Open the system drive of an AWS instance you cannot log into

If you cannot log into an AWS instance and want to inspect files on it, you can detach the volume from the lost instance and attach it to another instance as the secondary drive. Create a new instance Create a new AWS instance and log into it, Make a note of the Instance ID of …

Debugging a Packer build

Packer can configure a server instance and create an image of it. If you need to examine what Packer is doing, you can run Packer in debug mode and RDP into the instance to view files and other settings. Open the firewall In the “builders” element add a line to the Packer template to execute …

Create a new server image for a RightScale server template

The RightScale server templates publish server images to launch. It is advisable to create your own server image because the cloud providers can remove their published images anytime. If you generate your own image, you control the lifecycle of those. Create your own server image Use Packer to create a new server image. Install RightLink. On …

windows_task, ArgumentError: invalid date

When the windows_task resource is called to “create” a Windows Scheduled Task that already exists, an error message is returned. In the past, the “modify” action was responsible for the modification of the scheduled tasks, since Chef 13 the “create” action would update the task if exists. ArgumentError: …[…] (…:… line …) had an error: ArgumentError: …

.NET Framework Detection in the Windows Registry

To determine which .NET framework is installed on the Windows computer check the values in the registry. The HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v4\Full key contains two values you can check: Release Version You can use InSpec, part of the Chef DK, to check the values: describe registry_key(‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v4\Full’) do it { should have_property ‘Release’ } it { …

Chef exit codes

Chef uses the standard RFC 062 exit codes. In your .kitchen.yml file, you can supply an array of exit codes in the “retry_on_exit_code” option to retry the operation in case the Chef script execution is interrupted. The usual values are retry_on_exit_code: # An array of exit codes that can indicate that kitchen should retry the converge …

FATAL: Chef::Exceptions::Reboot: Rebooting server at a recipe’s request.

When your Chef recipe requests a reboot using the “reboot” Chef resource, the output window shows an error message: Chef Client finished, …/… resources updated in … seconds […] WARN: Rebooting server at a recipe’s request. Details: {:delay_mins=>1, :reason=>”…”, :timestamp=>…, :requested_by=>”…”} Running handlers: […] ERROR: Running exception handlers Running handlers complete […] ERROR: Exception handlers complete Chef …

Unable to satisfy constraints on package

When you make a change to the version restrictions in the metadata.rb file and execute berks install in your Chef cookbook directory, you may get the error message: Unable to satisfy constraints on package … due to solution constraint (…). Solution constraints that may result in a constraint on …: [(…)], [(…) -> (…)] Demand that …