PE known issues

Installing packages with Ubuntu’s Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) leads to unexpected restarts of pe-puppetserver and pe-orchestration-services

On Ubuntu 22.04, if you use the apt or apt-get commands to install new packages, the needrestart app might trigger a restart of pe-puppetserver and pe-orchestration-services.

push @{$nrconf{blacklist_rc}}, qr(^pe-puppetserver);
push @{$nrconf{blacklist_rc}}, qr(^pe-orchestration-services);

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.

Puppet agent fails to start on FIPS-compliant RHEL 7 and 8

Sep 22 17:53:49 <hostname> puppet[8982]: Error: Could not run: SSL_CTX_new: library has no ciphers

Until the issue is fixed, you can manually start the puppet service by running systemctl start puppet on the agent node.

FIPS-enabled PE 2023.0 and later can't use the default system cert store

FIPS-compliant builds running PE 2023.0 and later 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.

Embedded Puppet (EPP) functions return incorrectly encoded strings

Starting in Puppet 8, EPP functions return binary strings instead of UTF-8 strings. If you use the epp or inline_epp function to generate parameters for exported resources, then the compiler stores the parameter values as base64 encoded strings in PuppetDB. This issue results in corrupted data that cannot be read or processed when nodes collect the exported resource from PuppetDB.

Until this issue is fixed, you can use the following custom Puppet function to convert strings to UTF-8 encoding:

Puppet::Functions.create_function(:force_utf8) do
  dispatch :on_string do
    param 'String', :val
  end

  def on_string(arg)
    arg.force_encoding(Encoding::UTF_8)
  end
end

When using the above Puppet function, wrap the output of your epp or inline_epp functions as follows:

force_utf8(epp('<module>/example.epp'))

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.

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.

Error when multiple SSH key types are specified for a single r10k host

The r10k_known_hosts parameter allows you to specify different SSH key "type" values, such as rsa, dsa, ecds, or ed25519, within an array of hashes. However specifying different key types for the same host currently causes a catalog error which prevents Code Manager and r10k from functioning.

[
  {
    "name": "host1.example.com",
    "type": "rsa",
    "key": "<HOST_PUBLIC_KEY>",
    "title": "host1.example.com_rsa"
  },
  {
    "name": "host1.example.com",
    "type": "ed25519",
    "key": "<HOST_PUBLIC_KEY>",
    "title": "host1.example.com_ed25519"
  }
]

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.