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Release Notes: Chef Manage 3.0

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Chef Manage provides a web-based user interface that manages Chef Infra nodes and other policy objects, such as data bags and roles, on the instance of Chef Infra Server that it is installed on.

Chef Manage is deprecated and users should plan to migrate to Chef Automate as the replacement.

Upgrading

Download the latest version of the chef-manage package for your platform from downloads.chef.io to your Chef Infra Server, then run:

# rpm -Uvh /path/to/chef-manage-*.rpm
or 
# dpkg -i /path/to/chef-manage-*.deb

then
# chef-manage-ctl reconfigure
# chef-server-ctl reconfigure

What’s New in 3.0

This release includes a number of important dependency updates and support for SSL connections to the Chef Infra Server.

Dependency Updates

  • Rails is upgraded to 5.2.3
  • Chef Infra Client is upgraded from 11 to 14
  • Sidekiq is upgraded from 2.5 to 4 to improve the background processing

SSL Support

The major version upgrade of Chef Infra Client in this release brings in SSL support between Chef Manage and Chef Infra Server. These services always run on the same system so this feature is of limited value in most cases. For compatibility with self-signed certificates which are commonly used on the Chef Infra Server, this feature defaults to off in this release.

Configuration

The SSL support is configured using these settings in the /etc/chef-manage/manager.rb configuration file. After any changes you must run sudo chef-manage-ctl reconfigure to apply the changes.

ssl_verify_mode : Configure SSL verification for the connection to the Chef Infra Server. By default this is set to :verify_none. Setting this to :verify_peer will require a Chef Manage to verify the SSL certificate of the Chef Infra Server.

trusted_certs_dir: Provide a path to a directory containing trusted SSL certificates. This is empty by default, but /etc/chef/trusted_certs is the most likely setting for reusing certificates installed by Chef Infra Client.

Bug Fixes

Generating a Knife Config now produces a config.rb instead of knife.rb file. These have the same format and contents but config.rb has been preferred since Chef Infra Client 12.0. (chef-manage#925)

Minor UI bug fixes (chef-manage#941)

Supported Versions

Chef Manage 3.0 is compatible with Chef Infra Server 12 and later. Users are always encouraged to stay up to date on Chef Infra Server releases to ensure they have the latest security updates.

Added Platform Support

RHEL 7 RHEL 8 Ubuntu 16.04 Ubuntu 18.04

Removed Platform Support

Ubuntu 10.04 Ubuntu 12.04 Ubuntu 14.04