Hi,
We deployed splunk using Chef, but the reciped did not have the deploymentclient.conf as part of the process. Now that we put that file on the server, do we need to restart Splunk to have splunkd recognize that file is now there, and we can start pushing config files?
Yes, you need to put the deploymentclient.conf file in $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local
on the deployment client, enable the deployment client, and restart the deployment client. If you haven't already, see the documentation topic on enabling deployment clients in the Distributed Deployment Manual for the details, in particular the CLI section at the bottom.