Request Entity Too Large Error while bootstrapping a new node from a Chef workstation

3
votes

I tried this link to set up a Chef Server, workstation and nodes. While bootstrapping a new node from a workstation to install a client on that node, I got the below error:

Chef Client failed. 0 resources updated in 14 seconds
[2016-04-18T08:46:31+00:00] FATAL: Stacktrace dumped to /var/chef/cache/chef-stacktrace.out
[2016-04-18T08:46:31+00:00] FATAL: Please provide the contents of the stacktrace.out file if you file a bug report
[2016-04-18T08:46:31+00:00] ERROR: 413 "Request Entity Too Large"
[2016-04-18T08:46:31+00:00] FATAL: Chef::Exceptions::ChildConvergeError: Chef run process exited unsuccessfully (exit code 1)

This is my bootstrap command:

knife bootstrap server_name -x username -P password --sudo --use-sudo-password

I added Ohai::Config[:disabled_plugins] = ["passwd"] to /etc/chef/client.rb file on the node and re-ran the command from workstation but got the same error. Can someone help me with this?

Thanks in advance.

2
chef-infrabootstrapping
Sounds like your node object is too large, one way to dig into it is to add in a recipe (better at the end of last recipe):require 'pp'; pp node to get the node object on stdout to find which attribute is very large. (or you may have a problem server side, but hard to guess if you're using hosted or private chef server, etc.) - Tensibai
Hi, can you be more specific? What to add and where to add? - srk

2 Answers

2
votes

The knife bootstrap command overwrites the whole client.rb config every time you run it. You would either have to make a new bootstrap template including that snippet (if you're planning to do this one a large number of machines) or let it fail, edit the config, and then run sudo chef-client on the machine to let it register.

0
votes

If you're using Che-12.8.1 or later you can utilize the knife bootstrap client.d feature:

You should be able to create a file named .chef/bootstrap/client.d/disabled_plugins.rb with the line:

Ohai::Config[:disabled_plugins] = ["passwd"]

If you're using the chef-client cookbook to manage your chef-client config during the run you'll need to watch your run to make sure those aren't getting into a fight and that the cookbook doesn't helpfully remove that file and re-run ohai and balloon your node size (I haven't played with this so don't know either way).