Sometimes Vagrant’s provisioning error messages can be a little cryptic.

When troubleshooting a failing chef-solo run, tweaking a run_list or debugging a new recipe, I’ve found it very handy to log into the partially provisioned VM with vagrant ssh and then run: Vagrant is a great tool for developing and testing new chef cookbooks. After bringing up a new vm, and editing a cookbook,vagrant provision runs the chef-solo provisioner and tests things out. However, when things fail, vagrant’s provisioning error messages can be a little cryptic. Shef is a good tool for running cookbooks in isolation, but it needs some help to find all the configuration and attributes that vagrant provides. If my new_and_broken cookbook is failing on a Ubuntu 12.04 VM, all I need to do is run:

$ shef -s -c /tmp/vagrant-chef-1/solo.rb -j /tmp/vagrant-chef-1/dna.json
    (output snip)
chef > recipe
chef:recipe > include_recipe 'new_and_broken'
    (huge output snip)
chef:recipe > run_chef
    (where the error happens)

This loads shef in solo mode, with vagrant generated configuration and JSON attributes files, enters into recipe mode, loads my new and broken cookbook and runs it. The resulting error messages are usually more helpful than vagrant provision and I can get back to work.