Install gem from S3 in OpsWorks Chef recipe - ruby

Question

I need net-ssh and net-scp as part of a custom OpsWorks chef recipe.
Getting occasional failures from rubygems.org failing to provide the gems, so I would like to host them myself on S3.
chef_gem has the 'source' argument, but it seems to require the local file exist prior to chef being started (so I can't download the file immediately before chef_gem using remote_file)
$gemSsh = "#{Chef::Config[:file_cache_path]}/net-ssh.gem"
$gemScp = "#{Chef::Config[:file_cache_path]}/net-scp.gem"
remote_file $gemSsh do
source "https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/****/net-ssh-2.9.1.gem"
action :nothing
end.run_action(:create)
remote_file $gemScp do
source "https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/****/net-scp-1.2.1.gem"
action :nothing
end.run_action(:create)
chef_gem "net-ssh" do
action :nothing
source $gemSsh
end.run_action(:install)
chef_gem "net-scp" do
action :nothing
source $gemScp
end.run_action(:install)
(Note: the run_action(:install) is based on comments here https://tickets.opscode.com/browse/CHEF-4843)
This fails with the following error:
NoMethodError
-------------
undefined method `name' for "/var/lib/aws/opsworks/cache.stage2/net-scp.gem":String
Cookbook Trace:
---------------
/var/lib/aws/opsworks/cache.stage2/cookbooks/opsworks_commons/libraries/monkey_patch_rubygems_provider.rb:55:in `install'
/var/lib/aws/opsworks/cache.stage2/cookbooks/****/recipes/default.rb:24:in `from_file'

Answer 1

You can use "--local" flag which is provided by gem install (You can find other options with gem install --help).
Basic command would be somethig like gem install --local path_to_gem/filename.gem. So your recipe in that case would be:
....
chef_gem "net-ssh" do
action :nothing
options("--local #{$gemSsh}")
end.run_action(:install)
chef_gem "net-scp" do
action :nothing
options("--local #{$gemScp}")
end.run_action(:install)