bizarro error when starting a puppet agent

Peter Berghold

unread,

Feb 5, 2016, 11:19:23 AM2/5/16

to puppet-users

First a disclaimer: I am trying to provide support for our production team setting up a system as a Puppet agent node and most of the work I'm doing is being handled with the operations team acting as my voice operated keyboards.

I handed my operations team instructions on how to install a Puppet client on some of our production boxes. One such box when running the agent for the first time issues the following error and the run fails:

"Error: Could not run command from postrun_command: Execution of '/etc/puppet/etckeeper-commit-post' retur ned 1: Error: Could not execute posix command: No such file or directory - /etc/puppet/etckeeper-commit-post"

Never saw this error before and I'm quite baffled by it. Where is this coming from and what is Puppet trying to tell me?

Thanks in advance.

Matthaus Owens

unread,

Feb 5, 2016, 2:10:51 PM2/5/16

to Puppet Users

Peter,

To allow us to be more helpful, it would be great if you could include which version of puppet you are installing and from where. From the problem you describe, I imagine you are installing from debian or ubuntu.

They include 2 files in their package /etc/puppet/etckeeper-commit-pre and /etc/puppet/etckeeper-commit-post that are referenced in the puppet.conf that ships with the package. It looks like etckeeper is designed to allow someone to version control the etc directory (https://joeyh.name/code/etckeeper/). The error you're seeing indicates that the file doesn't exist, so there are 2 options to resolve it.

1. Edit /etc/puppet/puppet.conf to remove or disable the prerun_command and postrun_command settings.

2. Reinstall the package to try to get the etckeeper-commit-post file back (this assumes you are using the debian/ubuntu puppet packages)

Another option would be to use the Puppet Labs' apt repositories instead of debian/ubuntu. We don't ship with those settings on by default in our packages.

HTH

--
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...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-users/CAArvnv2zJrNqO_W3wgeAjWiFmJ%3D%2BJzyohg_is4SQ1_SU153%2BoA%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Matthaus Owens
Puppet Labs

Peter Berghold

unread,

Feb 5, 2016, 3:54:39 PM2/5/16

to Puppet Users

Puppet version: 3.7.2

OS Family: RHEL

lsbdistdescription => Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.5 (Santiago)

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-users/CACD%3DwAekA%2BxkVk-doG3LAsaR%3D1moR2VMd-vk2oLYvU0kEtcJLg%40mail.gmail.com.

Peter Berghold

unread,

Feb 5, 2016, 5:00:33 PM2/5/16

to Puppet Users

Just the questions you asked prompted me to ask my operators more questions. Seems instructions were not followed when they configured Puppet so a quick correction solved the problem. Thanks.

Christopher Wood

unread,

Feb 5, 2016, 5:13:52 PM2/5/16

to puppet...@googlegroups.com

It may be useful to provide them with a puppet manifest which configures most of the puppet agent. If all they need to do is "yum install puppet; puppet apply file.pp" that might simplify things from both ends.

On Fri, Feb 05, 2016 at 10:00:14PM +0000, Peter Berghold wrote:
> Just the questions you asked prompted me to ask my operators more
> questions. Seems instructions were not followed when they configured
> Puppet so a quick correction solved the problem. Thanks.

> On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 3:54 PM Peter Berghold <[1]salty....@gmail.com>

> wrote:
>
> Puppet version: 3.7.2
> OS Family: RHEL
> lsbdistdescription => Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.5
> (Santiago)
> On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 2:10 PM Matthaus Owens
> <[2]matt...@puppetlabs.com> wrote:
>
> Peter,
> To allow us to be more helpful, it would be great if you could include
> which version of puppet you are installing and from where. From the
> problem you describe, I imagine you are installing from debian or
> ubuntu.
> They include 2 files in their package /etc/puppet/etckeeper-commit-pre
> and /etc/puppet/etckeeper-commit-post that are referenced in the
> puppet.conf that ships with the package. It looks like etckeeper is
> designed to allow someone to version control the etc directory

> ([3]https://joeyh.name/code/etckeeper/). The error you're seeing

> send an email to [5]puppet-users...@googlegroups.com.

> To view this discussion on the web visit

> [6]https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-users/CAArvnv2zJrNqO_W3wgeAjWiFmJ%3D%2BJzyohg_is4SQ1_SU153%2BoA%40mail.gmail.com.
> For more options, visit [7]https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

>
> --
> Matthaus Owens
> Puppet Labs
>
> --
> 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 [8]puppet-users...@googlegroups.com.

> To view this discussion on the web visit

> [9]https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-users/CACD%3DwAekA%2BxkVk-doG3LAsaR%3D1moR2VMd-vk2oLYvU0kEtcJLg%40mail.gmail.com.
> For more options, visit [10]https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

>
> --
> 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 [11]puppet-users...@googlegroups.com.

> To view this discussion on the web visit

Lowe Schmidt

unread,

Feb 9, 2016, 8:39:01 AM2/9/16

to puppet...@googlegroups.com

etckeeper is a tool for managing /etc with a RCS and is not part of the Puppet distribution itself.

It tries to do a commit every time something changed on the filesystem and it is failing to do that, I suggest talking to the team that set up the machines about how they use etckeeper first

Regards,

--

Lowe Schmidt | +46 723 867 157

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to puppet-users...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-users/20160205221340.GA25248%40iniquitous.heresiarch.ca.

Peter Berghold

unread,

Feb 9, 2016, 1:23:11 PM2/9/16

to puppet...@googlegroups.com

Thanks for that but it turns out that the team that did the setups didn't follow the standard operating procedure that I gave them. Somebody tried to read into what I wrote left a pair of lines in the configuration file that should have been there.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-users/CAC-wWcQeMjQovbxyxCj_QN4BTU0mpdxWuh_jdBGorZxUrMJ0ww%40mail.gmail.com.

Reply all

Reply to author

Forward