OSX Bootstrap with Chef

This is a repo I use for setting up a new mac using chef-solo. It is based off of Ben Bleything's repo - https://github.com/bleything/bootstrap but has significant inspiration and code from Justin Timberman (@jtimberman)'s work in this area as well.

It's fairly opionated but I tried to make it configurable too. Modify to suit your tastes. Be sure to read the various notes below before running this unmodified on your mac!

Chef

I use the Chef omnibus/universal installer.

This is not a fully automated chef run. It may prompt you for things (such as sudo passwd). It can probably be made to run fully-automated with minimal effort.

Using

Pre-reqs:

• Install ‘Command Line Tools for OSX ’ from http://developer.apple.com/downloads (requires free apple ID login) for the C compiler. Homebrew will need this. Alternatively you can install XCode and then install the Command Line Tools package from within the XCode GUI.

• Install Chef: curl -L http://www.opscode.com/chef/install.sh | sudo bash

Chef configs and roles

• Copy roles/private_settings.rb-example to roles/private_settings.rb and edit to suit taste.

• Create your own role in the roles directory or use one of the existing files. I have a laptop and desktop role that set things up slightly differently for me, but mostly just inherit from the base role.

• Create a config/<name>.json file or use one that is already there. I try to keep these files to the minimum run_list and put the bulk of the data into a role.

GO !!!

• Run chef using Rake! rake chef dna=my_config would run chef-solo using the config/myconfig.json file. Default is dna=laptop if not specified.

Do non-chef things

• Install other things not included in this cookbook, such as:

  • Any apps from the Mac App Store
  • SSH keys, SSL keys, etc.
  • Configure FileVault

A note about Dropbox

The apps::dropbox recipe will stop the Chef run after installing Dropbox if it detects that Dropbox is not yet configured. I do this because some of the other recipes depend on files in my Dropbox. You can disable this if it doesn't matter in your setup by setting the node attribute node[:dropbox][:exit_if_not_configured] to false.

A note about Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are pretty weird and cryptic to setup in OSX from the command line. My recommendation is to set yours up manually in System Preferences > Keyboard and then copy the resulting ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist into cookbooks/osx_settings/files to distribute to your other macs.

Warning! I have included my keyboard settings in this repo!! Delete or replace them before running if you don't like my bindings!!!

A note about Sublime Text 2 Settings

I symlink my Sublime Text 2 settings directory to a Dropbox folder so that I can share settings and plugins across machines. This approach has worked surprisingly well for me, but if you don't want to do it, remove the apps::sublime_text_settings recipe from the base role.

A note about OSX settings (aka "defaults")

OSX settings are applied from the osx_settings cookbook. This is a very basic setup and it simply executes defaults. I think this is a quick and simple way to handle settings and maps directly to various articles you'll find online. I may move to using @jtimberman's LWRPs for handling these in the future.

A note about CoRD (RDP) servers (*.rdp files)

The apps::cord recipe will manage any *.rdp files in the apps/files/cord/Servers directory by copying them into ~/Library/Application Support/CoRD/Servers/.

TODO / Unfinished

• The expandrive recipe does not currently install a license if you have one.
• The expandrive recipe could manage your sftp bookmarks.
• Manage ssh and ssl keys? Perhaps using the private_settings.rb role.
• convert osx_settings to use @jtimberman's LWRPs from his mac_os_x cookbook?
• More support for various dotfiles I want to install.
• Make this recipe multi-OS compatible. It would be neat to make this usable for setting up Linux and Windows workstations too.
• Setup tunneblick vpn's

Contributions and Thanks

This setup uses a lot of great code and ideas from these pioneers in the osx-workstation-setup-with-chef world:

• Ben Bleything - https://github.com/bleything/bootstrap
• Joshua Timberman (@jtimberman) - https://github.com/jtimberman/workstation-chef-repo

Licenses

The code in this repository is licensed under the Apache 2.0 software license except where noted or applicable.

Author

Joe Miller - https://github.com/joemiller

But most of the hardwork was done by the other guys mentioned in the contributions section!