ChefConf

This talk aims to cover a breadth of topics about package management and Chef, starting with some fundamentals and continuing on to more advanced techniques and tips.

This talk will begin by explaining why packages and package management are fundamental tenants to managing infrastructure. We'll examine why the common practice of simply running "make install" in a Chef recipe is a bad idea and what users can do when they see recipes like this in the wild.

An extremely common problem with package management is misconfiguration of package repositories and client software. Most of the existing documentation available does not cover all of the configuration required to correctly setup and access package repositories securely and lots of configurations are simply copy-and-pasted from unreliable sources.

In order to combat some of this, the talk will continue by examining some common Chef resources for controlling package repositories with care to carefully go over commonly misunderstood and misused options. We'll examine how to generate secure package repositories, what options must be set in Chef recipes to access repositories securely, and what bugs you may bump into in your infrastructure that may prevent you from securely accessing package repositories.

Finally, this talk will wrap up with some concluding tips, tricks, and thoughts about packaging and how to use it to carefully manage infrastructure.