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Im wondering if its possible with chef (or any other tool like puppet or ansible ...) to create cookbooks from current server configurations.

For example i have a red hat server with an jboss 7 running on it. Would it be possible to read that server configuration (users, groups, installed services) and the jboss configuration and create a cookbook from this configuration for further use and deployments of new server?

if its not possible with chef, does a 3rd party tool exists which can handle such a task?

thanks.

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If you remember what you did to configure stuff, you can write a cookbook.

You can copy your configs, but be aware, that this is overkill for a good cookbook. In an installation you want to change as little as possible, dumping the whole state of a configuration adds much stuff you did not change. This is bad, when a newer version comes with a newer config and you copy the old config (with old default values) instead of just adding your keys.

I do not think there is a fully automated way.

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  • +1 I essentially keep track of configuration changes and history, convert it to ansible playbooks and then test it again, not as familiar with chef but in ansible you make a role based on your jboss config, and set variables in the playbook Commented Feb 7, 2016 at 23:23
  • I use ansible and try to use things like "lineinfile", which trys to preserve as much as possible. Or the regex module to replace a commented out line by a activated (and maybe changed) line. Good thing is, that your ansible file keeps track what you changed, not only comments like ## my changes below Commented Feb 8, 2016 at 0:18
  • I use jinja templates and always replace the configuration files. Commented Feb 8, 2016 at 0:20

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