Custom Facts not Storing

asked 2014-04-01 03:31:10 -0600

DevoidX
3 ●1 ●2 ●3

Hi! I have about a dozen custom facts, which until relatively recently were all being stored fine in PuppetDB. I use a curl command from one of my servers to retrieve the whole facts database and produce a simple webpage detailing these over my server estate (~150 linux servers)

About a month ago I noticed that some of these were reporting some of the facts incorrectly. When I log on to these servers and check using 'facter -p' the facts are reporting correctly, yet from the remote server the facts are simply not present. One example is a very simple ... (more)

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On a node with missing facts, can you add a notify { "factname = $factname": } to its manifest to see if the master receives the fact value at all?

ffrank ( 2014-04-03 07:49:18 -0600 )edit

hi - thanks for the reply. sorry, but i'll need a bit of handholding here.. do you mean notify { "factname = $factname": } explicitly, or for my simple example, notify { "mysql_version = $mysql_version ...(more)

DevoidX ( 2014-04-03 08:26:20 -0600 )edit

Great. Thanks. mysql_version =... indicates that the master does not in fact bind a value to $mysql_version. Your custom fact is not transmitted correctly. Try enabling debug output on the agent ...(more)

ffrank ( 2014-04-03 08:29:19 -0600 )edit

if i run puppet agent -t on the affected node, i see this: Notice: mysql_version = 5.6.12 Notice: /Stage[main]/Main/Node[brpdecl01]/Notify[mysql_version = 5.6.12]/message ...(more)

DevoidX ( 2014-04-03 08:45:43 -0600 )edit

ok, this is getting weirder. starting puppet with 'puppet agent -t' causes the fact to be correctly reported to the master. starting it with our usual way (service puppet start ...(more)

DevoidX ( 2014-04-03 09:03:34 -0600 )edit

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answered 2014-04-03 10:30:14 -0600

ffrank
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Your background daemon runs in a mode that is in some way different from 'puppet agent' as launched from the command line.

Things to check

environment that is being set in the initscript (or whatever script manages the service)
the full command that is launched (as visible in ps output)

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answered 2014-04-07 07:25:46 -0600

DevoidX
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Hi - Thanks for the help with this, I have fixed the issue(s) now. It turned out there were two... 1) As you correctly pointed out, checking the environment when puppet ran as a daemon, did not include the path to the mysql install. 2) I also had 2 custom facts which referenced each other, so there was a recursion problem going on. Pre-Facter 2, there was no sign of the error (other than it not working!), post-facter 2 there was an when running 'facter -p'.