Chef InSpec Integration with Chef Habitat

Chef InSpec provides an easy method to create an executable Chef Habitat package for a Chef InSpec profile. When run via the Chef Habitat Supervisor, the package will run Chef InSpec with your profile and write out its findings to the supervisor log. This provides the ability to ship your compliance controls alongside your Chef Habitat-packaged application and continuously run InSpec, providing you Continuous Compliance.

What is Chef Habitat

Chef Habitat by Chef Software is our new application automation tool that aims to make it easy, safe, and fast to build, deploy, and manage applications. From build dependencies, runtime dependencies, dynamic configuration, and service discovery (just to name a few), Chef Habitat packages the automation with the application instead of relying on an underlying platform.

To learn more about Chef Habitat see the Habitat documentation.

Using the Chef Habitat Integration

After creating a Chef Habitat package for a Chef InSpec profile (see CLI commands below) and uploading the package to a Chef Habitat Depot or manually distributing to a host, start the Chef Habitat Supervisor with your package:

hab start effortless/audit-baseline

The Chef Habitat Supervisor will install Chef InSpec and execute your profile in a loop. The loop is controlled by two variables: the interval and the splay. The interval is a set time you want InSpec to run and its default is 1800 seconds. The splay is a randomly generated sleep time that prevents a thundering herd problem, or resource starvation scenario, when sending your report to an external server like Chef Automate. The default for the splay is also 1800 seconds. Alternatively, the splay_first_run can be set to wait a random period of time between 0 and the number set for the splay_first_run before running InSpec when your Habitat package is started or updated. The default of the splay_first_run is 0 seconds.

HAB_INSPEC_PROFILE_FRONTEND1="interval = 60" hab start effortless/audit-baseline

The Chef Habitat Supervisor will display output like this:

hab start effortless/audit-baseline
∵ Missing package for core/hab-sup/0.17.0
» Installing core/hab-sup/0.17.0
↓ Downloading core/hab-sup/0.17.0/20170214235450
    1.68 MB / 1.68 MB - [=========================================================================] 100.00 % 7.43 MB/s

... more Chef Habitat output here ...

hab-sup(MN): Starting effortless/audit-baseline/0.1.0/20170328173005
hab-sup(CS): effortless/audit-baseline/0.1.0/20170328173005 is not installed
↓ Downloading adamleff-20160617201047 public origin key
    79 B / 79 B | [===============================================================================] 100.00 % 2.64 MB/s
☑ Cached adamleff-20160617201047 public origin key
↓ Downloading chef/inspec/1.17.0/20170321214949
    16.93 MB / 16.93 MB / [======================================================================] 100.00 % 10.49 MB/s

... more Chef Habitat output here ...

★ Install of effortless/audit-baseline/0.1.0/20170328173005 complete with 9 new packages installed.
hab-sup(MR): Butterfly Member ID d9bd761e18c144469d755b1b97406eb2
hab-sup(MR): Starting butterfly on 0.0.0.0:9638
hab-sup(MR): Starting http-gateway on 0.0.0.0:9631
inspec-profile-frontend1.default(SR): Initializing
inspec-profile-frontend1.default(SV): Starting process as user=hab, group=hab
inspec-profile-frontend1.default(O): Executing InSpec  effortless/audit-baseline
inspec-profile-frontend1.default(O): InSpec run completed successfully.
inspec-profile-frontend1.default(O): sleeping for 2134 seconds

The above sample output shows the supervisor starting, downloading the necessary dependencies for the supervisor and the Chef InSpec profile, and then shows the supervisor running Chef InSpec successfully.

Chef InSpec will write a JSON file in the ${svc_var_path}/inspec_results directory containing the results of the last Chef InSpec run. For example, for the effortless/audit-baseline package, the Chef InSpec results will be at:

/hab/svc/inspec-profile-frontend1/var/inspec_results/inspec-profile-frontend1.json

Chef InSpec Chef Habitat CLI Commands

inspec habitat profile create

Create a Chef Habitat package for a Chef InSpec profile. Chef InSpec will validate the profile, fetch and vendor any dependencies (if necessary), and build the Chef Habitat package with a dependency on the latest InSpec. The resulting package will be saved to the current working directory.

The package can then be manually uploaded to a Chef Habitat Depot or manually distributed to a host and installed via hab pkg install.

The package file will be named:

HABITAT_ORIGIN-inspec-profile-PROFILE_NAME-PROFILE_VERSION-BUILD_ID-x86_64-linux.hart

For example:

adamleff-inspec-profile-frontend1-0.1.0-20170328173005-x86_64-linux.hart

Syntax

inspec habitat profile create PROFILE_DIRECTORY

Example

inspec habitat profile create ~/profiles/frontend1

Example Output

$ habitat profile create ~/profiles/frontend1
[2017-03-28T13:29:32-04:00] INFO: Creating a Habitat artifact for profile: /Users/aleff/profiles/frontend1
[2017-03-28T13:29:32-04:00] INFO: Checking to see if Habitat is installed...
[2017-03-28T13:29:32-04:00] INFO: Copying profile contents to the work directory...
[2017-03-28T13:29:32-04:00] INFO: Generating Habitat plan at /var/folders/v5/z54gb76j2rs3wrn65hmtyf1r0000gp/T/inspec-habitat-exporter20170328-4932-kg2ltd/habitat/plan.sh...
[2017-03-28T13:29:32-04:00] INFO: Generating a Habitat run hook at /var/folders/v5/z54gb76j2rs3wrn65hmtyf1r0000gp/T/inspec-habitat-exporter20170328-4932-kg2ltd/habitat/hooks/run...
[2017-03-28T13:29:32-04:00] INFO: Generating Habitat's default.toml configuration...
[2017-03-28T13:29:32-04:00] INFO: Building our Habitat artifact...
   hab-studio: Destroying Studio at /hab/studios/src (default)
   hab-studio: Creating Studio at /hab/studios/src (default)
   hab-studio: Importing adamleff secret origin key
» Importing origin key from standard input
★ Imported secret origin key adamleff-20160617201047.
» Installing core/hab-backline
↓ Downloading core/hab-backline/0.19.0/20170311034116
    2.17 KB / 2.17 KB / [=========================================================================] 100.00 % 4.33 MB/s

... more Chef Habitat output here...

[2017-03-28T13:30:18-04:00] INFO: Copying artifact to /Users/aleff...

inspec habitat profile setup

Create a Chef Habitat directory that includes a plan file in a profile directory.

This is the same process that is used by inspec habitat profile create - but this adds the generated Chef Habitat directory and file to your system so that you can commit them to source control. If you commit these files to GitHub, you can connect that plan to the Chef Habitat Builder Service.

Syntax

inspec habitat profile setup PROFILE_DIRECTORY

Example

inspec habitat profile setup ~/profiles/frontend1

Example Output

[2018-10-31T23:45:59+00:00] INFO: Setting up profile at /home/nell/profiles/frontend1/ for Habitat...
[2018-10-31T23:45:59+00:00] INFO: Checking to see if the profile is valid...
[2018-10-31T23:45:59+00:00] INFO: Profile is valid.
[2018-10-31T23:45:59+00:00] INFO: Profile's dependencies are already vendored, skipping vendor process.
[2018-10-31T23:45:59+00:00] INFO: Generating Habitat plan at /home/nell/profiles/frontend1/habitat/plan.sh...

inspec habitat profile upload

Create and then upload a Chef Habitat package for a Chef InSpec profile. Like the inspec habitat profile create command, Chef InSpec will validate the profile, fetch and vendor any dependencies (if necessary), and build the Chef Habitat package with a dependency on the latest InSpec. However, instead of saving the package locally to the workstation, Chef InSpec will upload it to the depot defined in the HAB_DEPOT environment variable. If HAB_DEPOT is not defined, the package will be uploaded to the public Chef Habitat depot at https://app.habitat.sh.

Syntax

inspec habitat profile upload PROFILE_DIRECTORY

Example

inspec habitat profile upload ~/profiles/frontend1

Example Output

[2017-03-28T13:29:32-04:00] INFO: Creating a Habitat artifact for profile: /Users/aleff/profiles/frontend1
[2017-03-28T13:29:32-04:00] INFO: Checking to see if Habitat is installed...
[2017-03-28T13:29:32-04:00] INFO: Copying profile contents to the work directory...
[2017-03-28T13:29:32-04:00] INFO: Generating Habitat plan at /var/folders/v5/z54gb76j2rs3wrn65hmtyf1r0000gp/T/inspec-habitat-exporter20170328-4932-kg2ltd/habitat/plan.sh...
[2017-03-28T13:29:32-04:00] INFO: Generating a Habitat run hook at /var/folders/v5/z54gb76j2rs3wrn65hmtyf1r0000gp/T/inspec-habitat-exporter20170328-4932-kg2ltd/habitat/hooks/run...
[2017-03-28T13:29:32-04:00] INFO: Generating Habitat's default.toml configuration...
[2017-03-28T13:29:32-04:00] INFO: Building our Habitat artifact...
   hab-studio: Destroying Studio at /hab/studios/src (default)
   hab-studio: Creating Studio at /hab/studios/src (default)
   hab-studio: Importing adamleff secret origin key
» Importing origin key from standard input
★ Imported secret origin key adamleff-20160617201047.
» Installing core/hab-backline
↓ Downloading core/hab-backline/0.19.0/20170311034116
    2.17 KB / 2.17 KB / [=========================================================================] 100.00 % 4.33 MB/s

... more Chef Habitat output here...

[2017-03-28T13:30:18-04:00] INFO: Uploading the Habitat artifact to our Depot...
[2017-03-28T13:30:23-04:00] INFO: Upload complete!