chef-solo provision fails on ubuntu after downloading partial installer

[seven10builder]

when using the chef-solo provisioner and the vsphere builder (from here), I get a consistent error when trying to download the chef installer on the newly spun up host. The error is always the same:
vsphere: curl: (23) Failed writing body (1755 != 2759)
The log gist (see below) contains the greater body of the error, but it appears it is encountering an error when writing to stderr.

• Packer version: 1.1.3

• Host platform: Ubuntu 16.04

• Debug log output from PACKER_LOG=1 packer build template.json:
  https://gist.github.com/seven10builder/cbb11dafddf2d51ee9977feeb35d16da

• The simplest example template and scripts needed to reproduce the bug.
  in previous gist.

[ghost]

This issue has been automatically migrated to hashicorp/packer-plugin-chef#14 because it looks like an issue with that plugin. If you believe this is not an issue with the plugin, please reply to hashicorp/packer-plugin-chef#14.

[ghost]

I'm going to lock this issue because it has been closed for 30 days ⏳. This helps our maintainers find and focus on the active issues.

If you have found a problem that seems similar to this, please open a new issue and complete the issue template so we can capture all the details necessary to investigate further.