I picked up a copy of Learning Puppet 4 shortly after publication and went through some of the examples and exercises. Pretty straightforward, although there were a few glitches in the examples, as is typical with any fast-moving technology. The book’s errata addressed all of these, as far as I recall.
So now it’s about two years later, and I wanted to revisit the learning environment. Of course there have been updates to just about everything, so my first task was updating VirtualBox, Vagrant, Xcode (I’m on a Mac), the learning repository, and the vagrant plugin. After going through all that, I tried to start up the first client VM:
$ vagrant up client
Bringing machine 'client' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
(lots of output omitted)
==> client: Checking for guest additions in VM...
==> client: Setting hostname...
==> client: Configuring and enabling network interfaces...
client: SSH address: 127.0.0.1:2222
client: SSH username: vagrant
client: SSH auth method: private key
==> client: Rsyncing folder: /path/to/learning-puppet4/ => /vagrant
There was an error when attempting to rsync a synced folder.
Please inspect the error message below for more info.
Host path: /path/to/learning-puppet4/
Guest path: /vagrant
Command: "rsync" "--verbose" "--archive" "--delete" "-z" "--copy-links" "--no-owner" "--no-group" "--rsync-path" "sudo rsync" "-e" "ssh -p 2222 -o LogLevel=FATAL -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPath=/var/folders/6s/_lvgcgf10395112fqhvwlr1hv5_gdx/T/ssh.804 -o ControlPersist=10m -o IdentitiesOnly=yes -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -i '/path/to/learning-puppet4/.vagrant/machines/client/virtualbox/private_key'" "--exclude" ".vagrant/" "/path/to/learning-puppet4/" "vagrant@127.0.0.1:/vagrant"
Error: channel 0: open failed: connect failed: Connection refused
stdio forwarding failed
ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes received so far) [sender]
rsync error: unexplained error (code 255) at /BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/rsync/rsync-47/rsync/io.c(453) [sender=2.6.9]
Just before I ran vagrant up, I had been re-reading the book’s section on the vbguest plugin, and I got fixated on this:
In particular, this plugin helps avoid problems that happen when a new kernel is installed, such as the /vagrant shared mount not being available.
So I thought vbguest might be the cause of my problem. (Hint: it wasn’t!) I spent an inordinate amount of time deleting and re-installing everything, multiple times. When I finally hit upon the obvious idea of copy/pasting that very long rsync command into a terminal window, I quickly zeroed in on the underlying issue: my ~/.ssh/config file’s default settings will only work with the servers I manage for my employer. (Settings which I implemented after I had originally set up my ‘Learning Puppet 4’ environment.) I’m not going to go over the details, but as soon as I suspected that this might be the problem, it was pretty easy to verify:
$ mv -i ~/.ssh/config{,.save} # Move config file out of the way
$ vagrant destroy client
client: Are you sure you want to destroy the 'client' VM? [y/N] y
==> client: Forcing shutdown of VM...
Connection to 127.0.0.1 closed by remote host.
==> client: Destroying VM and associated drives...
$ vagrant up client
Bringing machine 'client' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
(lots of output omitted)
==> client: Rsyncing folder: /path/to/learning-puppet4/ => /vagrant
==> client: Running provisioner: shell...
client: Running: inline script
At least I didn’t get an error on rsync this time! Now to test logging in:
$ vagrant ssh client
You should start by enabling the Puppet Labs Puppet Collection 1 release repo
sudo yum install http://yum.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs-release-pc1-el-7.noarch.rpm
Then install Puppet Agent and its companion packages
sudo yum install -y puppet-agent
[vagrant@client ~]$
Success!
I’ve restored my original ssh config file, with a new Host section for the learning environment’s virtual machine. I may need to add more Hosts for the other VM’s, but hopefully I’ll remember to check here for hints if I run into this issue again.
The ssh options that I find most useful for diagnosing problems are -v (or -vv or -vvv) for verbose protocol status while initiating and breaking a connection, and -G which causes ssh to print its configuration after evaluating Host and Match blocks. To enter these options as part of a vagrant ssh connection, specify them after the target like so:
$ vagrant ssh client -- -G
