chef_locker

chef_locker is a Ruby gem that contains a script to prevent Chef clients from converging.

To install, declare something like the following in Chef:

chef_gem 'chef_locker'

Note that if something like rvm is installed, you may have to create a wrapper script to unset some Ruby-related environment variables.

Run sudo -H chef_locker [message with reason why] in a screen/tmux session and wait for Lock acquired to appear. Then detach from your screen/tmux session to keep Chef stopped (ctrl+b d in tmux).

To remove the lock and reenable Chef again, kill the process (ctrl + c).