Problem scenario
You are using Chef and the Kitchen command line tool. If a kitchen command fails, how can you find out the root cause?

Solution
With the command that fails, re-run it with this at the end: –log-level=debug

To learn more about the verbosity of kitchen commands, see this: https://docs.chef.io/workstation/ctl_kitchen/#options

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Continue reading “How Do You Troubleshoot a Kitchen Command?”

Problem scenario
You want to install the inspec gem. What do you do?

Solution
Run this:
gem install inspec
(Taken from https://mitre-inspec-developer.netlify.app/installation/linuxinstall.html )

Does the inspec-bin command work? This may be a newer version that is already installed.

If you installed Ruby with root, which is not recommended according to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24706277/error-sudo-gem-command-not-found,

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Continue reading “How Do You Install “inspec” with gem from the Command Line?”

Problem scenario
You are trying to create an organization using the chef-server-ctl org-create command.  But you get an error that the “name” entered was invalid.  For example, you run this:

sudo chef-server-ctl org-create ContInt “ContinualIntegration” –association_user contintuser –filename /bin/good.pem

But you get this:

ERROR: The data in your request was invalid
Response: Field ‘name’ invalid

What should you do?

Solution
For the “shortname” that is immediately after the “org-create” command,

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Continue reading “How Do You Troubleshoot the Chef Error “Field ‘name” invalid” after Running a chef-server-ctl Command?”

Problem scenario
You try to run a knife command but you get 404 not found.  What should you do?

Solution
Run this command: knife client list

If you get a 404 error with this command, then look at your client.rb file.  Is the chef_server_url correct?  Is the hostname actually the Chef server or is it something else?  Is the “organizations/companynickname” present and correctly typed?

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Continue reading “How Do You Fix “404 not found” Errors When You Run Knife Commands?”