Run an arbitrary command before provisioning

[coderanger]

It would be nice if I could run a command (in this case apt-get install curl) before installing Chef. This would also help for provisioning OSes not in omnitruck.

[someara]

+1 works for me

[sethvargo]

We are going to track this as #329. We have reservations about permitting the arbitrary execution of commands, since it diverges the test suite from the actual infrastructure.

Ultimately, this functionality will become available when #329 is fully flushed out, since you will be able to hook into a lifecycle command (before_provision in your example) and execute "code".

[bknowles]

This would also be great for those of us who need to do "apt-get update" before doing anything else in the run_list.

Much appreciated! Thanks!

[sethvargo]

@bknowles the solution to that issue it to have a dev dep on apt and include it in the run_list: https://github.com/opscode-cookbooks/jenkins/blob/master/.kitchen.yml#L22-L26

[coderanger]

@sethvargo Unfortunately that doesn't work on platforms where you cannot install Chef, such as default CentOS 5 images.

[bknowles]

@sethvargo that's actually exactly what we're doing. See my gist at https://gist.github.com/bknowles/d8aa92c5823b3312dd9a

But it would still be nice to build something like this into the test part of the framework, instead of having to have this dependency explicitly called out in each and every recipe.

[someara]

There are many situations where a base image won't have wget, curl, CA
certificates, etc etc.
This should only be used to prep the image to receive Chef.

On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 6:02 PM, Noah Kantrowitz
notifications@github.comwrote:

@sethvargo https://github.com/sethvargo Unfortunately that doesn't work
on platforms where you cannot install Chef, such as default CentOS 5 images.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//pull/311#issuecomment-32661035
.

[coderanger]

Yep, either installing curl or installing a real CA bundle are the common use cases, or manually installing Chef if omnitruck isn't available (new platform, etc).

[sethvargo]

Right, and you'll be able to do that after #329

[timothy-spencer]

Given that #329 seems to not be going anywhere, is this something that could land in the spirit of "don't let best be the enemy of good"? I am suffering because of the lack of this.

[someara]

For what it's worth... kitchen-dokken lets you do this with intermediate_instructions

[timothy-spencer]

Sadly, we use kitchen-ec2. I have certs for a proxy that I need to trust before anything can work. :-(