PE known issues

Puppet Server JVM segfaults during RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 migration

During migration of PE from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7 to RHEL 8, if your puppetlabs-stdlib module version is older than 9.1.0, the puppetserver Java Virtual Machine (JVM) might experience segfaults at seemingly random intervals. This issue is caused by underlying logic related to password hashing. To avoid this problem, upgrade the puppetlabs-stdlib module to version 9.1.0 or newer.

Converting legacy compilers fails with an external certificate authority

Agent_cert_regen: ERROR: Failed to regenerate agent certificate on node <compiler-node.domain.com>
Agent_cert_regen: bolt/run-failure:Plan aborted: run_task 'enterprise_tasks::sign' failed on 1 target
Agent_cert_regen: puppetlabs.sign/sign-cert-failed Could not sign request for host with certname <compiler-node.domain.com> using caserver <master-host.domain.com>

Converted compilers can slow PuppetDB in multi-region installations

In configurations that rely on high-latency connections between your primary servers and compilers – for example, in multi-region installations – converted compilers running the PuppetDB service might experience significant slowdowns. If your primary server and compilers are distributed among multiple data centers connected by high-latency links or congested network segments, reach out to Support for guidance before converting legacy compilers.

Provisioning a replica may occasionally fail due to a race condition

FIPS-enabled PE 2021.7 and later can't use the default system cert store

PE 2021.7 and later FIPS builds can't use the default system cert store, which is used automatically with some reporting services. This setting is configured by the report_include_system_store Puppet parameter that ships with PE.

Removing the puppet-cacerts file (located at /opt/puppetlabs/puppet/ssl/puppet-cacerts) can allow a report processor that eagerly loads the system store to continue with a warning that the file is missing.

If HTTP clients require external certs, we recommend using a custom cert store containing only the necessary certs. You can create this cert store by concatenating existing pem files and configuring the ssl_trust_store Puppet parameter to point to the new cert store.

Puppet Server FIPS installations don’t support Ruby’s OpenSSL module

FIPS-enabled PE installations don't support extensions or modules that use the standard Ruby Open SSL library, such as hiera-eyaml. As a workaround, you can use a non-FIPS-enabled primary server with FIPS-enabled agents, which limits the issue to situations where only the primary uses the Ruby library. This limitation does not apply to versions 1.1.0 and later of the splunk_hec module, which supports FIPS-enabled servers. The FIPS Mode section of the module's Forge page explains the limitations of running this module in a FIPS environment.

SAML Organization URL accepts invalid values

When you Connect to a SAML identity provider, make sure the Organization URL is a valid, well-formed URL. Supplying an invalid value does not produce a field validation error, but it does cause the following error at login: Invalid settings: organization_not_enough_data.

puppet infrastructure tune fails with multi-environment environmentpath

The puppet infrastructure tune command fails if environmentpath (in your puppet.conf file) is set to multiple environments. To avoid the failure, comment out this setting before running this command. For details about the environmentpath setting, refer to environmentpath in the open source Puppet documentation.

Restarting or running Puppet on infrastructure nodes can trigger an illegal reflective access operation warning

When restarting PE services or performing agent runs on infrastructure nodes, you might see this warning in the command-line output or logs: Illegal reflective access operation ... All illegal access operations will be denied in a future release

These warnings are internal to PE service components and have no impact on their functionality. You can safely disregard them.

Node groups visibility issue for non-admin users

In PE version 2021.7.3 and later, non-admin console users might encounter an error when trying to view the groups of a node. This happens if a node is part of multiple groups and the user doesn't have permission to view some of those groups. In such cases, when clicking on the node's Groups tab, users see an error message indicating they lack the required permissions.

Patching fails with excluded YUM packages

In the patching task or plan, using yum_params to pass the --exclude flag in order to exclude certain packages can result in task or plan failure if the only packages requiring updates are excluded. As a workaround, use the versionlock command (which requires installing the yum-plugin-versionlock package) to lock the packages you want to exclude at their current version. Alternatively, you can fix a package at a particular version by specifying the version with a package resource for a manifest that applies to the nodes to be patched.

Changing a file type in a control repo produces a checkout conflict error

Changing a file type in a control repository – for example, deleting a file and replacing it with a directory of the same name – generates the error JGitInternalException: Checkout conflict with files accompanied by a stack trace in the Puppet Server log. As a workaround, deploy the control repo with the original file deleted, and then deploy again with the replacement file or directory.

Code Manager and r10k do not identify the default branch for module repositories

When you use Code Manager or r10k to deploy modules from a Git source, the default branch of the source repository is always assumed to be main. If the module repository uses a default branch that is not main, an error occurs. To work around this issue, specify the default branch with the ref: key in your Puppetfile.

The toggle lockless deploys plan does not configure the replica in disaster recovery architecture

The toggle_lockless_deploys plan does not properly switch over a replica in disaster recovery to have lockless deploys because doing so requires updating Hiera data. Users who already have disaster recovery enabled and are toggling lockless deploys are recommended to update their pe.conf after running the plan.

The toggle lockless deploys plan runs some actions verbosely, and failures are expected while polling for changes

While polling for changes, do not prematurely abort the toggle_lockless_deploys plan run if you see errors on the console. Wait until the plan fully completes before assessing whether the failures were an expected part of polling for changes or not.

The toggle lockless deploys plan does not support Ubuntu 18.04

The toggle_lockless_deploys plan currently supports Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04. The plan supports Ubuntu 18.04 in the next release.