The steps to reproduce this are the following:

1. Create directory to publish to 

sudo mkdir -p /etc/puppet/myforges/fakeforge
sudo chown -R apache:apache /etc/puppet/myforges

2. Create repo
pulp-admin puppet repo create --repo-id=fakeforge

3. Download the example puppet module that contains a symlink

wget https://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/pulp/pulp/demo_repos/puppet_symlink/examplecorp-mymodule-0.1.0.tar.gz

4. Upload the example module to the repo

pulp-admin puppet repo uploads upload --file examplecorp-mymodule-0.1.0.tar.gz --repo-id fakeforge

5. Run the following script:

from pulp.common import pic

pic.connect()
pic.POST('/v2/repositories/fakeforge/distributors/', {'distributor_type_id':'puppet_install_distributor', 'distributor_id':'puppet_tmp_install_distributor', 'auto_publish': False, 'distributor_config': {'install_path':'/etc/puppet/myforges/fakeforge'}})

pic.connect()
pic.POST('/pulp/api/v2/repositories/fakeforge/actions/publish/', {'id': "puppet_tmp_install_distributor"})


If the pulp_manage_puppet boolean is turned off this fails.  However, the task is marked as successful anyway.