How to setup a Cookbook to configure Apache Webserver

Here in this article we will try to setup a very basic Chef Cookbook to install Apache HTTPD service and validate it.

Table of Contents

Test Environment

Fedora Server
Chef DK

What is Cookbook

A cookbook is the fundamental unit of configuration and policy distribution in Chef Infra. A cookbook defines a scenario and contains everything that is required to support that scenario.

Procedure

Step1: Generate a Cookbook

As a first step let’s try to generate a template cookbook named “apache_httpd” as shown below.

[user@host-1 chefspace]$ mkdir cookbooks
[user@host-1 chefspace]$ cd cookbooks/
[user@host-1 cookbooks]$ chef generate cookbook apache_httpd
Generating cookbook apache_httpd
- Ensuring correct cookbook file content
- Ensuring delivery configuration
- Ensuring correct delivery build cookbook content


Your cookbook is ready. Type `cd apache_httpd` to enter it.
There are several commands you can run to get started locally developing and testing your cookbook.
Type `delivery local --help` to see a full list.
Why not start by writing a test? Tests for the default recipe are stored at:
test/recipes/default_test.rb
If you'd prefer to dive right in, the default recipe can be found at:
recipes/default.rb

Here is the tree structure of the cookbook that we just generated.

[user@host-1 cookbooks]$ tree apache_httpd/
apache_httpd/
|-- Berksfile
|-- chefignore
|-- metadata.rb
|-- README.md
|-- recipes
|   `-- default.rb
|-- spec
|   |-- spec_helper.rb
|   `-- unit
|       `-- recipes
|           `-- default_spec.rb
`-- test
    `-- recipes
        `-- default_test.rb


6 directories, 8 files

Step2: Generate template for HTML file

Now let’s create an html file template for the cookbook that we just created as shown below.

[user@host-1 cookbooks]$ chef generate template apache_httpd index.html
Recipe: code_generator::template
  * directory[./apache_httpd/templates/default] action create
    - create new directory ./apache_httpd/templates/default
    - restore selinux security context
  * template[./apache_httpd/templates/index.html.erb] action create
    - create new file ./apache_httpd/templates/index.html.erb
    - update content in file ./apache_httpd/templates/index.html.erb from none to e3b0c4
    (diff output suppressed by config)
    - restore selinux security context

Step3: Update HTML template file

Here we are going to update the template html file “index.html.erb” with some content as shown below.

[user@host-1 templates]$ pwd
/home/user/chefspace/cookbooks/apache_httpd/templates
[user@host-1 templates]$ vi index.html.erb
[user@host-1 templates]$ cat index.html.erb
<html>
                <head>
                <title> This is simple webpage </title>
                </head>
                <body>
                <h1> This is a grooming website from Cookbook </h1>
                </body>
</html>

Step4: Update recipe file

Here we are going to update the default reciple file “default.rb” to install apache httpd service and copy the template html file that was created.

[user@host-1 recipes]$ pwd
/home/user/chefspace/cookbooks/apache_httpd/recipes
[user@host-1 recipes]$ cat default.rb
#
# Cookbook Name:: apache_httpd
# Recipe:: default
#
# Copyright (c) 2017 The Authors, All Rights Reserved.


package 'Install Apache' do
                case node[:platform]
                when 'redhat','centos'
                                package_name 'httpd'
                                action    :install
                when 'ubuntu','debian'
                                package_name 'apache2'
                                action :install
                end
end


service 'httpd' do
                action [:enable, :start]
end


template '/var/www/html/index.html' do
                source 'index.html.erb'
end

Step5: Run the Cookbook using chef-client

Now we are ready to execute our cookbook to setup our apache httpd service as shown below.

[user@host-1 recipes]$ sudo chef-client --local-mode --runlist 'recipe[apache_httpd]'
[2017-06-03T03:04:30-07:00] WARN: No config file found or specified on command line, using command line options.
Starting Chef Client, version 12.12.15
resolving cookbooks for run list: ["apache_httpd"]
Synchronizing Cookbooks:
  - apache_httpd (0.1.0)
Installing Cookbook Gems:
Compiling Cookbooks...
Converging 3 resources
Recipe: apache_httpd::default
  * yum_package[Install Apache] action install (up to date)
  * service[httpd] action enable (up to date)
  * service[httpd] action start (up to date)
  * template[/var/www/html/index.html] action create
    - update content in file /var/www/html/index.html from eea344 to 5ff101
    --- /var/www/html/index.html             2017-06-02 20:05:07.795943412 -0700
    +++ /var/www/html/.chef-index.html20170603-3853-wyjz1z 2017-06-03 03:05:11.707685428 -0700
    @@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
                <title> This is simple webpage </title>
                </head>
                <body>
    -          <h1> This is a grooming website </h1>
    +         <h1> This is a grooming website from Cookbook </h1>
                </body>
     </html>
    - restore selinux security context


Running handlers:
Running handlers complete
Chef Client finished, 1/4 resources updated in 41 seconds

Step6: Validate HTTPD service

Now let’s try to access our html content that we just deployed as a part of cookbook execution as shown below.

[user@host-1 recipes]$ curl http://localhost/index.html
<html>
                <head>
                <title> This is simple webpage </title>
                </head>
                <body>
                <h1> This is a grooming website from Cookbook </h1>
                </body>
</html>

Hope you enjoyed reading this article. Thank you..

How to setup a Cookbook to configure Apache Webserver