Configuration error on 0.25.5 (default provider)

[Josh]

I inherited a puppet install from a former sys admin at my
organization and this is my first time working with it. I'm on 0.25.5
and would like to upgrade eventually but I'm afraid to do that at the
moment so I'm looking for suggestions other than "Upgrade".

I need to add a new server to the configuration. This is on RHEL 5 and
I installed through yum. I copied $vardir from another server in the
fleet and wiped out the machine-specific ssl certs. From the look of
things, I was able to successfully generate and sign a new ssl cert
for the machine. When I start the service, though, I get the error:

"Could not create resources for managing Puppet's files and
directories in sections [:main, :puppetd, :ssl]: Could not find a
default provider for file".

I've googled for this error for days and haven't found anything
useful. There are a few bug reports but most of them are for other OSs
or aren't applicable. I'm not sure what this error is referring to at
all. Some people suggest that it has something to do with the ruby
configuration but I don't know much about ruby either. If someone
could help with this, I would greatly appreciate it. I need to get
this server up and running soon. Let me know if I haven't provided
enough info.

Thanks,

Josh

[Nicolai]

There is no need to copy _anything_ from /var/lib/puppet from another machine, actually i think it breaks stuff.

As youre running 0.25.5 you need to run puppetd once so that it can create its private key and cert, sign the cert on the master with puppetca --sign machine-name.

Then puppet should run and apply the manifests you have for the node.

Regards

Nicolai

[Josh]

Nicolai,

Thanks for the reply. I think I copied the /var/lib/puppet directory
from another server as a last resort after trying a bunch of other
things first. For the sake of argument, though, I've deleted my entire
puppet installation and begun from scratch. I did a yum install of
puppet and then did the following:

[root@server ~]# puppetd --server puppetmaster.domain.com --
waitforcert 30 --test
err: Could not create resources for managing Puppet's files and

directories in sections [:main, :puppetd, :ssl]: Could not find a
default provider for file

err: Could not create resources for managing Puppet's files and
directories in sections [:main, :ssl]: Could not find a default
provider for file
info: Creating a new SSL key for server.domain.com
err: Could not request certificate: Cannot save server.domain.com;
parent directory /var/lib/puppet/ssl/private_keys does not exist
info: Creating a new SSL key for server.domain.com
err: Could not request certificate: Cannot save server.domain.com;
parent directory /var/lib/puppet/ssl/private_keys does not exist
info: Creating a new SSL key for server.domain.com
err: Could not request certificate: Cannot save server.domain.com;
parent directory /var/lib/puppet/ssl/private_keys does not exist
info: Creating a new SSL key for server.domain.com
err: Could not request certificate: Cannot save server.domain.com;
parent directory /var/lib/puppet/ssl/private_keys does not exist
info: Creating a new SSL key for server.domain.com
err: Could not request certificate: Cannot save server.domain.com;
parent directory /var/lib/puppet/ssl/private_keys does not exist
Cancelling startup

This error keeps scrolling up the screen until I ctrl-C out of it like
I did above. While this is going on, I run `puppetca --sign
server.domain.com` on the puppetmaster but it fails and says there is
no request from the server. At this point, I create the ssl/
private_keys directory manually. I go through the above steps a few
more times and it complains about the ssl/public_keys, ssl/certs and
ssl/certificate_requests directories not existing so I create them as
well. After all of that, I can finally get a signed ssl cert. Then I
try to start the puppet service and get the following errors in
syslog:

Starting Puppet client version 0.25.5

Could not create resources for managing Puppet's files and directories

in sections [:main, :ssl, :puppetd]: Could not find a default provider
for file

Could not create resources for managing Puppet's files and directories

in sections [:main, :ssl]: Could not find a default provider for file
Could not retrieve catalog from remote server: No such file or
directory - /var/lib/puppet/client_yaml/catalog
Using cached catalog
Could not retrieve catalog; skipping run

At this point, I stop puppet and create the client_yaml/catalog
directories. I restart puppet and then get the following errors in
syslog which is what my original question was about:

Starting Puppet client version 0.25.5

Could not create resources for managing Puppet's files and directories

in sections [:main, :ssl, :puppetd]: Could not find a default provider
for file

Could not create resources for managing Puppet's files and directories

in sections [:main, :ssl]: Could not find a default provider for file
Could not run Puppet configuration client: Could not find a default
provider for file

Then puppet does nothing. If you know how to fix this error or you can
point out anything in my installation that's wrong, I'd greatly
appreciate it. I'm more than happy to read docs, too, if you can point
me to good online documentation but I've searched all over the puppet
labs site and can't find anything useful. Their docs for installing
and configuring a new server are terrible, especially when it comes to
adding a new client. Thanks very much for your help.

Josh

[Josh]

Again, the error I'm seeing is:

"Could not create resources for managing Puppet's files and
directories in sections [:main, :puppetd, :ssl]: Could not find a
default provider for file"

Has anyone here ever seen this error or know how to fix it? This is
not a clearly worded error so I have no idea where to begin
troubleshooting it.

Thanks,

Josh