How can I get Chef to run apt-get update before running other recipes

Question

Right now I have the following in my Vagrantfile:

config.vm.provision :chef_solo do |chef|
    chef.cookbooks_path = "cookbooks"
    chef.add_recipe "apt"
    chef.add_recipe "build-essential"
    chef.add_recipe "chef-redis::source"
    chef.add_recipe "openssl"
    chef.add_recipe "git"
    chef.add_recipe "postgresql::server"
    chef.add_recipe "postgresql::client"
end

In order to install the software added to my recipe_list, I need to get the VM to issue an apt-get update before installing the other software.

I was under the impression that this was one of the features of the 'apt' recipe - that it would run the update first thing.

The output when I do a vagrant provision is:

[Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:20:03 -0800] INFO: *** Chef 0.10.2 ***
[Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:20:03 -0800] INFO: Setting the run_list to ["recipe[apt]", "recipe[build-essential]", "recipe[chef-redis::source]", "recipe[openssl]", "recipe[git]", "recipe[postgresql::server]", "recipe[postgresql::client]", "recipe[vagrant-main]"] from JSON
[Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:20:03 -0800] INFO: Run List is [recipe[apt], recipe[build-essential], recipe[chef-redis::source], recipe[openssl], recipe[git], recipe[postgresql::server], recipe[postgresql::client], recipe[vagrant-main]]
[Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:20:03 -0800] INFO: Run List expands to [apt, build-essential, chef-redis::source, openssl, git, postgresql::server, postgresql::client, vagrant-main]
[Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:20:03 -0800] INFO: Starting Chef Run for lucid32
[Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:20:03 -0800] INFO: Processing package[postgresql-client] action install (postgresql::client line 37)
[Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:20:04 -0800] ERROR: package[postgresql-client] (postgresql::client line 37) has had an error
[Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:20:04 -0800] ERROR: Running exception handlers
[Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:20:04 -0800] ERROR: Exception handlers complete
[Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:20:04 -0800] FATAL: Stacktrace dumped to /tmp/vagrant-chef-1/chef-stacktrace.out
[Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:20:04 -0800] FATAL: Chef::Exceptions::Exec: package[postgresql-client] (postgresql::client line 37) had an error: apt-get -q -y install postgresql-client=8.4.8-0ubuntu0.10.04 returned 100, expected 0

Answer 1

You can include the apt recipe in the very beginning:

include_recipe 'apt'

this will run the update command.