Overriding Chef Attributes In Role File

Question

I'm trying to override https://github.com/elasticsearch/cookbook-elasticsearch/blob/master/attributes/default.rb#L51 with a block like http://pastie.org/private/rfrpsjvl2ldxjky91r6zqg using Chef Solo.

# filename: chef/roles/elasticsearch.rb
name "elasticsearch"
description "Args"
run_list ['recipe[java]', 'recipe[elasticsearch]']
override_attributes { "node" => { "elasticsearch" => { "bootstrap" => {  "mlockall" => false } } } }
# Also tried:
# override_attributes { "elasticsearch" => { "bootstrap" => {  "mlockall" => false } } }

It seems like this may have been a bug in my chef version(11.4.4, issue at Google Cache, because of the opscodepocalypse)

It appears to be some issue with recently introduced changed to requiring additional metadata, but I can't find any reference to that.

Without defining a wrapper cookbook, how can I override these attributes?

Bonus if anyone can tell me how I could debug this myself with Chef-solo?

Answer 1

I wasn't able to make this work at all, I resorted to writing the following in my site-cookbooks/base/attributes/default.rb:

override.elasticsearch[:bootstrap][:mlockall] = false

It appears that the Chef 11 attribute resolution precedences changed quite a lot: http://www.opscode.com/blog/2013/02/05/chef-11-in-depth-attributes-changes/.

Answer 2

I would try

override_attributes :elasticsearch => { :bootstrap => {  :mlockall => false } }