Installation on Linux and Ubuntu

Chef provides us with a number of ways to get started. We can get it working using different methods. Each method has certain advantages and disadvantages. Chef-Solo can be installed as a Ruby gem, or a Debian package and is not available as Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) packages for Red Hat based Linux.

The detailed installation methods are discussed in the following sections.

Installing Chef as a Ruby gem

Chef is written in Ruby, and before getting started with Chef-Solo, we have to install Ruby. The installation is simple enough and it requires only two packages to get started. Ruby developers may prefer this particular method to get started.

apt-get install Ruby1.9.3 Ruby1.9.3-dev build-essential

This will install Ruby Version 1.9.1 and also a few required extensions. After installation of Ruby, we can easily install Chef using it as a Ruby gem. We can install Ruby by using the following snippet:

gem1.9.3 install --no-ri --no-rdoc chef

Also, you can install...