Description of problem: Under EL4, calling fqdn_rand in a Puppet class consistently produces the following error: bignum too big to convert into `unsigned long' Typically, this error occurs during compilation on the Puppet master, which makes it very difficult to work around in the policy as any conditional test on $operatingsystemrelease runs against the agent host. It also means that even EL5 agents running against an EL4 Puppet master cannot call fqdn_rand. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): puppet-0.25.5-1.el4 puppet-server-0.25.5-1.el4 ruby-1.8.1-7.el4_8.4 How reproducible: Use fqdn_rand() in any Puppet policy and either retrieve the policy from an EL4 Puppet master or run locally on an EL4 agent. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Create test.pp containing: alert(fqdn_rand("60")) 2. Run: $ puppet test.pp 3. Actual results: bignum too big to convert into `unsigned long' at /home/me/test.pp:1 on node testnode.example.com Expected results: alert: Scope(Class[main]): 48 Additional info: Underlying problem may be in RHEL 4 ruby. Same EPEL version works fine under EL5 with ruby-1.8.5.
This is definitely a ruby ruby bug. I'm not sure if there's any way to work around it in puppet's code or not. EL4 is nearing it's EOL and will not serve well as a puppetmaster for much longer. Other EL and Fedora releases will soon move to puppet 2.6.x and I am doubtful that we will push that to EL-4. I'll reassign this to ruby and see if the maintainers there have suggestions or can backport the fixes from newer ruby releases.
Thanks for the response, Todd. 'Tis as I feared but thought it was worth raising anyway in case there was a simple fix.
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