“source” attribute of the package resource in chef

Question

I am a beginner with the chef and slowly diving deep into it. I have a doubt regarding the "source" attribute of the resource "Package". The documentation says the "source" attribute uses local file system stored files and not HTTP or FTP. I have a 'TOMCAT tar' file and 'Java RPM' package to be installed on nodes.

Just like how the resource "cookbook_file" has files saved in "file" Directory in the cookbooks directory: tree structure of apache cookbook

on which local file system does the "source" attribute of the resource "package" take files from? Does it grab files from the same 'files' directory? or in any other folders? I have written a simple cookbook assuming that the "source" attribute would take files from the "file" dir by default. but that is not working out:

package 'Installing JAVA' do source 'jdk-8u131-linux-x64' action :install end

package 'Installing tomcat version 9' do source 'apache-tomcat-9.0.0.M22.tar' action :install end

Kindly help me out!

Innocent Anigbo Innocent Anigbo · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-09T18:35:14

You are missing a lot here. The package resource is used to declare packages you want to install and you don't have to tell chef how or where to get the package you declared to be installed. Chef will use your local system repo using your distro package manager to do this, but you don't need to tell chef this. Also you wouldn't need the tomcat and java file in the file directory in that case. it will figure it out it self.

As i see above you want to install apache-tomcat-9.0.0.M22.tar.gz and jdk-8u131-linux-x64.rpm. I see the files are in file DIR which is OK. In this case you will need another chef reosurce. See below on how you could achieve this

1) Use the cookbook_file resource to transfer files from a sub-directory of COOKBOOK_NAME/files/ to a specified path located on the remote host that is running your chef-client.

cookbook_file '/opt/apache-tomcat-9.0.0.M22.tar.gz' do
  source 'apache-tomcat-9.0.0.M22.tar.gz'
  owner 'tomcat_user'
  group 'tomcat_user'
  mode '0755'
  action :create
end



cookbook_file '/opt/jdk-8u131-linux-x64.rpm' do
  source 'jdk-8u131-linux-x64.rpm'
  owner 'root'
  group 'root'
  mode '0755'
  action :create
end

2) Now unpack the tomcat file using execute resources

execute 'extract tomcat' do
  command "tar xf /opt/apache-tomcat-9.0.0.M22.tar.gz -C /opt --strip-components=1"

end

3) Now install the java rpm package as follow

rpm_package 'jdk-8u131-linux-x64.rpm'

https://docs.chef.io/resource_file.html

https://docs.chef.io/resource_cookbook_file.html

https://docs.chef.io/resource_package.html

https://docs.chef.io/resource_rpm_package.html

https://docs.chef.io/resource_execute.html

“source” attribute of the package resource in chef

2 Answers