chef-solo/chef-client local mode doesn't accept attribute override in a json

I have a cookbook and roles.son and environment.json file available. I run them through both chef-solo and chef-client -z (local mode).

Both give the ability to add -j flag to pass the roles.json but doesn't provide any easy way of attribute overriding using environment.json. I am not using a server so not pushing it any where.

Am I missing something ?

I have something like this :

cookbooks  environment.json  file.txt  local-mode-cache  nodes  roles.json

and I'm running the following

1 : chef-client local mode with client.rb:

log_level               :info
log_location            "/var/log/chef/client.log"
node_name       "ip-10-201-38-78"
cookbook_path           "/tmp/cookbooks/"
json_attribs        "/tmp/roles.json"

chef-client -z -c client.rb -j roles.json

chef-solo -c client.rb -j roles.json

Solution

The -j is not used to specify the role information, see:

http://docs.chef.io/ctl_chef_client.html#options

It can be used to specify node attributes, but would have a different format compared to the roles file.

Update

I suspect you don't need a role at all.

Here's an example of how to specify both node attributes and the run-list in the JSON file passed to chef client:

sudo chef-client -z -j node.json

The cookbook dependencies are of course located in a "cookbooks" subdir

├── node.json
├── cookbooks
    ├── apt ..
    ├── build-essential ..
    ├── chef_handler ..
    ├── compat_resource ..
    ├── homebrew ..
    ├── java ..
    ├── mingw ..
    ├── seven_zip ..
    └── windows ..

node.json

{
  "java": {
    "jdk_version":8,
    "install_flavor":"oracle",
    "oracle": {
      "accept_oracle_download_terms":true
    }
  },
  "run_list":[
    "recipe[apt]",
    "recipe[java]"
  ]
}