Berkshelf cookbooks are not being copied to the Vagrant directory

Question

I am trying to provision a Vagrant machine using Chef-solo, Berkshelf, and the vagrant-berkshelf plugin. However, the provisioning fails with this error:

Berkshelf::CookbookNotFound: Cookbook <cookbook name> not found in any of the default locations

berks install successfully installs everything to ~/.berkshelf/cookbooks/, but the cookbooks are never copied over to ~./berkshelf/default/vagrant/berkshelf-20131017-8441-pqghfq-default which is where Berkshelf reports it is updating, right before the trace:

[Berkshelf] Updating Vagrant's berkshelf: '/Users/<me>/.berkshelf/default/vagrant/berkshelf-20131017-8441-pqghfq-default'

So, I guess my questions are:

1. Who is responsibile for copying the cookbooks to the specific Vagrant folder (Berkshelf, the vagrant-berkshelf plugin, or Vagrant)? I've browsed through each repo's source this evening, but haven't been able to nail down where this is supposed to happen.
2. Is there any more information I can provide to help answer question #1? :)

Environment Detail:

Mac OSX 10.8 ruby 1.9.3

vagrant -v: 1.3.5

berks -v : Berkshelf (2.0.10)

$: vagrant plugin list

buff-config (0.2.0)

mini_portile (0.5.1)

nugrant (1.1.0)

vagrant-berkshelf (1.3.4)

vagrant-cachier (0.1.0)

vagrant-omnibus (1.1.1)

vagrant-rackspace (0.1.3)

Answer 1

Who is responsibile for copying the cookbooks to the specific Vagrant folder (Berkshelf, the vagrant-berkshelf plugin, or Vagrant)?

A little from column A and a little from column B, both of which get some help from column C.

The Vagrant chef-solo provisioner has the ability to copy cookbooks (+ roles/data bags/etc) from the host machine to the guest. It does this by creating a directory on the host and then mounting that directory within the VM.

The vagrant-berkshelf plugin first creates a directory on the host and then uses vanilla Berkshelf functionality to export all of the relevant cookbooks to this directory.

Lastly the vagrant-berkshelf plugin tells the Chef-Solo provisioner to use the directory it has created as the source for the cookbooks it should copy across to the guest.

Answer 2

I had a similar issue trying to provision a vagrant box. I solved my problem in the following way.

In Berksfile, add the following

'cookbook-name', path: "<path to cookbook>"

is usually "cookbooks/cookbook-name"

Berksfile was then able to find the cookbook and copy it to berksfile's location which is where the chef-solo looks to find the cookbooks. I hope it helps.