[chef] 404 Net::HTTPServerException: cookbook_file

hi. i'm occasionally seeing an error lately on my clients. they complain
of:
FATAL: Net::HTTPServerException: remote_directory[/usr/local/bin] 
(toolbin::default line 27) had an error: Net::HTTPServerException: 
cookbook_file[/usr/local/bin/ec2-chef-ci] (dynamically defined) had an error: 
Net::HTTPServerException: 404 "Not Found"

detail of error: https://gist.github.com/2871114

but the file, ec2-chef-ci, is there in the cookbook. if i run chef-client
again, the error doesn't occur again (so far). the recipe that
places that file, among others does this:

remote_directory "/usr/local/bin" do
  source "usr/local/bin"
  files_owner "root"
  files_group "root"
  files_mode "0755"
  owner "root"
  group "root"
  mode "0755"
end

any clues as to what to look for? i'm about to turn on debug logging
on my server.

server: Ubuntu 11.04, chef 0.10.8
clients: Centos 5.8, chef-full-0.10.8-3, and some chef-full-0.10.10-1

thanks,
kallen