I wanted to capture the minimal steps required to install a Chef version 10 Server using RubyGems under Ruby 1.9 (1.9.3-p0) on Ubuntu 12.04.

Similar steps are also available on the Chef wiki, too.

This does not include any customization to the installation and takes everything as default. This will all change when Chef 11 is released.

These steps were performed on a default server install of Ubuntu 12.04.

Update apt sources.

sudo apt-get update

Install required packages.

sudo apt-get install ruby1.9.1-full build-essential wget ssl-cert curl

Update RubyGems.

REALLY_GEM_UPDATE_SYSTEM=yes sudo -E gem update --system

Install Chef.

sudo gem install chef --no-ri --no-rdoc

Configure chef-solo.

sudo mkdir -p /etc/chef
sudo vi /etc/chef/solo.rb

The config file should look like this:

file_cache_path "/tmp/chef-solo"
cookbook_path "/tmp/chef-solo/cookbooks"
recipe_url "http://s3.amazonaws.com/chef-solo/bootstrap-latest.tar.gz"

Run chef-solo with the chef-server::rubygems-install recipe.

sudo chef-solo -o chef-server::rubygems-install

The WebUI is not enabled by default. This can be done by setting an attribute, see the chef-server cookbook for more information.

Next, create a new API client that will be used to upload cookbooks.

sudo knife configure -i

Change the chef_server_url to use the FQDN or IP address of the Chef Server. Change the path for the validation key. The .chef/knife.rb file should look something like this:

log_level                :info
log_location             STDOUT
node_name                'jtimberman'
client_key               '/home/jtimberman/.chef/jtimberman.pem'
validation_client_name   'chef-validator'
validation_key           '/home/jtimberman/.chef/validation.pem'
chef_server_url          'http://10.1.1.100:4000'
cache_type               'BasicFile'
cache_options( :path => '/home/jtimberman/.chef/checksums' )

Copy the validation key (/etc/chef/validation.pem) to the .chef directory.

sudo cp /etc/chef/validation.pem ~/.chef

Verify that the API client and configuration file work.

knife client list
  chef-validator
  chef-webui
  jtimberman

The newly created API client should be listed. Mine is jtimberman. Now the Chef Server is ready to use.