Could not retrieve catalog from remote server: end of file reached

[Bret Wortman]

This is happening on some of my clients. It'll happen about 1 out of 20 runs, but it's really getting to be a problem. There's nothing indicative in /var/log/messages or any other server-side log that I can find, and this is all the output I'm seeing on the client:

# puppet agent - t

Info: Retrieving pluginfacts

Info: Retrieving plugin

Info: Loading facts

Error: Could not retrieve catalog from remote server: end of file reached

Warning: Not using cache on failed catalog

Error: Could not retrieve catalog; skipping run

#

Any guidance on how to get more details out of Puppet about what's going wrong here? It's persistent, but again, doesn't happen 100% of the time. And it's only happening on certain agents, so I'm pretty sure it's related to a module somewhere that's doing something wrong, but for the life of me, I can't suss out which module is causing the problem.

Bret Wortman

[Henrik Lindberg]

Are you using Webrick ? If so, there are versions of Puppet 3x that have
issues with concurrent operation (more than one agent at the same time)
that can cause all kinds of weird behavior - typically resulting in
truncated streams.

Try latest 3.6, or 3.7. The best fix is to stop using Webrick in favor
of Passenger. Webrick is really not for production use.

- henrik

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Visit my Blog "Puppet on the Edge"
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[Bret Wortman]

We're running through Passenger and Apache. Puppetdb back-end. Puppet 3.6.2-1 on F20 on the server, Puppet 3.7.1-1 C6.5 on the client. Hmmmm. Could the newer client be the problem?

[Bret Wortman]

I guess not. I upgraded the server to match but the problem persists.

[Josh Cooper]

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You may be running into https://tickets.puppetlabs.com/browse/PUP-3238. Is the passenger KeepAliveTimeout shorter than the the puppet agent's timeout? If so, the server may close an idle connection, e.g. while the agent is running facter.

See also https://docs.puppetlabs.com/puppet/3.7/reference/release_notes.html#performance-improvements

Josh

--

Josh Cooper

Developer, Puppet Labs

[Bret Wortman]

Bingo! I set the timeout to 15s on server and agent both (some of our network links are pretty crappy) and now everyone's connecting as before. Thanks for the tip!