Fix a “Does the directory exist?” error in Puppet Enterprise after adding an agent node

After adding an agent node to the development environment, you try to stop Puppet service on it, and get a Does the directory exist? error. Puppet agent commands succeed on the node, but all other Puppet commands fail.

Error messages and logs

When running puppet resource service puppet ensure=stopped on the agent, you get the following error:

/opt/puppetlabs/puppet/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/puppet/environments.rb:38:in `get!': Could not find a directory environment named 'development' anywhere in the path: /etc/puppetlabs/code/environments. Does the directory exist? (Puppet::Environments::EnvironmentNotFound)

On the primary server, in the puppetserver log at /var/log/puppetlabs/puppetserver/puppetserver.log:

2021-03-10T00:43:19.824Z INFO [qtp1034541873-242] [puppetserver] Puppet Not Found: Could not find environment 'development'

This error occurs when the agent’s environment is set in the [main] section of /etc/puppetlabs/puppet/puppet.conf instead of in the [agent] section. The development environment does not exist on the agent, causing errors. For example:

\[main\]
server = puppet.example.lab

certname = agent.example.lab
environment = development

\[agent\]
graph = true

Version and installation information

PE version: 2017.3.10 and later
OS: Any
Installation type: Any

Solution

To fix the issue, on the affected agent, edit /etc/puppetlabs/puppet/puppet.conf so that the environment is set in [agent].

For example:

\[main\]
server = puppet.example.lab

certname = agent.example.lab

\[agent\]

graph = true
environment = development

Learn more about puppet.conf.