Run the bolt task show
command or Get-BoltTask
PowerShell cmdlet and look
for any warnings related to your task metadata.
Make sure your task name is valid: Task names must
- Be lowercase
- Start with a letter
- Can only contain letters, numbers and underscores
Make sure your task executable is named the same as your task metadata. For
example, if your task is named mytask.rb
, you must name your metadata file
mytask.json
.
If you receive the following error:
Unable to use command 'bolt module add'. To use this command, update your project configuration to manage module dependencies.
You need to upgrade your project so Bolt can manage your modules and dependencies. For more information, see migrate a Bolt project.
If your task fails with the following error, the issue might be that your temporary directory (tmpdir) is mounted with noexec.
The task failed with exit code 126 and no stdout but stderr contained:
.... <temp path to task>>.rb: Permission denied
You can resolve this by configuring an alternate tmpdir for the transport you're using, or by talking to your administrator about updating permissions for the directory.
Bolt caches task and plan metadata when listing plans and tasks, and only
updates the cache when modules in the <PROJECT DIRECTORY>/modules/
directory
are modified. Try rerunning the command with --clear-cache
to refresh the
cache and update task and plan metadata.
The task or plan may also be present at a higher precedence on the modulepath.
To verify that the specific task or plan is being loaded from the place you
expect, run bolt task show [task name]
, bolt plan show [plan name]
,
Get-BoltTask -Name <TASK NAME>
, or Get-BoltPlan -Name <PLAN NAME>
to see
the path the task or plan is loaded from.
Try running Bolt with --log-level debug
to see the exact output from your task.
Make sure your task executable starts with a shebang (#!
) line indicating the
interpreter to use and verify that the executable is present on the target
system. For example, if you write a Python task and include the line:
#!/usr/bin/env python
, Bolt attempts to execute the script using the default
python
executable on the target system.
Bolt does not support PowerShell 2.0. If your task targets a Windows OS that has only PowerShell 2.0 installed, the task will fail.
In 2017, Microsoft deprecated PowerShell 2.0. For a more detailed explanation, see Micosoft's blog post on the subject.
Both Microsoft and Puppet recommend updating the target with Windows PowerShell 5.1, but versions 3.0 and 4.0 are also supported.
This will show up as an error similar to the following:
fingerprint SHA256:6+fv7inQSgU2DuYF5NolTlGF6xM8RBRTw1W6B9rbHkc is unknown for "hostname.example.com,10.16.112.82"
When connecting over SSH, Bolt checks the host key against the fingerprint in
~/.ssh/known_hosts
to verify the host is the one it's expecting to connect to.
This error means that there is no key for the host in ~/.ssh/known_hosts
, so
Bolt doesn't know how to tell if it's the right host.
If you can connect to the host over SSH outside Bolt, you can store the SSH host
key fingerprint with ssh-keyscan hostname.example.com >> ~/.ssh/known_hosts
.
You can disable this check entirely with --no-host-key-check
on the CLI or the
host-key-check: false
option under the config: ssh
section of inventory.yaml.
Note that doing so will reduce the security of your SSH connection.
config:
ssh:
host-key-check: false
By default, Bolt tries to connect over the standard SSH port 22. If you need to
connect over a different port, either include the port in the name of the target
(hostname.example.com:2345
) or set it in your Bolt config or inventory.
By default, the native-ssh
transport enables BatchMode
when establishing
connections to targets. When BatchMode
is enabled, SSH does not fall back to
querying for a password, which might make it impossible to connect to a target
if you are unable to authenticate using keys.
You can disable BatchMode
in your transport configuration using the
batch-mode
setting, which allows SSH to fall back to querying for a password
when key authentication fails. However, native-ssh
uses the ssh
client by
default, which prompts for passwords interactively and causes Bolt to hang.
To avoid hanging when BatchMode
is disabled, you must configure ssh-command
to use an SSH utility like sshpass
to provide a password to the SSH client
non-interactively. Additionally, ensure the user
is configured and
host-key-check
is disabled.
The following configuration shows how to disable BatchMode
and provide a
password to the SSH client using sshpass and the prompt
plugin.
# inventory.yaml
config:
ssh:
native-ssh: true
host-key-check: false
batch-mode: false
user: root
ssh-command:
- sshpass
- -p
- _plugin: prompt
message: Enter your SSH password
- ssh
By default, Bolt tries to connect over SSH. Make sure you've specified the
winrm
protocol for the target. There are three ways to specify winrm
:
- Include the
winrm
in the name of the target. For example:winrm://hostname.example.com
- Pass
--transport winrm
on the CLI - Set the
winrm
transport in your config or inventory file:# inventory.yaml ... config: transport: winrm
If you're still getting "connection refused" messages, try disabling SSL. By default, Bolt connects to targets over WinRM using the HTTPS port 5986. Your target might not be set up to connect over HTTPS. If you disable SSL, Bolt connects to the target using the HTTP port 5985. You can disable SSL in one of the following ways:
-
Pass
--no-ssl
on the CLI -
Set the
ssl
key tofalse
in your config or inventory file:# inventory.yaml ... config: transport: winrm winrm: ssl: false
Puppet logs might not be printing to the console because they are logged at a
lower level than Bolt is configured to print at. By default, Bolt prints all
logs at the warn
level or higher to the console.
Additionally, Puppet logs are printed at a different level in Bolt than they
would be in Puppet. For example, Puppet notice
level logs are equivalent to
the info
level in Bolt. As a result, if you use the notice()
Puppet log
function, Bolt does not print the contents of notice
to the console by
default. You can see which Bolt log level each Puppet log level maps to in
Puppet log functions in Bolt.
To print logs and messages in Bolt to the console you can do one or more of the following:
-
When you want to view all logs at a specific level on the console, set the log level from the command line or in your configuration file.
-
When you have messages you want to log directly from Bolt, use Bolt's log plan functions.
-
When you have messages you want printed to the console regardless of log level, you should use the
out::message
plan function.
If you see a gem
related error similar to the following:
Ignoring nokogiri-1.10.2 because its extensions are not built. Try: gem pristine nokogiri --version 1.10.2
Ignoring unf_ext-0.0.7.5 because its extensions are not built. Try: gem pristine unf_ext --version 0.0.7.5
Use the Bolt-provided gem command to reinstall/install these gems. For example:
sudo /opt/puppetlabs/bolt/bin/gem pristine nokogiri --version 1.10.2
sudo /opt/puppetlabs/bolt/bin/gem pristine unf_ext --version 0.0.7.5
When running on Windows, Bolt automatically sets the SSL_CERT_DIR
and
SSL_CERT_FILE
environment variables if they are not already set. Assuming a
default install location, the variables are set to the following directory and
certificate, which are installed with the Bolt package:
SSL_CERT_DIR = C:\Program Files\Puppet Labs\Bolt\ssl\certs
SSL_CERT_FILE = C:\Program Files\Puppet Labs\Bolt\ssl\cert.pem
If you see an SSL connection error similar to the following when running on Windows:
SSL_connect returned=1 errno=0 state=error: certificate verify failed (unable to get local issuer certificate)
Set the SSL_CERT_DIR
and SSL_CERT_FILE
environment variables to use a valid
certificate and certificate directory.
PowerShell 3.0 cannot automatically discover and load the Bolt module. If you're using PowerShell 3.0, add the Bolt module manually.
🔩 Tip To confirm your PowerShell version, run
$PSVersionTable
.
To allow PowerShell to load Bolt, add the correct module to your PowerShell profile.
- Update your PowerShell profile.
'Import-Module -Name ${Env:ProgramFiles}\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\PuppetBolt' | Out-File -Append $PROFILE
- Load the module in your current PowerShell window.
. $PROFILE
PowerShell's execution policy is a safety feature that controls the conditions
under which PowerShell loads configuration files and runs scripts. This feature
helps prevent the execution of malicious scripts. The default policy is
Restricted
(allow no scripts to run) for Windows clients and RemoteSigned
(allow signed scripts and non-signed scripts not from the internet) for Windows
servers. Some environments change this to AllSigned
, which only allows
scripts to run as long as they are signed by a trusted publisher.
As of Bolt 2.21.0, we sign Bolt PowerShell module files with a Puppet code
signing certificate. If your PowerShell environment uses an AllSigned
execution policy and you add Puppet as a trusted publisher, the bolt
command
works without any further input. If you're using the AllSigned
policy and you
have not added Puppet as a trusted publisher, you can accept the publisher
without having to change your execution policy.
If your environment uses a Restricted
policy, you must change your policy to
RemoteSigned
or AllSigned
. Check with your security team before you make any
policy changes.
If you see this or a similar error when trying to run Bolt, you probably need to change your script execution policy restrictions:
bolt : The 'bolt' command was found in the module 'PuppetBolt', but the module could not be loaded.
For more information, run 'Import-Module PuppetBolt'.
At line:1 char:1
+ bolt --help
+ ~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (bolt:String) [], CommandNotFoundExceptio
n
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : CouldNotAutoloadMatchingModule
To change your script execution policy:
-
Press Windows+X, A to run PowerShell as an administrator.
-
Set your script execution policy to at least
RemoteSigned
:Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
For more information about PowerShell execution policies, see Microsoft's documentation about execution policies and how to set them.
Bolt does not support encrypted SSH private keys if the keys are provided using the
key-data
field in your transport configuration. If providing a decrypted key is feasible
for your use case and security practices, you can manually decrypt the key by running
openssl rsa -in <KEY FILE>
and providing your passphrase. Alternatively, you can
add the key to your SSH agent and not specify a private-key
for Bolt to use. Bolt
will use the agent to authenticate your connection.
When Bolt runs a command using the Docker transport, it shells out to the
docker exec
command and sets environment variables using the --env
command-line option to set environment variables. When you run a command
using the Docker transport, and the command includes environment variable
interpolations, the environment variables are not interpolated as expected.
For example, the following command:
bolt command run 'echo \"\$PHRASE\"' --env-var PHRASE=hello --targets docker://example
Results in output similar to:
Started on docker://example...
Finished on docker://example:
$PHRASE
Successful on 1 target: docker://example
Ran on 1 target in 0.59 sec
To run commands that interpolate environment variables using the Docker transport, update the command to execute a new shell process and then read the command from a string. For example, you can update the command to:
bolt command run "/bin/sh -c 'echo \"\$PHRASE\"'" --env-var PHRASE=hello --targets docker://example
This results in the expected output:
Started on docker://example...
Finished on docker://example:
hello
Successful on 1 target: docker://example
Ran on 1 target in 0.59 sec
You can configure the Docker transport to always execute a new shell process
when running commands by setting the docker.shell-command
configuration option
in your inventory file or bolt-defaults.yaml
file:
# inventory.yaml
config:
docker:
shell-command: /bin/sh -c
# bolt-defaults.yaml
inventory-config:
docker:
shell-command: /bin/sh -c
Sensitive output is not supported when running tasks using the pcp
transport.
For more information, see the bolt_shim
documentation.
Visit the #bolt channel in the Puppet Community Slack to find a whole community of people waiting to help!