CHEF-SHELL(1)

NAME
chef-shell - The man page for the chef-shell command line tool.

chef-shell is a recipe debugging tool that allows the use of breakpoints within recipes. chef-shell runs as an Interactive Ruby (IRb) session. chef-shell supports both recipe and attribute file syntax, as well as interactive debugging features.

NOTE: chef-shell is the new name for Shef as of Chef 11.x. chef-shell is backwards compatible and aside from the name change, has the same set of functionality as with previous releases.

The chef-shell executable is run as a command-line tool.

MODES

chef-shell is tool that allows knife to be run using an Interactive Ruby (IRb) session. chef-shell currently supports recipe and attribute file syntax, as well as interactive debugging features. chef-shell has three run modes:
Mode | Description
Standalone | No cookbooks are loaded, and the run list is empty. This mode is the default.
Solo | chef-shell acts as a chef-solo client. It attempts to load the chef-solo configuration file and JSON attributes. If the JSON attributes set a run list, it will be honored. Cookbooks will be loaded in the same way that chef-solo loads them. chef-solo mode is activated with the -s or --solo command line option, and JSON attributes are specified in the same way as for chef-solo, with -j /path/to/chef-solo.json.
Client | chef-shell acts as a chef-client. During startup, it reads the chef-client configuration file and contacts the Chef server to get attributes and cookbooks. The run list will be set in the same way as normal chef-client runs. chef-client mode is activated with the -z or --client options. You can also specify the configuration file with -c CONFIG and the server URL with -S SERVER_URL.

OPTIONS

This command has the following syntax:

chef-shell OPTION VALUE OPTION VALUE ...

This command has the following options:

-a, --standalone
    Use to run chef-shell in standalone mode.

-c CONFIG, --config CONFIG
    The configuration file to use.

-h, --help
    Shows help for the command.

-j PATH, --json-attributes PATH
    The path to a file that contains JSON data.

-l LEVEL, --log-level LEVEL
    The level of logging that will be stored in a log file.

-s, --solo
    Use to run chef-shell in chef-solo mode.

-S CHEF_SERVER_URL, --server CHEF_SERVER_URL
    The URL for the Chef server.

-v, --version
    The version of the chef-client.

-z, --client
    Use to run chef-shell in chef-client mode.

AUTHOR
Chef