varnish Cookbook

Installs and configures varnish.

Requirements

chef-client

• Requires chef-client 12 and above.

Platforms

Tested on:

• Ubuntu 12.04
• Ubuntu 14.04
• Debian 6.0
• Centos 5.9
• Centos 6.5
• Centos 7.0

Attributes

• node['varnish']['dir'] - location of the varnish configuration directory
• node['varnish']['default'] - location of the default file that controls the varnish init script on Debian/Ubuntu systems.
• node['varnish']['version'] - If retrieving from official Varnish project repository, may choose 3.0 or 4.0.
• node['varnish']['start'] - Should we start varnishd at boot? Set to "no" to disable (yes)
• node['varnish']['nfiles'] - Open files (131072)
• node['varnish']['memlock'] - Maxiumum locked memory size for shared memory log (82000)
• node['varnish']['instance'] - Default varnish instance name (node['fqdn'])
• node['varnish']['listen_address'] - Default address to bind to. Blank address (the default) means all IPv4 and IPv6 interfaces, otherwise specify a host name, an IPv4 dotted quad, or an IPv6 address in brackets
• node['varnish']['listen_port'] - Default port to listen on (6081)
• node['varnish']['vcl_conf'] - Name to use for main configuration file. (default.vcl.erb)
• node['varnish']['vcl_source'] - Name for default configuration file template. (default.vcl)
• node['varnish']['vcl_cookbook'] - Cookbook in which to look for the default.vcl.erb (or 'vcl_source' filename) template. This is used to specify custom template without modifying community cookbook files. (varnish)
• node['varnish']['vcl_generated'] - Generate the varnish configuration using the supplied template. (true)
• node['varnish']['conf_source'] - Name of the default system configuration file. (default.erb)
• node['varnish']['conf_cookbook'] - Cookbook in which the default system configuration file is located. (varnish)
• node['varnish']['secret_file'] - Path to a file containing a secret used for authorizing access to the management port. (/etc/varnish/secret)
• node['varnish']['admin_listen_address'] - Telnet admin interface listen address (127.0.0.1)
• node['varnish']['admin_listen_port'] - Telnet admin interface listen port (6082)
• node['varnish']['user'] - Specifies the name of an unprivileged user to which the child process should switch before it starts accepting connections (varnish)
• node['varnish']['group'] - Specifies the name of an unprivileged group to which the child process should switch before it starts accepting connections (varnish)
• node['varnish']['ttl'] - Specifies a hard minimum time to live for cached documents. (120)
• node['varnish']['storage'] - The storage type used ('file')
• node['varnish']['storage_file'] - Specifies either the path to the backing file or the path to a directory in which varnishd will create the backing file. Only used if using file storage. ('/var/lib/varnish/$INSTANCE/varnish_storage.bin')
• node['varnish']['storage_size'] - Specifies the size of the backing file or max memory allocation. The size is assumed to be in bytes, unless followed by one of the following suffixes: K,k,M,m,G,g,T,g,% (1G)
• node['varnish']['log_daemon'] - Specifies if the system varnishlog daemon dumping all the varnish logs into /var/log/varnish/varnish.log should be enabled. (true)
• node['varnish']['parameters'] = Set the parameter specified by param to the specified value. See Run-Time Parameters for a list of parameters. This option can be used multiple times to specifymultiple parameters.

If you don't specify your own vcl_conf file, then these attributes are used in the cookbook default.vcl template:

• node['varnish']['backend_host'] = Host to serve/cache content from (localhost)
• node['varnish']['backend_port'] = Port on backend host to access (8080)

Recipes

default

Installs the varnish package, manages the default varnish configuration file, and the init script defaults file.

repo

If placed before the default recipe in the run list, the official Varnish project apt repository will offer access to more version and platform support.

Usage

On systems that need a high performance caching server, use recipe[varnish]. Additional configuration can be done by modifying the default.vcl.erb and default.erb templates.

If running on a Redhat derivative then you may need to include yum-epel as it provides the jemalloc dependency that varnish needs

Resources

See the distro_install and vendor_install recipes for examples of these resources in action.

varnish_install

Installs Varnish with the default configuration supplied by the package.

The :install action handles package installation. By default, it
will install Varnish from your distro repositories. If you set the
vendor_repo parameter to true, then it will install Varnish
from the varnish-cache repositories.

Parameters

Actions

• :install - Installs and enables the Varnish service.

Examples

Install from the OS distribution :

varnish_install 'default' do
  package_name 'varnish'
  vendor_repo false
end

Install version 4 from the vendor :

varnish_install 'default' do
  package_name 'varnish'
  vendor_repo true
  vendor_version '4.0'
end

varnish_default_config

Configures the Varnish service. If you do not include this, the config
files that come with your distro package will be used instead.

You can also send a hash to parameters which will add additional parameters to the varnish daemon via the -p option. The default hash is:

{ 'thread_pools' => '4',
  'thread_pool_min' => '5',
  'thread_pool_max' => '500',
  'thread_pool_timeout' => '300' }

Actions

• :configure - Creates the varnish configuration file from template.

Example

Configure some parameters on the Varnish service :

varnish_default_config 'default' do
  start_on_boot true
  max_open_files 131_072
  max_locked_memory 82_000
  listen_address nil
  listen_port 6081
  path_to_vcl '/etc/varnish/default.vcl'
  admin_listen_address '127.0.0.1'
  admin_listen_port 6082
  user 'varnish'
  group 'varnish'
  ttl 120
  storage 'malloc'
  malloc_size "#{(node['memory']['total'][0..-3].to_i * 0.75).to_i}K"
  parameters(thread_pools: '4',
             thread_pool_min: '5',
             thread_pool_max: '500',
             thread_pool_timeout: '300')
  path_to_secret '/etc/varnish/secret'
end

varnish_default_vcl

Example

Set a backend to example.com:80 :

varnish_default_vcl 'default' do
  backend_host 'example.com'
  backend_port 80
end

Actions

• :configure - Creates a default.vcl file.

varnish_log

Configures varnishlog or varnishncsa service. You can define both
logfiles by calling varnish_log more than once. You can install logrotate
config files if you wish as well.

Actions

• :configure - configures the varnishlog or varnishncsa service.

Examples

Configure varnish logs with log rotation :

varnish_log 'default' do
  file_name '/var/log/varnish/varnishlog.log'
  pid '/var/run/varnishlog.pid'
  log_format 'varnishlog'
  logrotate true
  logrotate_path '/etc/logrotate.d'
end

Configure ncsa logs with a specific output format and without log rotation :

varnish_log 'default_ncsa' do
  file_name '/var/log/varnish/varnishncsa.log'
  pid '/var/run/varnishncsa.pid'
  log_format 'varnishncsa'
  ncsa_format_string '%h|%l|%u|%t|\"%r\"|%s|%b|\"%{Referer}i\"|\"%{User-agent}i\"'
  logrotate false
end

License & Authors

• Author:: Joe Williams joe@joetify.com
• Author:: Lew Goettner lew@goettner.net
• Author:: Matthew Thode matt.thode@rackspace.com
• Author:: Matt Barlow matt.barlow@rackspace.com
• Contributor:: Patrick Connolly patrick@myplanetdigital.com
• Contributor:: Antonio Fernández Vara antoniofernandezvara@gmail.com

Copyright 2008-2009, Joe Williams <joe@joetify.com>
Copyright 2014. Patrick Connolly <patrick@myplanetdigital.com>
Copyright 2015. Rackspace, US Inc.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.