1. knife-configure(1)
2. Chef Manual
3. knife-configure(1)

## NAME

`knife-configure` - Generate configuration files for knife or Chef Client

## SYNOPSIS

knife configure [client] (options)

## DESCRIPTION

Generates a knife.rb configuration file interactively. When given the --initial option, also creates a new administrative user.

## CONFIGURE SUBCOMMANDS

knife configure (options)

`-i`, `--initial`
  Create an initial API Client
`-r`, `--repository REPO`
  The path to your chef-repo

Create a configuration file for knife. This will prompt for values to enter into the file. Default values are listed in square brackets if no other entry is typed. See knife(1) for a description of configuration options.

knife configure client directory

Read the knife.rb config file and generate a config file suitable for use in /etc/chef/client.rb and copy the validation certificate into the specified directory.

## EXAMPLES

- On a freshly installed Chef Server, use knife configure -i to create an administrator and knife configuration file. Leave the field blank to accept the default value. On most systems, the default values are acceptable.

  user@host$ knife configure -i
  Please enter the chef server URL: [http://localhost:4000]
  Please enter a clientname for the new client: [username]
  Please enter the existing admin clientname: [chef-webui]
  Please enter the location of the existing admin client's private key: [/etc/chef/webui.pem]
  Please enter the validation clientname: [chef-validator]
  Please enter the location of the validation key: [/etc/chef/validation.pem]
  Please enter the path to a chef repository (or leave blank):
  Creating initial API user...
  Created (or updated) client[username]
  Configuration file written to /home/username/.chef/knife.rb

  This creates a new administrator client named username, writes a configuration file to /home/username/.chef/knife.rb, and the private key to /home/username/.chef/username.pem. The configuration file and private key may be copied to another system to facilitate administration of the Chef Server from a remote system. Depending on the value given for the Chef Server URL, you may need to modify that setting after copying to a remote host.

## SEE ALSO

knife(1) knife-client(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

1. Chef 0.10.0
2. April 2011
3. knife-configure(1)