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David Gardner
Asked: 2009-07-17 05:15:03 +0800 CST

How to fix Puppet fully-qualified parameter path error?

  • 772

I regularly but randomly get the following error message when I run the puppet client on machines (non-daemonized):

err: Could not create : Parameter path failed: File paths must be fully qualified
warning: Not using cache on failed catalog
warning: Configuration could not be instantiated: Parameter path failed: File paths must be fully qualified

It seems moderately clear what it means -- that I don't have a fully-qualified path in a parameter. However, it doesn't tell me where I can find this to fix it, or even which parameter is wrong :(

(If I use the debug option it consistently works, so it seems like a problem with the caching of the manifests... It would be nice to get rid of this for production use, still)

Note : I cannot make this happen consistently :/

puppet path configuration-management syntax

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    [Answering own question after getting around to prodding at the config for a while]

    I've managed to track this down to one of the modules which I have written (of course), but it was due to a use of a variable which didn't work out how I expected.

    What happened was:

    $variable_dir = "/etc/puppet/bar"

class foo {
  file { $variable_dir:
    ensure => directory
  }
}

define some-define() {
   # Trimmed for brevity
   exec { "some-$name":
     # command, creates, timeout etc here
     require => File[$variable_dir],
   }
}

    ..which basically caused some confusion with the File[] using a variable. I've replaced these with the explicit value of the variable for now and it all works fine, but it was something of a surprise! I'm assuming that my understanding of scope and when variables can be defined/used is somewhat out of whack with Puppet, so I'm going to learn that a lot better...

    It seems to have caused the same behaviour as using non-fully-qualified paths on file strings, by failing to find the variable or not obtaining the value? Quite odd, anyway.

    Edit : It's quite possible that the variable wasn't found in scope, and so was empty and definitely not a fully-qualified path. Doesn't explain why this was not consistent, however...

    • 2

  2. When you test your puppet configuration, you can do it by running

    puppetd --test

    which will give you much more verbose output, and it should show you where it fails. If you are really desperate, you can tack on --debug to get even more output.

    If you want to go looking in your .pp files you should search for a

    file { "path/to/file":
    ...
}

    which has a missing / (i.e. it should read /path/to/file instead)

    • 1

  3. You can put the actual path to path property, then it works. This works for me:

    $variable_dir = "/etc/puppet/bar"

class foo {
  file { 'variable_dir':
    path => ${variable_dir},
    ensure => directory
  }
}

define some-define() {
   # Trimmed for brevity
   exec { "some-$name":
     # command, creates, timeout etc here
     require => File['variable_dir'],
   }
}
    • 0

  4. Full path should be placed in the key name, unless you're using path parameter.

    For example:

    file { '/full/path':
  ensure => directory,
  recurse => true,
}

    or:

    file { 'my name':
  path => "/full/path",
  ensure => directory,
  recurse => true,
}

    If you're using variable, make sure it's defined. If it's in different class, use standard $class::variable syntax. For any further information, run puppet with -vd (verbose+debug) parameter.

    • 0