On 05/06/2014 04:56 PM, jcbollinger wrote:
>     Ah, so you're running the master from an unprivileged user. That
>     makes a
>     lot of sense now.
> 
> 
> 
> Maybe.  It is normal to run the /master/ as an unprivileged user.  The
> master does not store anything in its home directory in that case,
> unless its home directory is set to something like /var/lib/puppet.  Or
> am I stuck in the past?

More or less. Hence my awkward wording of "running *from* an
unprivileged user". Sure, you normally want the master to drop root
privileges after initialization, and run as the puppet user.

Since Puppet 3 it is surpassingly easy to run independent master
processes with webrick, though, by just exclaiming `puppet master` from
a terminal, which will (just as the agent) use ~/.puppet as its base of
operation/configuration. (Of course, care must be taken if the master
port is already in use, but that should be it.)

> It is /ab/normal to run the agent as an unprivileged user, because that
> prevents the agent from applying most of the kinds of system changes
> that Puppet is typically wanted for.  It is perhaps more common to run
> 'puppet apply' as a normal user, but the same limitations apply.  Under
> these circumstances, however, it is my understanding that agent or apply
> will use $HOME/.puppet.

Right.

> Again, maybe.  If the agents have in the past run successfully as root
> (as is more usual), then they will have certificates signed by the
> master and living in Puppet's normal system directory.  If one then
> tries to run the agent on one or more of those machines, however, then
> just such a problem as is reported might arise.
>
> Specifically, when running as an ordinary user, the agent cannot use the
> certificate that puppet-as-root uses, because it cannot access the
> corresponding private key.  Instead, it creates its own key pair, and
> issues a certificate request to the master based on that public key.
> The master, on the other hand, already has a signed certificate for the
> node, which it returns to the agent (this is a feature).  That
> certificate is indeed not based on the same key pair as the cert
> request, so the agent would emit exactly the message described.

Very true. Specifically, I have found during last night's debugging
session that the $ssldir contents are very prone to fall off balance if
they are ever used by an agent that has the wrong permissions.

Sadly, bottom line likely remains: If an intact copy of the certs and
keys cannot be secured, it will be necessary to certify from scratch.

Regards,
Felix

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