# Debugging chef-solo in chef-shell

**URL:** <https://discourse.chef.io/t/debugging-chef-solo-in-chef-shell/4494>\
**Category:** Chef Infra (archive)\
**Created:** [September 24, 2013, 5:04pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/debugging-chef-solo-in-chef-shell/4494 "2013-09-24T17:04:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Igor\_Serebryany](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/igor_serebryany/32/362_2.png) [@Igor\_Serebryany](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Igor_Serebryany)\
**Post date:** [September 24, 2013, 5:04pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/debugging-chef-solo-in-chef-shell/4494/1 "2013-09-24T17:04:38Z")

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Hi Chefs,

I’m trying to debug a cookbook in chef-shell but I’m running into problems.

I start chef-shell in solo mode with ‘chef-shell -s -j myattr.json’. When I  
try to expand the runlist (as instructed  
here[http://docs.opscode.com/chef\_shell.html](http://docs.opscode.com/chef_shell.html),  
using ‘node.run\_list.expand(‘production’)’, chef-shell still tries to talk  
to a chef server. It complains about missing client.pem, and after I  
created a reasonable-looking file at the right location it still says ‘ERROR:  
Connection refused connecting to localhost:4000’.

Is there a way to tell chef-shell to avoid trying to talk to any sort of  
server? Is this a bug? This is on chef 11.4.0.

Thanks,  
–Igor

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**Author:** ![kallistec](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/kallistec/32/23_2.png) [@kallistec](https://discourse.chef.io/u/kallistec)\
**Post date:** [September 24, 2013, 5:16pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/debugging-chef-solo-in-chef-shell/4494/2 "2013-09-24T17:16:04Z")

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On Tuesday, September 24, 2013 at 10:04 AM, Igor Serebryany wrote:

> Hi Chefs,
> 
> I'm trying to debug a cookbook in chef-shell but I'm running into problems.
> 
> I start chef-shell in solo mode with 'chef-shell -s -j myattr.json'. When I try to expand the runlist (as instructed here ([chef-shell (executable)](http://docs.opscode.com/chef_shell.html)), using 'node.run\_list.expand('production')', chef-shell still tries to talk to a chef server. It complains about missing client.pem, and after I created a reasonable-looking file at the right location it still says 'ERROR: Connection refused connecting to localhost:4000'.
> 
> Is there a way to tell chef-shell to avoid trying to talk to any sort of server? Is this a bug? This is on chef 11.4.0.
> 
> Thanks,  
> --Igor

Try upgrading to 11.6, there were a handful of chef-shell bugs that got fixed.

--  
Daniel DeLeo