Installing multiple packages via Vagrant + Chef

Question

I've just discovered Vagrant + Chef and I'm trying to create a simple recipe to install multiple packages on the node. I thought something like this could work (I'm completely new tu ruby):

# (From cookbooks/MY_COOCKBOOK/recipes/default.rb)
# Install required packages
%w{build-essential libncurses5-dev openssl libssl-dev}.each do |pkg|
  package pkg do
    action :install
  end
end

But this fails with the following error:

[default] [Thu, 17 Mar 2011 06:24:27 -0700] INFO: Installing package[libssl-dev] version 0.9.8k-7ubuntu8.5
: stdout
[default] /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/chef-0.9.12/bin/../lib/chef/mixin/command.rb:184:in `handle_command_failures': stderr
[default] : : stderr
[default] apt-get -q -y install libssl-dev=0.9.8k-7ubuntu8.5 returned 100, expected 0: stderr
[default]  (: stderr
[default] Chef::Exceptions::Exec: stderr
[default] )
: stderr
[default]   from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/chef-0.9.12/bin/../lib/chef/mixin/command.rb:131:in `run_command'
    from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/chef-0.9.12/bin/../lib/chef/mixin/command.rb:199:in `run_command_with_systems_locale'
    from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/chef-0.9.12/bin/../lib/chef/provider/package/apt.rb:68:in `install_package'
    from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/chef-0.9.12/bin/../lib/chef/provider/package.rb:60:in `action_install'
[...]

: stderr
[default] [Thu, 17 Mar 2011 06:24:34 -0700] ERROR: package[libssl-dev] (/tmp/vagrant-chef/cookbooks-0/erlang-src/recipes/default.rb:22:in `from_file') had an error:
apt-get -q -y install libssl-dev=0.9.8k-7ubuntu8.5 returned 100, expected 0
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/chef-0.9.12/bin/../lib/chef/mixin/command.rb:184:in `handle_command_failures'
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/chef-0.9.12/bin/../lib/chef/mixin/command.rb:131:in `run_command'
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/chef-0.9.12/bin/../lib/chef/mixin/command.rb:199:in `run_command_with_systems_locale'
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/chef-0.9.12/bin/../lib/chef/provider/package/apt.rb:68:in `install_package'
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/chef-0.9.12/bin/../lib/chef/provider/package.rb:60:in `action_install'

I've the impression I'm missing something basic here...

Scrawly

Answer 1

It turned out that I was simply missing the "apt" recipe on my Vagrantfile, which run an apt-get update before installing the required packages. So, the above was correct.

Scrawly

Answer 2

Just adding this answer here for future reference. If you ever run into a situation where you must run apt-get update before calling some package commands, you can resort to this snippet:

execute "update package index" do
  command "apt-get update"
  ignore_failure true
  action :nothing
end.run_action(:run)

And it works fine.

Coterminous

This is unnecessary if you're using cookbooks normally without calling run_action on resources, just include the default recipe from the apt cookbook before using any package resources and the recipe will run apt-get update. – Heterogony