No nodes reported in Dashboard 2.0.0

[Dimitri Yioulos]

Hi, All.

Previously, I had a Puppet server running version 3.x, and Puppet Dashboard 1.2.  Worked a treat.  Now, I created a new Puppet server version 4.  I got that all working fine.  I also installed Dashboard 2.0.0.  While I can see the Dashboard, there are no nodes reported.  Has anyone else installed Puppet Dashboard 2.0.0 to work with Puppet 4 that might give me some help?

Thanks.

[Dimitri Yioulos]

A bit more information:

- I used instructions from O'Reilly Learning Puppet 4

-  I see the reports from nodes in /opt/puppetlabs/server/data/puppetserver/reports.

-  If I click on the "Nodes" tab in Dashboard, I get "Forbidden You don't have permission to access /nodes on this server."

-  I used dashboard.conf (as provided with Learning Puppet 4) for Apache.  Of course, I did some tweaking.  But, here's the part that may be the bug-a-boo:

  Listen 3000

<VirtualHost *:3000>

  ServerName   dashboard.example.com

  DocumentRoot /opt/puppet-dashboard/public/      <--- there is no nodes subdirectory here

  RailsBaseURI /

[James Pryor]

Hello Dimitri,
Hopefully someone on this list can help you with Puppet Dashboard, unfortunately I am not that person.

That said, today if I were to choose a Web UI for reporting or as ENC, I personally would not use puppet dashboard.  I would like to be proven wrong, but based on a quick search of this list's archives, it appears that many people that  have moved away from it and on to other Web UIs. Looking at it's github repo's [1] activity, it looks like there are long standing pull requests and open issues with it. In fact the book's author has two open PRs from about 18 months ago. It makes me sad, and I wish that Puppet Dashboard had a lively & responsive community of users/contributors because I was at PuppetConf 2013 and sat in on the presentation from @sodabrew where he expressed his intent to keep it going.

You might be better served by using the alternatives as explained in the book, perhaps PuppetDB together with puppetboard[2].

[1] https://github.com/sodabrew/puppet-dashboard
[2] https://github.com/voxpupuli/puppetboard

As an aside, I like many parts of the book. The author has done good job of the difficult task of distilling the vibrant puppet ecosystem and tooling into a comprehensive book. However, I find it a bit odd in that a book about learning puppet 4 that says: "PuppetDB is a full-featured product worthy of its own book. At this time, the best available documentation can be found at 'PuppetDB Overview' on the Puppet docs site." - p109; basically glosses over PuppetDB when PuppetDB brings a whole lot to the table.

Regards,

James

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Puppet Users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to puppet-users+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-users/b975e1bf-a063-4055-b021-236ed8511857%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Dimitri Yioulos]

James,

Thanks so much for the reply.

I recall when I stood up Puppet-Dashboard 1.2 with my earlier Puppet instance.  It was by no means a trivial task!  However, I succeeded, and found it a useful reporting tool.  Hence my wish to make it work with my new Puppet set-up.  Howvever, despite following the book's instructions faithfully (and they appear to be the most complete and explanatory), and hacking mightily, I'm stuck at the one-yard line, in American football parlance.  The UI presents itself, but there are no data in it.  And since, as you correctly point out, there's not much of a community around Dashboard, getting troubleshooting help is tough.  So, while your post isn't of direct help, it is appreciated.

Before I give up on it (a thought I really hate, but I have to cut my losses, at some point), let me mention that if I shut down Apache, and run Dashboard via the built-in webrick, I get the same results - a data-less UI.  It's useful, however, if only for the fact that the following is output while webrick is running (hope no one minds this long snippet):

Invalid request: Invalid HTTP format, parsing fails.

        /opt/puppet-dashboard/vendor/bundle/ruby/gems/thin-1.6.3/lib/thin/request.rb:84:in `execute'

        /opt/puppet-dashboard/vendor/bundle/ruby/gems/thin-1.6.3/lib/thin/request.rb:84:in `parse'

        /opt/puppet-dashboard/vendor/bundle/ruby/gems/thin-1.6.3/lib/thin/connection.rb:39:in `receive_data'

        /opt/puppet-dashboard/vendor/bundle/ruby/gems/eventmachine-1.0.4/lib/eventmachine.rb:187:in `run_machine'

        /opt/puppet-dashboard/vendor/bundle/ruby/gems/eventmachine-1.0.4/lib/eventmachine.rb:187:in `run'

        /opt/puppet-dashboard/vendor/bundle/ruby/gems/thin-1.6.3/lib/thin/backends/base.rb:73:in `start'

        /opt/puppet-dashboard/vendor/bundle/ruby/gems/thin-1.6.3/lib/thin/server.rb:162:in `start'

        /opt/puppet-dashboard/vendor/bundle/ruby/gems/rack-1.4.5/lib/rack/handler/thin.rb:13:in `run'

        /opt/puppet-dashboard/vendor/bundle/ruby/gems/rack-1.4.5/lib/rack/server.rb:268:in `start'

        /opt/puppet-dashboard/vendor/bundle/ruby/gems/railties-3.2.21/lib/rails/commands/server.rb:70:in `start'

        /opt/puppet-dashboard/vendor/bundle/ruby/gems/railties-3.2.21/lib/rails/commands.rb:55:in `block in <top (required)>'

        /opt/puppet-dashboard/vendor/bundle/ruby/gems/railties-3.2.21/lib/rails/commands.rb:50:in `tap'

        /opt/puppet-dashboard/vendor/bundle/ruby/gems/railties-3.2.21/lib/rails/commands.rb:50:in `<top (required)>'

        script/rails:6:in `require'

        script/rails:6:in `<main>'

Invalid HTTP format, eh?  I have no idea what that, or the succeeding Ruby errors, mean.  Perhaps someone will look at this, and shed some light?  Here's hoping.  In the meantime, I'll start looking at alternatives.

Again, thanks.

On Friday, February 10, 2017 at 3:06:23 PM UTC-5, Dimitri Yioulos wrote:

[Michael Watters]

puppet-dashboard is EOL and has not been updated in quite a while. 
You'll need to move to a modern solution such as Puppetboard which does
work with Puppet Server and Puppetdb 4.

On Friday, February 10, 2017 at 3:06:23 PM UTC-5, Dimitri Yioulos wrote:

[Dimitri Yioulos]

Thanks, Michael.  Sorry it's fallen by the wayside.  I've now installed Foreman.  While, I liked Puppet-Dashboard's output more, Foreman will do just fine.

On Friday, February 10, 2017 at 3:06:23 PM UTC-5, Dimitri Yioulos wrote:

[Rob Nelson]

There's also puppetboard. See https://github.com/voxpupuli/puppetboard and https://github.com/voxpupuli/puppet-puppetboard

Rob Nelson
rnel...@gmail.com

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Puppet Users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to puppet-users+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-users/6cc0886b-ee7c-4d0c-b6a0-62165ff7b01b%40googlegroups.com.