Inspecting files on your Chef server with knife

Sometimes, you may want to peek into the files stored on your Chef server. You might not be sure about an implementation detail of the specific cookbook version currently installed on your Chef server, and need to look it up. Knife can help you out by letting you show various aspects of the files stored on your Chef server.

Getting ready

1. Install the iptables community cookbook by executing the following command:

   mma@laptop:~/chef-repo $ knife cookbook site install iptables
   Installing iptables to /Users/mma/work/chef-repo/cookbooks
   ...TRUNCATED OUTPUT...
   

   Note

   Take a look at the following error:

   ERROR: IOError: Cannot open or read ../chef-repo/cookbooks/iptables/metadata.rb!

   If you get the preceding error, your cookbook only has a metadata.json file. Make sure that you delete it and create a valid metadata.rb, file instead.

2. Upload the iptables cookbook on your Chef server by executing the following command:

   mma@laptop:~/chef-repo $ knife cookbook upload iptables --include-dependencies
   Uploading iptables       [3.0.0]
   Uploading compat_resource [12.14.7]
   Uploaded 2 cookbooks.