clarkdave.net

Vagrant, Chef and the sudo cookbook

Vagrant is great. Chef is great. Let’s say you’re using Vagrant to test a Chef config for a server. Maybe you want to add the Opscode sudo cookbook to manage your sudo package and sudoers? If so, be careful!

This particular sudo cookbook replaces the /etc/sudoers file to do its thing, wiping out the %sudo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL line in the process. It just so happens that, on a typical Vagrant box, the vagrant user is part of this group, and depends on it to be able to do, well, anything.

Blindly installing the sudo book (as I did) will therefore result in your vagrant user being powerless. Side-effects of this include: network failures; an inability to shutdown the VM (vagrant halt) and much more!

If you are dead-set on using the sudo cookbook, make sure you add the vagrant user to the sysadmin group, or add the %sudo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL line back in to the sudoers file.