This is a little trick I use to spin up the packages instalation on Debian/Ubuntu boxes in Vagrant.
I add a simple function that checks if a directory named something similar to ~/.vagrant.d/cache/apt/opscode-ubuntu-12.04/partial (it may have another path in Windows or MacOS) and create the directory if it doesn't already exist.
def local_cache(basebox_name)
cache_dir = Vagrant::Environment.new.home_path.join('cache', 'apt', basebox_name)
partial_dir = cache_dir.join('partial')
partial_dir.mkdir unless partial_dir.exist?
cache_dir
