KNIFE-CLIENT(1) 						    Chef Manual 						   KNIFE-CLIENT(1)

NAME

       knife-client - Manage Chef API Clients

SYNOPSIS

       knife client sub-command (options)

SUB-COMMANDS
       Client subcommands follow a basic create, read, update, delete (CRUD) pattern. The Following subcommands are available:

BULK DELETE

       knife client bulk delete regex (options)

       Delete  clients	where the client name matches the regular expression regex on the Chef Server. The regular expression should be given as a
       quoted string, and not surrounded by forward slashes.

CREATE

       knife client create client name (options)

       -a, --admin
	      Create the client as an admin

       -f, --file FILE
	      Write the key to a file

       Create a new client. This generates an RSA keypair. The private key will be displayed on STDOUT or written to the named	file.  The  public
       half will be stored on the Server. For chef-client systems, the private key should be copied to the system as /etc/chef/client.pem.

       Admin  clients  should  be  created  for users that will use knife to access the API as an administrator. The private key will generally be
       copied to ~/.chef/client\_name.pem and referenced in the knife.rb configuration file.

DELETE

       knife client delete client name (options)

       Deletes a registered client.

EDIT

       client edit client name (options)

       Edit a registered client.

LIST

       client list (options)

       -w, --with-uri
	      Show corresponding URIs

       List all registered clients.

REREGISTER

       client reregister client name (options)

       -f, --file FILE
	      Write the key to a file

       Regenerate the RSA keypair for a client. The public half will be stored on the server and the private key displayed on STDOUT or written to
       the  named  file.  This	operation will invalidate the previous keypair used by the client, preventing it from authenticating with the Chef
       Server. Use care when reregistering the validator client.

SHOW

       client show client name (options)

       -a, --attribute ATTR
	      Show only one attribute

       Show a client. Output format is determined by the --format option.

DESCRIPTION

       Clients are identities used for communication with the Chef Server API, roughly equivalent to user accounts on the Chef Server, except that
       clients only communicate with the Chef Server API and are authenticated via request signatures.

       In the typical case, there will be one client object on the server for each node, and the corresponding client and node will have identical
       names.

       In the Chef authorization model, there is one special client, the "validator", which is authorized to create new non-administrative clients
       but has minimal privileges otherwise. This identity is used as a sort of "guest account" to create a client identity when initially setting
       up a host for management with Chef.

SEE ALSO

       knife-node(1)

AUTHOR

       Chef was written by Adam Jacob adam@opscode.com with many contributions from the community.

DOCUMENTATION

       This manual page was written by Joshua Timberman joshua@opscode.com. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and / or modify  this  docu-
       ment under the terms of the Apache 2.0 License.

CHEF

       Knife is distributed with Chef. http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Home

Chef 10.12.0							     June 2012							   KNIFE-CLIENT(1)