Vagrant & Custom Chef Resources

Question

I've been trying to test out some of my cookbooks using Vagrant. I've been able to set up my Vagrant box without a problem, but it's failing every time I try to provision (or do vagrant up with a cookbooks directory specified in the Vagrantfile).

For some reason it seems that it's trying to compile every cookbook in the directory (regardless of whether it's being used in the run list or not) and it's unhappy with my custom resources. Each of them are failing with the same error:

SyntaxError
-----------
compile error
/tmp/vagrant-chef-1/chef-solo-1/cookbooks/expect/resources/script.rb:5: syntax error, unexpected ':', expecting $end
attribute :script, kind_of: String, required: true
                           ^

The custom resource it's complaining about in this example is:

actions :create

default_action :create

attribute :script, kind_of: String, required: true

The relevant part of my Vagrantfile is:

config.vm.provision :chef_solo do |chef|
  chef.cookbooks_path = "/Users/0x783czar/Development/Work/Chef-Repos/chef2/cookbooks"
  chef.roles_path = "/Users/0x783czar/Development/Work/Chef-Repos/chef2/roles"
  chef.data_bags_path = "/Users/0x783czar/Development/Work/Chef-Repos/chef2/data_bags"
  chef.add_recipe "build-essential"
  chef.add_recipe "mongodb"

  # You may also specify custom JSON attributes:
  # chef.json = { :mysql_password => "foo" }
end

I've used this same cookbook & resource with Chef-Solo and not encountered any problems, so I'm rather confused. Both by why it's trying to compile a cookbook I'm not even using, as well as to why it's unable to compile the custom resources.

I'm using "Vagrant 1.0.5", on "Mac OS X 10.8", with "VirtualBox 4.2.4", and this Vagrant build is using "Chef-Solo 10.14.2"

Draco Ater Draco Ater · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-12T22:06:55

If you downloaded your Vagrant box from vagrantbox.es, I am pretty sure you have ruby 1.8.x installed there, because they have to support both chef and puppet. Unfortunately puppet does not work well with ruby 1.9.x.

At the same time ruby introduced new hash syntax in 1.9 which is:

{ key1: value, key2: value ... } compared to old:
{ :key1 => value, :key2 => value ... }

But ruby 1.8.x does not support that. Use old hash syntax

attribute :script, :kind_of => String, :required => true

Or create your own vagrant box with ruby 1.9 installed :)

Vagrant & Custom Chef Resources

1 Answers