Puppet users - Aug 2010 - Frequent "Could not retrieve file metadata" errors

I get errors like this randomly on some of my puppet clients:

puppetd[7303]: (//munin/Config-file[muninnode]/File[/etc/m
unin/munin-node.conf]) Failed to retrieve current state of resource:
Could not
retrieve file metadata for puppet://puppet.hq.eso.org/modules/munin/munin-node.c
onf:  at /etc/puppet/manifests/site.pp:41

The relevant definition from /etc/puppet/manifests/site.pp is:
# Generic config file
define config-file ($fullpath, $source, $mode = ''644'') {
        file { $fullpath:
        source => "puppet://puppet.hq.eso.org/modules/${source}",
        backup => mainbackup,
        mode => $mode,
        ensure => file,
        group => root,
        owner => root
        }
}


Any ideas why these messages are popping up randomly (about 1 or 2
times a day, usually on a different host)?

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Hi,

On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 6:39 PM, Tim <tkedwards@fastmail.com.au>
wrote:
> puppetd[7303]: (//munin/Config-file[muninnode]/File[/etc/m
> unin/munin-node.conf]) Failed to retrieve current state of resource:
Are you using the built-in webrick server that comes with Puppet or
have you switched to either Mongrel or Passenger? If you''re using the
built-in server, you may be hitting the single threaded nature of that
server, i.e. it can only respond to one request at a time. So, if more
than one puppet client connects at the same time, you''ll see some of
them throw this (and other similar) errors as their requests time out.

If you have a low number of clients (<100), you should be able to get
away with using the --splay command-line parameter (or splay=true in
puppet.conf) to spread the load out on the client side. If you have
more clients, you should look at switching to Mongrel or Passenger
instead.

Hope that helps,
Avi

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On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 4:39 AM, Tim <tkedwards@fastmail.com.au> wrote:
> The relevant definition from /etc/puppet/manifests/site.pp is:
> # Generic config file
> define config-file ($fullpath, $source, $mode = ''644'') {
>        file { $fullpath:
>        source =>
"puppet://puppet.hq.eso.org/modules/${source}",
>        backup => mainbackup,
>        mode => $mode,
>        ensure => file,
>        group => root,
>        owner => root
>        }
> }
>
>
> Any ideas why these messages are popping up randomly (about 1 or 2
> times a day, usually on a different host)?

Is it possible that your fileserver repository is being updated/written to
when this happens?

-- 
Benjamin C. Kite, System Administrator, Greenpeace USA
☎ (202) 319-2489 - ⬡ (202) 538-2845

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I was getting errors like this before I switched from webrick to nginx/
mongrel.

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The files are not being updated/written at the time, some of these
errors occur at 2am when no one''s about. So I''ll assume
it''s because
we''re using the default webrick. We currently have only a couple of
dozen clients but that will expand to over 200 in future so I''ll look
at switching to mongrel or passenger.

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On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 1:39 AM, Tim <tkedwards@fastmail.com.au>
wrote:
> I get errors like this randomly on some of my puppet clients:
>
> puppetd[7303]: (//munin/Config-file[muninnode]/File[/etc/m
> unin/munin-node.conf]) Failed to retrieve current state of resource:
> Could not
> retrieve file metadata for
puppet://puppet.hq.eso.org/modules/munin/munin-node.c
> onf:  at /etc/puppet/manifests/site.pp:41
>
> The relevant definition from /etc/puppet/manifests/site.pp is:
> # Generic config file
> define config-file ($fullpath, $source, $mode = ''644'') {
>        file { $fullpath:
>        source =>
"puppet://puppet.hq.eso.org/modules/${source}",
>        backup => mainbackup,
>        mode => $mode,
>        ensure => file,
>        group => root,
>        owner => root
>        }
> }
>
>
> Any ideas why these messages are popping up randomly (about 1 or 2
> times a day, usually on a different host)?
Are you using an external node classifier? Environments?
>
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> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
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>
>


-- 
nigel

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I followed the instructions here:
http://projects.puppetlabs.com/projects/puppet/wiki/Puppet_Scalability
I''ll see how it goes over the next few days

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