4.10.4. Puppet Certificate Issues

4.10.4.1. Puppet Client Certificate Issues

Warning

NEVER RUN ``puppet cert clean –all``

Most of the time, clients will have certificate issues due to the system clock not being properly set. Before taking any other measures, make sure that your system clock is correct on both the master and the clients!

If you need to fix client certificate issues outside of time, first make sure that you do not have a certificate already in place on your Puppet Server.

# puppet cert list --all

If you do have a certificate in place, and need to register a client with the same name, remove that client’s certificate from the system.

# puppet cert clean <fqdn.of.the.client>

Warning

If you delete the Puppet master’s certificate, you will need to re-deploy Puppet certificates to all of your nodes!

Warning

NEVER RUN ``puppet cert clean –all``

4.10.4.1.1. Puppet Client Re-Registration

If, for some reason, you need to re-register your client with a new server, simply run the following on your client once the server is ready.

# rm -rf `puppet config print ssldir`
# puppet agent -t

After running the puppet agent, sign off the new certificate request on the Puppet master.

# puppet cert list
# puppet cert sign <cert req name>

4.10.4.2. Puppet Master Certificate Issues

To fix the issue where the Puppet Server certificate was removed using puppet cert clean, run puppet cert generate <your puppetservers cert name> and restart the puppetserver service.

If the /etc/puppetlabs/puppet/ssl directory was removed on the Puppet master (and you do not have a backup of it) or for some other reason you need to regenerate all the Puppet certificates and the Puppet CA do the following:

Warning

This is destructive to your Puppet communications. This should only be used if you have no other options.

  1. Stop the puppetserver and puppetdb services.

  2. Remove the certificates and the CA on the Puppet master and generate the new Puppet master and CA certificates.

    # rm -rf /etc/puppetlabs/puppet/ssl
# puppet cert generate <your puppetserver cert name>

  3. Clean the old certificates out from the puppetdb directory and copy the new ones from the puppetserver using puppetdb’s ssl setup script.

    # rm -rf /etc/puppetlabs/puppetdb/ssl/*
# puppetdb ssl-setup

  4. Restart the puppetserver and puppetdb services

  5. Remove the old certificates from each of the Puppet clients and re-register the client using the Puppet Client Re-Registration instructions.

4.10.4.2.1. Puppetserver and PuppetDB certificate mismatch

If the puppetserver CA has been updated and the puppetdb certificates are not cleaned a puppet agent run produces an error similar to this:

Error: Could not retrieve catalog from remote server: Error 500 on SERVER: Server Error:
Failed to execute '/pdb/cmd/v1?checksum=5584595ca917e6b8d5767f7ff0fd71863fdfc486&version=5
&certname=puppet.your.domain&command=replace_facts&producer-timestamp=1521137360'
on at least 1 of the following 'server_urls': https://puppet.your.domain:8139

You will probably need to disconnect the PuppetDB process from the Puppet Server. Follow the How to Disconnect PuppetDB from the Puppet Server Guide to remediate this issue.