undefined method parent for nil:NilClass

Funny puppet errors:

err: Could not retrieve catalog from remote server: Error 400 on SERVER: Puppet::Parser::AST::Variable failed with error NoMethodError: undefined method `parent' for nil:NilClass at /etc/puppet/environments/foo/modules/util/manifests/init.pp:23 on node foo.bar.baz

warning: Not using cache on failed catalog
err: Could not retrieve catalog; skipping run

And: it breaks always somewhere different.



Wow. nice error message.
What does it mean?
The only thing which you can see is that puppet does not receive a class (nil:NilClass)

It took us some time to find thet we had dangling symlinks in our manifests file structure.

Puppet definitely has troubles with import (I now hate import even more) and symlinks without a target.