chef on virtualbox. guest is downloading very slowly from host - download

Question

I am using vagrant and chef to build a VM.
Host: OSX 10.9.5
audrey:ubuntu2 jluc$ chef -v
Chef Development Kit Version: 0.10.0
chef-client version: 12.5.1
berks version: 4.0.1
kitchen version: 1.4.2
audrey:ubuntu2 jluc$ vagrant -v
Vagrant 1.8.1
audrey:ubuntu2 jluc$ vagrant plugin list
vagrant-berkshelf (4.1.0)
vagrant-omnibus (1.4.1)
vagrant-share (1.1.5, system)
Virtualbox: 5, but same on 4 previously.
Guest: Ubuntu 14.04
Background: I am using alien to install Oracle rpm. However, you can't just point the client to a url or package somewhere, you need to download the rpms from Oracle, accept conditions and then make the files available to your client install. There are 2 rpms, one 30MB, one 640KB.
I am doing this by launching a http server on the host, on port 9003.
Problem:
The download/remote_file time, within the chef run, is anywhere from 5-20 minutes, while I can wget/curl them from within the guest in 5-15 seconds.
Details:
The following chef code deals with those files:
ip = node[:network][:default_gateway]
simplehttp_port=node[:basedjango][:port_host_fileserver]
fn_basic = "oracle-instantclient12.1-basiclite-12.1.0.2.0-1.x86_64.rpm"
execute 'download_basic' do
cwd "/tmp"
command "wget http://#{ip}:#{simplehttp_port}/#{fn_basic} "
not_if do ::File.exists?(fnp_basic) end
end
#I have also used this instead, just as slow...
remote_file fnp_basic do
uri = "http://#{ip}:#{simplehttp_port}/#{fn_basic}"
not_if do ::File.exists?(fnp_basic) end
mode '0755'
action :create
end
My problem is that I can vagrant ssh into the guest and wget or curl the file in anything from 5 to 15 seconds. From the chef cookbooks, I am looking at 5-20 minutes each time (there is a condition guard to avoid downloading it if it exists).
==> default: [2016-01-18T11:13:58-08:00] INFO: file[/etc/profile.d/ORACLE_HOME.sh] mode changed to 755
==> default:
==> default: - change mode from '' to '0755'
==> default:
==> default: - change owner from '' to 'root'
==> default:
==> default: - change group from '' to 'root'
==> default:
==> default: (up to date)
==> default: Recipe: basedjango::oracle
==> default:
==> default: * execute[download_basic] action run
!!! 11:13 to 11:28 => 15 minutes here.
==> default: [2016-01-18T11:28:04-08:00] INFO:
execute[download_basic] ran successfully
==> default:
==> default: - execute wget http://10.0.2.2:9003/oracle-instantclient12.1-basiclite-12.1.0.2.0-1.x86_64.rpm
==> default: * execute[install_basic] action run
And here is the same command, executed manually via vagrant ssh. About 2 seconds in this case.
vagrant#vagrant:/tmp$ wget http://10.0.2.2:9003/oracle-instantclient12.1-basiclite-12.1.0.2.0-1.x86_64.rpm
--2016-01-18 11:50:40-- http://10.0.2.2:9003/oracle-instantclient12.1-basiclite-12.1.0.2.0-1.x86_64.rpm
Connecting to 10.0.2.2:9003... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 30940809 (30M) [text/html]
Saving to: ‘oracle-instantclient12.1-basiclite-12.1.0.2.0-1.x86_64.rpm’
100%[====================================================================================================================================================================================>] 30,940,809 17.8MB/s in 1.7s
2016-01-18 11:50:41 (17.8 MB/s) - ‘oracle-instantclient12.1-basiclite-12.1.0.2.0-1.x86_64.rpm’ saved [30940809/30940809]
The remote_file resource behaves the same way, so at first I thought it was something wrong with it or the way I use it. The rpms are NOT being served from the Vagrant shared directory, btw.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

I don't know if you haven't already found a solution, but when I had that issue (even downloading from another server) I could 'fix' it by enabling debug output for chef. This magically increased the download speed.
Simply put
config.vm.provion :chef_solo |chef|
chef.log_level = 'debug'
[...]
end