Author:

Franklin Webber

College dropout, turned instructor who found software development because everything else in his life was going too well. Forged by the fires of tech support, quality assurance and software development, he now brings technology to the hungry, sullied masses with raw energy, immeasurable empathy and a strong injection of humor.


What to Expect When You’re InSpec’ing

“What to expect when you’re InSpec-ing” is a series of concise learning segments focused on InSpec topics using InSpec resources and controls in quick examples that demonstrate the feature set of the InSpec compliance and testing suite. To develop the “Auditing with InSpec”  certification, the Chef Training team immersed ourselves in how InSpec worked.

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“Habitatize Yourself” a Ruby Web Application in Habitat

Editor Note: “Habitatize Yourself” a Ruby Web Application is a YouTube series hosted by Franklin Webber. This series takes you from idea to Habitat-packaged Ruby application in a lunch break. Watch, learn and code along with him and see how Habitat makes building, deploying, and managing modern applications delightful.

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Test Driven Cookbook Development in 2017

We are constantly asked to deliver our infrastructure faster at what seems like a compromise of its quality. Waiting until it’s time to deploy into production is not the moment to see if the cookbooks we have written will work.

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Watch: Testing at the Edges

On March 1st, I presented a live webinar titled “Testing at the Edges”. Watch the recording below to hear me explain how to test resource guards that execute system commands or require specific system files. I also demonstrate enabling test coverage and working around recipes that rely on search results from the Chef Server.

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Watch: Build a Custom Ohai Plugin

On February 1st, I presented a live webinar titled “Build a Custom Ohai Plugin”. Watch the recording below to hear me explain the purpose of Ohai, the structure and language of its plugins, and how you can write a unit test and integration test for your plugin.

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What is Ohai, anyway?

The year was 2007. Cats and all manner of animals on the Internet were reaching out to us, to say hello, in big, bold letters: OH HAI! When I heard Nathen Harvey greet the class in my first Chef training at SURGE 2013, I was taken aback and tickled. He explained that Ohai, not ‘OH HAI!’, is a core tool of Chef.

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Watch: Writing Elegant Tests

On December 20th, I presented a live webinar on Writing Elegant Tests. Watch the recording below to hear me explain powerful RSpec features that you can use immediately to reduce code duplication, make your tests more expressive, and helpers that are exportable between all your cookbooks.

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Test Ohai Plugins with ChefSpec and InSpec

You can test your custom Ohai plugins with ChefSpec using the chefspec-ohai gem, and with InSpec in Test Kitchen. This frees you from the traditionally difficult task of debugging a failing Ohai plugin. In this post, I’ll focus solely on testing an Ohai plugin.

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InSpec Language Support in Atom and VS Code

During the webinar “Better Tools for a Better Life” I stressed the importance of code snippets to increase your efficiency. I found that two of the editors I used during the presentation, and in my every day practice, were lacking support for InSpec.

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The Ruby Behind Chef

On September 14th I presented a live webinar on The Ruby Behind Chef. There is quite a bit of Ruby behind Chef and it is rather complex. Watch the recording below to hear me explain core Ruby topics by creating our own version of Chef: T-Rex Chef.

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