Chef is one of configuration management system, but it seems hard to install for not rubyist. I’ll explain how to set up chef-server with exact versions. They are ruby 1.9.2 and ubuntu-11.10.

You can absolutely set up chef-server after this post!

Initially, install ruby1.9

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libstdc++6-4.6-dev g++ ruby1.9.2-full

Create two configuration files of chef.

~/solo.rb

file_cache_path "/tmp/chef-solo"
cookbook_path "/tmp/chef-solo/cookbooks"

~/chef.json

{
  "chef_server": {
    "server_url": "http://localhost:4040",
    "webui_enabled": true
  },
  "run_list": [ "recipe[chef-server::rubygems-install]" ]
}

Install chef client, and install chef server using chef-solo.

sudo gem install zliby chef-solr --no-ri --no-rdoc
sudo chef-solo -c ~/solo.rb -j ~/chef.json -r http://s3.amazonaws.com/chef-solo/bootstrap-latest.tar.gz

Some scripts in /etc/init.d strangely require /usr/bin/chef-* scripts. Make symbolic links for them.

sudo ln -sf /usr/local/bin/chef-* /usr/bin

Start all related services in order.

sudo /etc/init.d/chef-solr start
sudo /etc/init.d/chef-expander start
sudo /etc/init.d/chef-server start
sudo /etc/init.d/chef-server-webui start

Congraturation, you finished installing chef server. Open http://localhost:4040 with your browser.