Chef / Vagrant SSH bootstrap error - ssh

Question

I am trying to bootstrap a node, bento/centos 7.2, via Chef and am running into an SSH error.
I have virtualbox installed along with vagrant. I am able to ssh into the vm without issue using the ssh client built-in to the Chef DK. I am using Hosted Chef as my server.
On my Win 10 workstation, I issue the following command and get an error.
PS C:\Users\Topher\Documents\Learn Chef\.chef> knife bootstrap 10.0.2.15 --ssh-user vagrant --sudo --ssh-identity-file C:\Users\
Topher\.vagrant\machines\default\virtualbox\private_key --node-name localhost --run-list 'recipe[learn_chef_httpd]'
Node localhost exists, overwrite it? (Y/N) Y
Client localhost exists, overwrite it? (Y/N) Y
Creating new client for localhost
Creating new node for localhost
Connecting to 10.0.2.15
ERROR: Net::SSH::ConnectionTimeout: Net::SSH::ConnectionTimeout
Any ideas what is causing the ConnectionTimeout?

Answer 1

In my case I was trying to bootstrap a remote server (not a local Vagrant VM) using knife as follows:
knife bootstrap <FQDN of node being provisioned> -x <username> -P <password> --sudo --use-sudo-password <password> -N <name for node being provisioned>
In my case the problem was that my Chef Server was running as a local VM and it was using a VirtualBox private network and was therefor not accessible to the node I was provisioning using knife. By changing my Vagrant config for my Chef Server to a public bridge network I was able to get past the "ERROR: Net::SSH::ConnectionTimeout: Net::SSH::ConnectionTimeout" during my knife bootstrap command. Here is what my Vagrant file change looked like:
Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|
config.vm.define 'chef-server' do |cs|
cs.vm.box = 'bento/ubuntu-14.04'
cs.vm.box_version = '2.2.9'
cs.vm.hostname = 'chef-server.test'
#cs.vm.network 'private_network', ip: 'xxx.16.9.5'
cs.vm.network "public_network",
bridge: "Intel(R) Ethernet Connection I217-LM",
ip: ENV.fetch("IPS", "xxx.16.9.5"), netmask: ENV.fetch("NETMASKS", "255.255.0.0")
cs.vm.provision 'shell', inline: CHEF_SERVER_SCRIPT.dup
set_hostname(cs)
cs.vm.provider 'virtualbox' do |v|
v.memory = 2048
v.cpus = 2
end
end
Note the commented out private network and the uncommented public network immediately after it.
One useful command line arg for knife is -VV for verbose / debug output. Try that to see if it gives you more insight into your problem.
One other thing I noticed is that in my case I would sometimes the "ERROR: Net::SSH::ConnectionTimeout: Net::SSH::ConnectionTimeout" during my knife bootstrap command but on retry it would succeed.
Please mark my answer as the correct answer if it solves your problem.