Could not find class, and yet it is there

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So… this is a bit embarrassing, but…

Environments.

Right there in my /etc/puppet.conf file is this:

[master]
  manifest=$confdir/manifests/site.pp
  modulepath=$confdir/environments/$environment/modules:$confdir/modules

After throwing strace at it to figure out where it was hunting for files, I noticed something. It was looking for custommod under /etc/puppet/environments/production/modules, and since there was a directory there (empty), it did not then go check /etc/puppet/modules. Apparently when importing a module it checks for directory-presence, rather than file-presence (init.pp).

Remove that empty directory, things start working.

Run the puppet agent using a different environment, things start working.

Moral of the story:

Puppet Environment paths do not act like bash $PATH.

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