By default “pivotal” is the only chef server superuser who has permission to CREATE users,orgnization, group etc in chef server.  So if by mistake you will delete the “pivotal” user with below command :

# chef-server-ctl user-delete pivotal

Then , further is you run any command(list,create,delete,etc) related to users, organization , it will fail with the following error :

Response:  Failed to authenticate as 'pivotal'. Ensure that your node_name and client key are correct.

 

So to overcome this issue we have to recreate “pivotal” using its with required authorization  in pgdb.

So follow below steps to do it.

create pivotal’s public key from /etc/opscode/pivotal.pem and store in an accessible location

#openssl rsa -in /etc/opscode/pivotal.pem -pubout > /var/opt/opscode/postgresql/9.2/data/pivotal.pub

get the pivotal user’s authz_id and store in an accessible location

# echo "SELECT authz_id FROM auth_actor WHERE id = 1" | su -l opscode-pgsql -c 'psql bifrost -tA' | tr -d '\n' > /var/opt/opscode/postgresql/9.2/data/pivotal.authz_id

create the pivotal user’s record

# echo "INSERT INTO users (id, authz_id, username, email, pubkey_version, public_key, serialized_object, last_updated_by, created_at, updated_at) VALUES (md5(random()::text), pg_read_file('pivotal.authz_id'), 'pivotal', 'kryptonite@opscode.com', 0, pg_read_file('pivotal.pub'), '{\"first_name\":\"Clark\",\"last_name\":\"Kent\",\"display_name\":\"Clark Kent\"}', pg_read_file('pivotal.authz_id'), LOCALTIMESTAMP, LOCALTIMESTAMP);" | su -l opscode-pgsql -c 'psql opscode_chef'

delete the temporary files

# rm /var/opt/opscode/postgresql/9.2/data/pivotal.pub /var/opt/opscode/postgresql/9.2/data/pivotal.authz_id