Update your omnibus! This cookbook can install the omnibus Chef package into your system if you are currently running via gem install, and it can keep your omnibus install up to date.

Add the recipe to your run list and specify what version should be installed on the node:

knife node run_list add recipe[omnibus_updater]

In your role you'll likely want to set the version (it defaults to the 0.10.10 version of Chef):

override_attributes(
  :omnibus_updater => {
    :version => '10.16.2'
  }
)

It can also uninstall Chef from the system Ruby installation if you tell it to:

override_attributes(
  :omnibus_updater => {
    :remove_chef_system_gem => true
  }
)

If you are using a Chef version earlier than 10.12.0 you may want to take a look at the chef_gem cookbook to ensure gems are going where expected.

The default recipe will install the omnibus package based on system information but you can override that by using the install_via attribute which accepts: deb, rpm or script.

Versions for the omnibus installer are defined as: x.y.z-n If the :version attribute only provides x.y.z the n value will be automatically filled in with the latest available version.

Using the :version_search attribute, the latest stable version of the omnibus installer will be installed automatically as they become available.

Release clients can be installed via the auto-installation using :allow_release_clients attribute.

If you want to disable the updater you can set the disabled attribute to true. This might be useful if the cookbook is added to a role but should then be skipped for example on a Chef server.

• Repo: https://github.com/hw-cookbooks/omnibus_updater
• IRC: Freenode @ #heavywater