tabula_rasa

Run community cookbooks from within AWS OpsWorks without clashing with the older versions in opsworks-cookbooks. Recipes run from within Tabula Rasa will not have access to the opsworks-cookbooks (unless you include them in your repository) but they will see your Custom Stack JSON and all the Ohai settings added by the AWS OpsWorks Agent.

Version 0.2.5 has been tested with Chef 11.10, on Ubuntu 12.04 and 14.04 and Amazon Linux 2014.03.

Copyright © 2014, Shlomo Swidler.

Licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.

Issues? https://github.com/shlomoswidler/tabula_rasa/issues

Usage

AWS OpsWorks has several lifecycle actions: setup, configure, deploy, undeploy, and shutdown. In Custom layers you can specify the custom list of recipes to run for each action. With Tabula Rasa, you specify the run list in the Custom Stack JSON, as well as the repository from which to pull the Tabula Rasa cookbooks.

Tabula Rasa repositories can support Berkshelf. Berkshelf will be invoked if the Stack Settings also enable Berkshelf for the Stack's Custom Cookbook Repository.

To use Tabula Rasa:

1. Use Tabla Rasa git://github.com/shlomoswidler/tabula_rasa.git as the Custom Repository URL for your Stack, or include this cookbook in your own custom cookbook repository.
2. Configure your Custom Stack JSON as per the Configuration section below, to specify the repository from which the Tabula Rasa cookbooks are retrieved, and the custom run list for each OpsWorks lifecycle action.
3. Include the tabula_rasa recipe in the OpsWorks Layer's Custom Chef Recipes for each lifecycle action. You can specify other recipes before and after tabula_rasa in the Custom Chef Recipes---Tabula Rasa will have no effect on them and they will run normally, as expected, using the custom cookbook repository you specified for this Layer.

To update the Tabula Rasa cookbooks from their repository (and possibly re-run Berkshelf, if it is configured to run) run the recipe update_tabula_rasa_cookbooks. Unfortunately, OpsWorks offers no hooks to allow you to seamlessly refresh the Tabula Rasa cookbooks when you perform an Update Custom Cookbooks.

Configuration

The OpsWorks Custom Stack JSON should be used to specify the following items:

Tabula Rasa cookbook repository

The Tabula Rasa cookbook repository configuration is modeled after the same sets of attributes that control the OpsWorks Custom Cookbooks node[:opsworks_custom_cookbooks][:scm]

{ 
  "tabula_rasa": {
    "scm": {
      "type":       "git", "svn", "s3", or "archive"
      "repository": "Repository URL",
      "revision":   "revision of the SVN or Git repo - HEAD is the default"
      "user":       "OPTIONAL - Git or SVN user, or AWS Access Key for s3 repos, or user for HTTP/S auth"
      "password":   "OPTIONAL - Git or SVN password, or AWS Secret Key for s3 repos, or password for HTTP/S auth",
      "ssh_key":    "OPTIONAL - private ssh key for the Git repository. Defaults to the SSH Key in the Stack Settings."
    }
  }
}

Tabula Rasa run lists

{
  "tabula_rasa":
    "recipes": {
      "setup":      [ "recipe1", "cookbook::recipe2", "recipe3" ],
      "configure":  [ "recipe1", "cookbook::recipe2", "recipe3" ],
      "shutdown":   [ "recipe1" ]
    }
  }
}

Each entry in the [:tabula_rasa][:recipes] hash corresponds to the run list for that lifecycle action. These recipes will be run as the tabula_rasa recipe is executed during the converge stage of the Chef run. You can omit from the hash any lifecycle action that does not need a custom Tabula Rasa run list.