Chef Experiments - Create host files

I am in the process of experimenting with Chef and here's one of them

knife create cookbook host_file_update


Then create the recipe

recipes/default.rb

hosts = search(:node, "*:*")
template "/etc/hosts" do
  source "hosts.erb"
  owner "root"
  group "root"
  mode 0644
  variables(
    :hosts => hosts,
    :hostname => node[:hostname],
    :fqdn => node[:fqdn]
  )
end

And then the template file hosts.erb referenced above

templates/default/hosts.erb 

127.0.0.1   localhost

<% @hosts.each do |node| %>
<%= node['ipaddress'] %> <%= node['hostname'] %> <%= node['fqdn'] %>
<% end %>

Pretty useful, if you want to populate this automatically as and when you add servers.  One of the next things to try is see if we can make Chef pick the additional IPs (e.g service net in Rackspace cloud) and create separate entries for it