Currently we are disabling Chef Servers due to on-going CVE and we needed to disble Chef Client Timer job to stop calling Chef Infra Server. We want to find out the script needed to disable Timer Job for both Windows (MS DOS Script) and Linux (Shell Script).

Windows - Disable Scheduled Task

Chef Infra Client is typically scheduled using the Windows Task Scheduler.
You can disable the scheduled task by running the following commands in an elevated Command.

schtasks /change /tn "Chef Infra Client" /disable
if %errorlevel% neq 0 (
    echo Failed to disable Chef Infra Client scheduled task.
) else (
    echo Chef Infra Client scheduled task disabled successfully.
)

Notes:

• Replace "Chef Infra Client" with the actual scheduled task name if different in your environment.

• You can verify the task name by opening Task Scheduler → Task Scheduler Library and locating the Chef Infra Client task.

Linux - Disable and Stop Service

Chef Infra Client is usually managed as a systemd service on Linux.
Run the following commands with root privileges:

sudo systemctl disable chef-client.service
sudo systemctl stop chef-client.service

Notes:

• Replace chef-client.service with your actual service name if it differs.

• disable prevents the service from starting automatically at boot, while stop halts the service immediately.

Verification

After running the above steps:

Windows:

schtasks /query /tn "Chef Infra Client"

Confirm that the status shows Disabled.

Linux:

systemctl status chef-client.service

Confirm the service is inactive (dead) and disabled.

These changes prevent Chef Infra Client from running automatically, but they do not uninstall or remove any Chef configuration. To resume normal operations, simply enable and start the service/task again:

Windows:

schtasks /change /tn "Chef Infra Client" /enable

Linux:

sudo systemctl enable chef-client.service
sudo systemctl start chef-client.service

The above scripts are provided as reference only. Please test these commands in a non-production environment first and verify on a few sample nodes before applying changes across all systems in bulk.