Vagrant Chef path for importing database - database

Question

I have learned a lot about setting up vagrant with chef and I am hitting a wall since I am new to ruby - vagrant - chef and I am not the biggest developer. Being mostly front end but trying to set up a better environment to develop in.
I have searched and found great answers but left with one final question.
I have this code creating the database but I can not figure out where to place the database to import from...
# import an sql dump from your app_root/data/dump.sql to the my_database database
execute "import" do
command "mysql -u root -p\"#{node['mysql']['server_root_password']}\" my_database < /chef/vagrant_db/database-name.mysql"
action :run
end
So I need to know where the path should start from, the top level home directory, from the top level folder where I run vagrant up? Where it is currently and a few other tried places is not working.
Any ideas would be great. I have search google so much so that I am almost ready to give up.
Thanks
Tim

Answer 1

I would recommend using Chef::Config[:file_cache_path] for this. Let's say you want to get that SQL file from a remote web server:
db = File.join(Chef::Config[:file_cache_path], 'database.mysql')
remote_file db do
source 'http://my.web.server/db.mysql
action :create_if_missing
notifies :run, 'execute[import]', :immediately
end
execute "import" do
command "mysql -u root -p\"#{node['mysql']['server_root_password']}\" my_database < #{db}"
action :nothing
end
This will:
Add idempotency - meaning it won't try to import the database on each run
Leverage Chef's file-cache-path, which is persisted and guaranteed to be writable on supported Chef systems
Extensible (you could easily change remote_file to cookbook_file or some custom resource to fetch the database)
Now, getting the file from Vagrant is a different story. By default, Vagrant mounts the directory where the Vagrantfile is located at on the host (local laptop) at /vagrant on the VM (guest machine). You can mount additional locations (called "shared folders") anywhere on your local laptop.
Bonus
If you are running the database on your local machine, you can actually share the socket over a shared folder with Vagrant :). Then you don't even need MySQL on your VM - it will use the one running on your host laptop.
Sources:
I write a lot of Chef :)