"no implicit conversion from nil to integer" error in Puppet Enterprise 2018.1

When you run Puppet, you get a "no implicit conversion from nil to integer" error.

Error messages and logs

Could not retrieve catalog from remote server: Error 500 on SERVER: Server Error: Evaluation Error: Error while evaluating a Resource Statement, Evaluation Error: Error while evaluating a Function Call, no implicit conversion from nil to integer (file: /opt/puppetlabs/puppet/modules/puppet_enterprise/manifests/params.pp, line: 141, column: 40) on node example.com

or:

Error: Could not retrieve catalog from remote server: Error 500 on SERVER: Server Error: Puppet::Parser::Compiler failed with error TypeError: no implicit conversion from nil to integer on node example.com

You get this error when there's a syntax issue in /etc/puppetlabs/puppet/hiera.yaml.

Version and installation information

PE version: 2018.1

Installation type: Any

Solution

To prevent the error, fix formatting and syntax errors in your hiera.yaml file.

Common errors include:

• Using tabs to indent instead of spaces
• Using curly quotes (”) instead of straight quotes (")
• Not closing quotes
• Other typos