Vagrant Provision, Chef Error: You must specify at least one cookbook repo path - vagrant

Question

I'm trying to set up Vagrant for web development, on Windows 8.1. I've already hit the problem undefined method “cheffish” for nil:NilClass, so am using Vagrant 1.7.4 with Chef 12.3.0.
I can't solve this error:
ERROR: You must specify at least one cookbook repo path
from:
c:\web\project>vagrant provision
==> default: The cookbook path 'c:/web/project/cookbooks' doesn't exist. Ignoring...
==> default: The cookbook path 'c:/web/project/site-cookbooks' doesn't exist. Ignoring...
==> default: Chef 12.3.0 Omnibus package is already installed.
==> default: Running provisioner: chef_solo...
==> default: Detected Chef (latest) is already installed
Generating chef JSON and uploading...
==> default: Running chef-solo...
==> default: stdin: is not a tty
==> default: [2015-07-21T10:08:00+00:00] INFO: Forking chef instance to converge...
==> default: Starting Chef Client, version 12.3.0
==> default: [2015-07-21T10:08:00+00:00] INFO: *** Chef 12.3.0 ***
==> default: [2015-07-21T10:08:00+00:00] INFO: Chef-client pid: 1813
==> default: [2015-07-21T10:08:01+00:00] INFO: Setting the run_list to ["recipe[apt]", "recipe[nodejs]", "recipe[postgresql]", "recipe[postgresql::ser
ver]", "recipe[postgresql::client]"] from CLI options
==> default: [2015-07-21T10:08:01+00:00] INFO: Run List is [recipe[apt], recipe[nodejs], recipe[postgresql], recipe[postgresql::server], recipe[postgr
esql::client]]
==> default: [2015-07-21T10:08:01+00:00] INFO: Run List expands to [apt, nodejs, postgresql, postgresql::server, postgresql::client]
==> default: [2015-07-21T10:08:01+00:00] INFO: Starting Chef Run for vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-64
==> default: [2015-07-21T10:08:01+00:00] INFO: Running start handlers
==> default: [2015-07-21T10:08:01+00:00] INFO: Start handlers complete.
==> default: Running handlers:
==> default: [2015-07-21T10:08:01+00:00] ERROR: Running exception handlers
==> default: Running handlers complete
==> default: [2015-07-21T10:08:01+00:00] ERROR: Exception handlers complete
==> default: [2015-07-21T10:08:01+00:00] FATAL: Stacktrace dumped to /var/chef/cache/chef-stacktrace.out
==> default: Chef Client failed. 0 resources updated in 0.736170145 seconds
==> default: [2015-07-21T10:08:01+00:00] ERROR: You must specify at least one cookbook repo path
==> default: [2015-07-21T10:08:01+00:00] FATAL: Chef::Exceptions::ChildConvergeError: Chef run process exited unsuccessfully (exit code 1)
Chef never successfully completed! Any errors should be visible in the
output above. Please fix your recipes so that they properly complete.
Vagrantfile
VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION = "2"
Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config|
# Use Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr 64-bit as our operating system
config.vm.box = "ubuntu/trusty64"
# Configurate the virtual machine to use 2GB of RAM
config.vm.provider :virtualbox do |vb|
vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--memory", "2048"]
end
# Forward the Rails server default port to the host
config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 8000, host: 8000
# config.omnibus.chef_version = :latest
config.omnibus.chef_version = "12.3.0"
# Use Chef Solo to provision our virtual machine
config.vm.provision :chef_solo do |chef|
chef.cookbooks_path = ["cookbooks", "site-cookbooks"]
chef.add_recipe "apt"
chef.add_recipe "nodejs"
chef.add_recipe "postgresql"
chef.add_recipe "postgresql::server"
chef.add_recipe "postgresql::client"
chef.json =
{
postgresql: {
users: [
{
"username" => "postgres",
"password" => "password",
"superuser" => true,
"replication" => false,
"createdb" => true,
"createrole" => false,
"inherit" => true,
"replication" => false,
"login" => true
}
]
}
}
end
end
Cheffile
site "http://community.opscode.com/api/v1"
cookbook 'apt'
cookbook 'nodejs'
cookbook 'build-essential'
cookbook 'postgresql', git: 'https://github.com/phlipper/chef-postgresql'
This vagrant-berkshelf issue looked similar, but deleting .vagrant.d, reloading and provisioning again didn't solve it.
What's causing this?
Thanks!

Answer 1

I installed Chef Dev Tools as this is the simplest way to install Berkshelf 3.0 on Windows. I set up a Berksfile in my project, based on my Cheffile, and enabled Berkshelf in the Vagrantfile. Now it provisions using Berkshelf, and it works.
Given there was no indication that Vagrant was using Berkshelf, I'm still not convinced that Berkshelf was the issue.
It would still be helpful to know how to install the latest Berkshelf version without Chef Dev Tools on Windows.