"Actually line 32 of the default.rb recipe already has group "admin". Turns out I just needed to add the "admin" group: # sudo groupadd admin Unfortunately the run_chef script got stuck at a later point after fixing this. I got the following error: ERROR: service[openvpn] (/var/chef/cookbooks/openvpn/recipes/default.rb line 85) had an error: /etc/init.d/openvpn start returned 1, expected 0 [ommited some hard to read errors, basically the same as follows but not as well formatted] ---- Begin output of /etc/init.d/openvpn start ---- STDOUT: STDERR: ---- End output of /etc/init.d/openvpn start ---- from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/chef-0.6.2/lib/chef/mixin/command.rb:133:in `chdir' from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/chef-0.6.2/lib/chef/mixin/command.rb:133:in `run_command' from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/chef-0.6.2/lib/chef/provider/service/init.rb:91:in `start_service' from /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/chef-0.6.2/lib/chef/provider/service.rb:60:in `action_start' from..." - Olifante