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---
page_title: "Common Chef Options - Provisioning"
sidebar_current: "provisioning-chefcommon"
---
# Shared Chef Options
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## All Chef Provisioners
The following options are available to all Chef provisioners. Many of these
options are for advanced users only and should not be used unless you understand
their purpose.
- `binary_path` (string) - The path to Chef's `bin/` directory on the guest
machine.
- `binary_env` (string) - Arbitrary environment variables to set before running
the Chef provisioner command. This should be of the format `KEY=value` as a
string.
- `install` (boolean, string) - Install Chef on the system if it does not exist.
The default value is "true", which will use the official Omnibus installer
from Chef. This is a trinary attribute (it can have three values):
- `true` (boolean) - install Chef
- `false` (boolean) - do not install Chef
- `"force"` (string) - install Chef, even if it is already installed at the
proper version on the guest
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- `installer_download_path` (string) - The path where the Chef installer will be
downloaded to. This option is only honored if the `install` attribute is
`true` or `"force"` . The default value is to use the path provided by Chef's
Omnibus installer, which varies between releases.
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- `log_level` (string) - The Chef log level. See the Chef docs for acceptable
values.
- `prerelease` (boolean) - Install a prerelease version of Chef. The default
value is false.
- `version` (string) - The version of Chef to install on the guest. If Chef is
already installed on the system, the installed version is compared with the
requested version. If they match, no action is taken. If they do not match,
the value specified in this attribute will be installed in favor of the
existing version (a message will be displayed).
You can also specify "latest" (default), which will install the latest
version of Chef on the system. In this case, Chef will use whatever
version is on the system. To force the newest version of Chef to be
installed on every provision, set the {#install} option to "force".
## Runner Chef Provisioners
The following options are available to any of the Chef "runner" provisioners
which include [Chef Solo ](/v2/provisioning/chef_solo.html ), [Chef Zero ](/v2/provisioning/chef_zero.html ), and [Chef Client ](/v2/provisioning/chef_client.html ).
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* `arguments` (string) - A list of additional arguments to pass on the
command-line to Chef. Since these are passed in a shell-like environment,
be sure to properly quote and escape characters if necessary. By default,
no additional arguments are sent.
* `attempts` (int) - The number of times Chef will be run if an error occurs.
This defaults to 1. This can be increased to a higher number if your Chef
runs take multiple runs to reach convergence.
* `custom_config_path` (string) - A path to a custom Chef configuration local
on your machine that will be used as the Chef configuration. This Chef
configuration will be loaded _after_ the Chef configuration that Vagrant
generates, allowing you to override anything that Vagrant does. This is
also a great way to use new Chef features that may not be supported fully
by Vagrant's abstractions yet.
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* `encrypted_data_bag_secret_key_path` (string) - The path to the secret key
file to decrypt encrypted data bags. By default, this is not set.
* `environment` (string) - The environment you want the Chef run to be
a part of.
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* `formatter` (string) - The formatter to use for output from Chef.
* `http_proxy` , `http_proxy_user` , `http_proxy_pass` , `no_proxy` (string) - Settings
to configure HTTP and HTTPS proxies to use from Chef. These settings are
also available with `http` replaced with `https` to configure HTTPS proxies.
* `json` (hash) - Custom node attributes to pass into the Chef run.
* `log_level` (string) - The log level for Chef output. This defaults to
"info".
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* `node_name` (string) - The node name for the Chef Client. By default this
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will be your hostname.
* `provisioning_path` (string) - The path on the remote machine where Vagrant
will store all necessary files for provisioning such as cookbooks, configurations,
etc. This path must be world writable. By default this is
`/tmp/vagrant-chef-#` where "#" is replaced by a unique counter.
* `run_list` (array) - The run list that will be executed on the node.
* `file_cache_path` and `file_backup_path` (string) - Paths on the remote
machine where files will be cached and backed up. It is useful sometimes
to configure this to a synced folder address so that this can be shared
across many Vagrant runs.
* `verbose_logging` (boolean) - Whether or not to enable the Chef
`verbose_logging` option. By default this is false.
