How can I install and configure knife tidy plugin ?

How to configure and use knife tidy on Chef Workstation?

 

What is knife tidy?

knife tidy is a Ruby gem that extends the functionality of knife with maintenance capabilities for Chef Infra Server. Over time, servers accumulate unused cookbooks, stale nodes, and multiple versions of artifacts. knife tidy helps identify and remove these, keeping the server lean and compliant.

By default, the knife tidy command is not included in Chef Workstation. It must be installed and configured.

 

Prerequisites

Before installing knife tidy, ensure you have the following in place:

• Chef Workstation: A current installation of Chef Workstation (which includes knife and the necessary Ruby environment).

• Knife Configuration: A properly configured knife.rb or ~/.chef/credentials file that allows knife to communicate with your Chef Infra Server. This usually involves access to an administrator user's key (e.g., pivotal.pem or your user's key).

• Backup: Always take a backup of your Chef Server data before performing any cleanup or deletion actions. Tools like knife-ec-backup are highly recommended for this.

 

Installation Methods

Linux / macOS (Chef Workstation)

Chef Workstation uses an embedded Ruby installation, so must install the gem using the embedded gem binary

sudo /opt/chef-workstation/embedded/bin/gem install knife-tidy

Windows (Chef Workstation)

Run in PowerShell:

"C:\opscode\chef-workstation\embedded\bin\gem.bat" install knife-tidy

Installation using source 

git clone https://github.com/chef-customers/knife-tidy.git
cd knife-tidy
gem build knife-tidy.gemspec && gem install knife-tidy-*.gem --no-ri --no-rdoc

 

Configuration and Usage 

The knife tidy workflow involves two main steps: reporting (to identify what can be cleaned) and cleaning (to perform the deletion). It is always recommended to run the report and review its output before running the clean command, especially using the --dry-run option.

To set up its connection, run knife configure, which generates the configuration in the credentials file(~/.chef/credentials) or use your existing knife configuration either  ~/.chef/config.rb (this method is only suitable for single Chef Infra Server and single-organization setups.) or ~/.chef/credentials file. 

 

Usage -  knife tidy basic commands

knife tidy server report –-help

This is the command to get help documentation for the reporting subcommand.

• Purpose: Displays the full list of options and usage instructions for the knife tidy server report command. This is where you find options like --node-threshold NUM_DAYS and other parameters needed to define what constitutes "stale" or "unused" data on your Chef Server.

• Result: It helps you understand how to generate the crucial JSON report files (e.g., *_stale_nodes.json, *_unused_cookbooks.json) that the subsequent clean commands rely on.

 

knife tidy server clean cookbooks --dry-run

This command runs a simulated deletion of unused cookbook versions on the Chef Server.

• Subcommand: cookbooks targets cookbook versions that are not referenced by any node's run list and are therefore considered unused.

• Flag: The --dry-run flag is crucial; it instructs knife tidy to simulate the deletion without making any actual changes to the Chef Server.

• Purpose: It shows you exactly which specific cookbook versions would be permanently deleted, allowing you to review the list for errors or unintended deletions before running the final cleanup.

Article - https://community.progress.com/s/article/Clean-up-unused-and-old-version-of-cookbooks-using-Knife-tidy

 

knife tidy server clean nodes --dry-run

This command runs a simulated deletion of stale nodes on the Chef Server.

• Subcommand: nodes targets nodes that have not checked in to the Chef Server within the time frame defined when the report was generated (usually set via --node-threshold).

• Flag: The --dry-run flag performs a simulation only.

• Purpose: It reveals the list of stale nodes that would be removed. Note that removing a node via knife tidytypically also removes its associated client and ACLs, making this a multi-object cleanup action.

Article -https://community.progress.com/s/article/Clean-up-stale-nodes-in-Chef-Infra-server-using-knife-tidy

 

knife tidy backup clean /path/to/backup/directory --dry-run

This command is used for managing local Chef Server backup directories, not the server itself.

• Subcommand: backup clean targets a specified local directory containing Chef Server backups (e.g., those created by tools like knife-ec-backup).

• Argument: /path/to/backup/directory specifies the location of your backups.

• Flag: The --dry-run flag ensures no files are deleted from the local disk.

• Purpose: It allows you to define a retention policy for your local backups (e.g., keep only the last 7 daily backups) and simulates the deletion of old backup files to free up disk space.

Article -https://community.progress.com/s/article/How-can-I-use-knife-tidy-to-clean-up-a-backup-created-with-knife-ec-backup