the commands below to install.

sudo apt install ./chef-server-core_13.0.17-1_amd64.deb

Wait for the installation to complete. Once done, run the commands below to accept its licensing terms and configure the server’s services.

sudo chef-server-ctl reconfigure

You should see something similar to the lines below:

---------------------------------------------+
            Chef License Acceptance

Before you can continue, 3 product licenses
must be accepted. View the license at

Licenses that need accepting:
  * Chef Infra Server
  * Chef Infra Client
  * Chef InSpec

Do you accept the 3 product licenses (yes/no)?

> yes

The chef comes with a utility to manage basic tasks like creating the admin account, organization, and others. To create an admin account, use the comment format:

sudo chef-server-ctl user-create USER_NAME FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME EMAIL 'PASSWORD' --filename FILE_NAME

An RSA key will be generated in the filename specified.

For example, to create a new admin account with the full name Super Admin and store it in your home folder, run the commands below:

sudo chef-server-ctl user-create chefadmin Super Admin chefadmin@example.com 'type_strong_password' --filename ~/chefadmin.pem

After that, you’ll also want to create an organization. Run the commands below to create an organization.

sudo chef-server-ctl org-create example "Example INC." --association_user chefadmin --filename ~/example-org.pem

Full details of the option above

• example – Organization short name. It must begin with a non-whitespace character.
• “Example INC.” – Organization full name
• –association_user – the admin account created earlier
• –filename – filename to store the RSA key for validation

Install Chef Manage

Chef Mange is a premium add-on that allows you to use a web interface to manage Chef tasks. If free up to 25 nodes. To install Chef Manage, run the commands below:

sudo chef-server-ctl install chef-manage
sudo chef-server-ctl reconfigure 
sudo chef-manage-ctl reconfigure
sudo chef-manage-ctl reconfigure --accept-license

Log in to the web interface using the server hostname or IP address when you’re done.

http://chef.example.com/login

That should bring up the Chef Mange web portal.

Login with the admin account created above and begin setting up some basic tasks.

Conclusion:

This post showed you how to install the Chef Server on Ubuntu 20.04 | 18.04. If you find any error above, please use the form below to report.

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