KNIFE-NODE(1)

NAME
knife-node - Manage the hosts in your infrastructure

SYNOPSIS
knife node sub-command (options)

DESCRIPTION
Nodes are data structures that represent hosts configured with Chef. Nodes have a name, a String that uniquely identifies the node, attributes, a nested Hash of properties that describe how the host should be configured, a chef_environment, a String representing the environment to which the node belongs, and a run_list, an ordered list of recipes or roles that chef-client should apply when configuring a host.

When a host communicates with a Chef Server, it authenticates using its node_name for identification and signs its reqests with a private key. The Server validates the request by looking up a client object with a name identical to the node_name submitted with the request and verifes the signature using the public key for that client object. NOTE that the client is a different object in the system. It is associated with a node by virtue of having a matching name.

By default chef-client(8) will create a node using the FQDN of the host for the node name, though this may be overridden by configuration settings.

NODE SUB-COMMANDS
The following node subcommands are available:

BULK DELETE
knife node bulk delete regex (options)

Deletes nodes for which the name matches the regular expression regex on the Chef Server. The regular expression should be given in quotes, and should not be surrounded with forward slashes (as is typical of regular expression literals in scripting languages).

CREATE
knife node create name (options)

Create a new node. Unless the --no-editor option is given, an empty node object will be created and displayed in your text editor. If the editor exits with a successful exit status, the node data will be posted to the Chef Server to create the node.

DELETE
knife node delete name (options)

Deletes the node identified by name on the Chef Server.

EDIT
knife node edit name (options)

-a, --all
    Display all node data in the editor. By default, default, override, and automatic attributes are not shown.

Edit the node identified by name. Like knife node create, the node will be displayed in your text editor unless the -n option is present.

FROM FILE
knife node from file file (options)

Create a node from a JSON format file.

LIST
knife node list (options)

-w, --with-uri
    Show corresponding URIs

List all nodes.

RUN_LIST ADD
knife node run_list add name run list item (options)

-a, --after ITEM
    Place the ENTRY in the run list after ITEM

Add the run list item to the node's run_list. See Run list

RUN_LIST REMOVE
knife node run_list remove node name run list item (options)

Remove the run list item from the node's run_list.

SHOW
knife node show node name (options)

-a, --attribute [ATTR]
    Show only one attribute

-r, --run-list
    Show only the run list

-F, --format FORMAT
    Display the node in a different format.

-m, --medium
    Display more, but not all, of the node's data when using the default summary format

Displays the node identified by node name on stdout.

RUN LIST ITEM FORMAT
Run list items may be either roles or recipes. When adding a role to a run list, the correct syntax is "role[ROLE_NAME]"

When adding a recipe to a run list, there are several valid formats:

Fully Qualified Format
    "recipe[COOKBOOK::RECIPE_NAME]", for example, "recipe[chef::client]"

Cookbook Recipe Format
    For brevity, the recipe part of the fully qualified format may be omitted, and recipes specified as "COOKBOOK::RECIPE_NAME", e.g., "chef::client"

Default Recipe Format
    When adding the default recipe of a cookbook to a run list, the recipe name may be omitted as well, e.g., "chef::default" may be written as just "chef"

SEE ALSO
knife-client(1) knife-search(1) knife-role(1)

AUTHOR
Chef was written by Adam Jacob adam@opscode.com with many contributions from the community.

DOCUMENTATION
This manual page was written by Joshua Timberman joshua@opscode.com. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and / or modify this document under the terms of the Apache 2.0 License.

CHEF
Knife is distributed with Chef. http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Home