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Install Chef Workstation and its components

Chef Workstation is modularized to improve user experience and simplify interactions with its components. This divides Chef Workstation into independent parts, enabling users to install, upgrade, and manage specific components individually using Chef Habitat. This approach reduces the complexity of maintaining the entire package.

System requirements

Chef Workstation 26 RC3 has the following requirements:

  • Linux x86-64 (64-bit) systems only
  • Chef Habitat 1.6.0 or later installed
  • Minimum 2GB available disk space for installation
  • Internet connectivity for package downloads (or access to internal Habitat Builder)

Prerequisites

We use Chef Habitat to distribute and install Chef Workstation and its components. If you haven’t already, you must download and install Chef Habitat. For more information, see the Chef Habitat documentation.

  1. Download and install Chef Habitat:

    curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/habitat-sh/habitat/main/components/hab/install.sh | sudo bash -s -- -c stable

  2. Verify Chef Habitat is installed.

    hab --version

Install Chef Workstation

To install Chef Workstation, follow these steps:

  1. Install the Chef Workstation Habitat package:

    sudo hab pkg install --binlink --force chef/chef-workstation --channel unstable
    • --binlink: Creates symbolic links in /bin for all included tools, making them accessible system-wide
    • --force: Overwrites any existing binlinks from previous installations
    • --channel unstable: Specifies the unstable channel where RC3 releases are published

    The installation process downloads the package and all dependencies, creates necessary binlinks, and configures the environment. This may take several minutes depending on your network connection.

  2. Optional: Verify that Chef Workstation and its tools are installed:

    chef-workstation -v

    Chef Workstation returns a list of installed packages and their versions.

  3. Optional: You can also verify each individual tool:

    chef-cli --version
knife --version
kitchen --version
berks --version
cookstyle --version
ohai --version
chef-vault --version
inspec --version

Install Chef Workstation tools

The following applications are included with Chef Workstation, but they can be installed as standalone applications.

Follow these instructions to install a Workstation tool.

  1. Install a package using hab pkg install:

    sudo hab pkg install <PACKAGE_IDENT> --channel unstable --binlink --force

    Replace <PACKAGE_IDENT> with the package identifier:

    • chef/berkshelf
    • chef/chef-cli
    • chef/chef-infra-client
    • chef/chef-test-kitchen-enterprise
    • chef/chef-vault
    • chef/cookstyle
    • chef/fauxhai
    • chef/inspec
    • chef/knife
    • chef/ohai

    The --binlink --force options overwrite any existing package symbolic links in the system’s PATH directory with the new version so you can run it directly in the command line.

  2. Verify that the correct version runs:

    berks -v
chef-cli -v
chef-client -v
chef-client -v
chef-vault <args>
cookstyle -v
fauxhai -v
knife -v
ohai -v

Troubleshooting

If commands aren’t found after installation, verify that Chef Habitat created the binlinks:

ls -la /bin | grep chef

If binlinks are missing, recreate them:

sudo hab pkg binlink --force chef/chef-workstation

Permission errors

Ensure you’re running installation commands with sudo for system-wide access.

Habitat channel issues

If the package can’t be found, verify channel availability:

hab pkg search chef/chef-workstation --channel unstable

Next step

More information

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