chef, the wrong way

gistfile1.txt

twiki_tmp = "/tmp/twiki.tar.gz"

remote_file twiki_tmp do
  source "http://softlayer-dal.dl.sourceforge.net/project/twiki/TWiki%20for%20all%20Platforms/TWiki-5.1.4/TWiki-5.1.4.tgz"
  checksum "bcd8544c83eb388737e334cdc2c2734e79df63fd0a64610c144addb00bc0d70d"
end

execute "extract Twiki" do
  command "tar -C /var/ -xzf " + twiki_tmp
  creates "/var/twiki/COPYING"
end

execute "chown -R www-data:www-data /var/twiki"

You'll want to do something like this:

twiki_tmp = "/tmp/twiki.tar.gz"

remote_file twiki_tmp do
  source "http://softlayer-dal.dl.sourceforge.net/project/twiki/TWiki%20for%20all%20Platforms/TWiki-5.1.4/TWiki-5.1.4.tgz"
  checksum "bcd8544c83eb388737e334cdc2c2734e79df63fd0a64610c144addb00bc0d70d"
end

execute "extract Twiki" do
  command "tar -C /var/ -xzf " + twiki_tmp
  creates "/var/twiki/COPYING"
  action :nothing
  subscribes :run, "remote_file[twiki_tmp]", :immediately
end

execute "chown -R www-data:www-data /var/twiki"

notice the action and subscribes in the execute block