如何启用 Ohai 插件生成 ['etc']['passwd']？

Question

I have upgraded my Chef Client from 14.0 to 15.3.14 but issue rose whenever I execute chef-client on my node(macOS Mojave).
The client output is:

-------------
undefined method `[]' for nil:NilClass

Cookbook Trace:
---------------
  /var/chef/cache/cookbooks/macos/recipes/mac_init.rb:62:in `from_file'

Relevant File Content:
----------------------
/var/chef/cache/cookbooks/macos/recipes/mac_init.rb:

 55:    action :create
 56:    owner 'administrator'
 57:    group 'localaccounts'
 58:    mode  '0775'
 59:  end
 60:
 61:  # Template for bash history
 62>>   node['etc']['passwd'].each do |user, data|
 63:
 64:    template "/Users/#{user}/.bash_profile" do
 65:      source '/default/bash_profile.erb'
 66:      owner 'administrator'
 67:      group 'staff'
 68:      ignore_failure true
 69:    end
 70:  end

It seems that node['etc']['passwd'] is no longer readable which result to have a value of nil .
I've checked another machine that was newly bootstrapped and verify it on Chef Server UI but the result is, there was no 'etc' in the attributes tab.

Answer 1

reading the release notes of ohai it says:

Optional Ohai Plugins

Ohai now includes the ability to mark plugins as optional, which skips those plugins by default. This allows us to ship additional plugins, which some users may find useful, but not all users would want being written to their Chef server. The change introduces two new configuration options; run_all_plugins which runs everything including optional plugins, and optional_plugins which allows you to run plugins marked as optional.

By default we will now be marking the lspci , sessions and passwd plugins as optional. Passwd has been particularly problematic for nodes attached LDAP or AD where it attempts to write the entire directory to the node. If you previously disabled this plugin via Ohai config, you no longer need to. Hurray!

but you can always enable back the optional plugins :

Enabling Optional Plugins

Optional plugins can be enabled in the client.rb configuration file: ohai.optional_plugins = [ :Sessions, :Lspci ]

in your specific case:

ohai.optional_plugins = [
  :Passwd
]

assuming you installed ohai using bundler, then you can check that the passwd is there by executing

$ bundle exec ohai etc

configuration

to have such behavor constantly, then:

• if chef-zero is used when invoking chef-client , client.rb can be used, which can be stored in a repository.
• use ohai resource . something like:

   ohai 'reload_passwd' do action :reload plugin 'etc' end

• contribute to chef-client cookbook , to have complimentary support for node['ohai']['disabled_plugins']

UPDATE: support for this has been introduced into chef-client cookbook:

• node['ohai']['disabled_plugins'] - An array of ohai plugins to disable, empty by default, and must be an array if specified. Ohai 6 plugins should be specified as a string (ie. "dmi"). Ohai 7+ plugins should be specified as a symbol within quotation marks (ie. ":Passwd").
• node['ohai']['optional_plugins'] - An array of optional ohai plugins to enable, empty by default, and must be an array if specified. Ohai 6 plugins should be specified as a string (ie. "dmi"). Ohai 7+ plugins should be specified as a symbol within quotation marks (ie. ":Passwd").