GNet Solutions » GNU/Linux Administration

Prepare the new Puppet Master server¶

I decided to separate the administrative server to a virtual node. To do this I created a new LXC node and installed puppetmaster and puppetmaster-passenger:

apt-get install puppetmaster puppetmaster-passenger

Migrate the old server data¶

I then used rsync to synchronize the configuration files and cache from the old server to the new server:

rsync -avh -e ssh root@puppetmaster.orig.net:/etc/puppet /etc/
rsync -avh -e ssh root@puppetmaster.new.net:/var/lib/puppet /var/lib/

This includes CA and SSL certificates, and configuration reports. This should allow a transparent migration to the new puppet master server by preserving the contents of the old puppet master server.

Dump the puppet SQL database:

mysqldump -u root -p puppet > /path/to/backup/puppet.sql

Then restor it into the new server:

mysql -u root -p

CREATE DATABASE puppet;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES TO 'puppetuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'SuperSecretPassword';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT

mysql -u root -p puppet < /path/to/restore/puppet

Set the puppet clients to use the new puppet master¶

This is as simple as changing the puppet.conf on the clients and pointing them to the new server:

#server=old.puppet.server.com
server=new.puppet.server.com

Troubleshooting¶

I got a few errors after setting the clients to the new puppet master server.

• After testing the puppet connection on the clients, the first error I recieved:

err: Could not retrieve catalog from remote server: Error 400 on SERVER: Could not autoload active_record: uninitialized constant ActiveRecord

and

err: Could not retrieve catalog from remote server: Error 400 on SERVER: cannot load such file -- mysql

To solve this I had to install a few ruby gems:

gem install metaclass mocha passenger railties rspec rspec-core rspec-expectations rspec-mocks ruby-mysql sprockets sprockets-rails stomp systemu test-unit thor tilt will_paginate actionmailer activerecord mysql daemon_controller ftools hiera hiera-puppet hike hoe httpclient

• I started getting another error on the puppet clients after install the gems:

err: Could not retrieve catalog from remote server: Error 400 on SERVER: Puppet::Parser::Compiler failed with error ArgumentError: wrong number of arguments (1 for 0) on node client1.puppet.server.com

This one took me a little while to solve, apparrently the problem was that ruby1.9 had been installed when I had installed the vim-nox package. This caused the Apache Passenger module to compile Puppet Master under ruby1.9, a bug exists in puppet 2.7.6 that causes an error exactly the same as the one above. I removed ruby1.9 and vim-nox, and found that to solve the problem after restarting apache2:

apt-get remove --purge ruby1.9
apt-get autoremove
apt-get clean
service apache2 restart

Resources¶

• http://projects.puppetlabs.com/issues/10963
• http://devblog.songkick.com/2013/04/02/migrating-to-a-new-puppet-certification-authority/