Skipping because provider prefetch failed

[andryua]

Describe the Bug

After update puppet agent to 8.10.0 i have errors wit chocolatey provider (8.7.0 - working)

Steps to Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:
in powershell or cmd running command
puppet agent -t

Environment

• Version 8.10.0
• Platform Windows 10 or 11

Output:

Debug: Prefetching windows resources for chocolateyfeature
Debug: Gathering features from 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\config\chocolatey.config'.
Error: Could not prefetch chocolateyfeature provider 'windows': Malformed XML: Content at the start of the document (got '')
Line: 1
Position: 47
Last 80 unconsumed characters:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
Warning: /Stage[main]/Windows::Chocolatey/Chocolateyfeature[allowEmptyChecksums]: Skipping because provider prefetch failed
Debug: /Stage[main]/Windows::Chocolatey/Chocolateyfeature[allowEmptyChecksums]: Resource is being skipped, unscheduling all events
Debug: Prefetching windows resources for chocolateyconfig
Debug: Gathering sources from 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\config\chocolatey.config'.
Error: Could not prefetch chocolateyconfig provider 'windows': Malformed XML: Content at the start of the document (got '')
Line: 1
Position: 47
Last 80 unconsumed characters:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
Warning: /Stage[main]/Windows::Chocolatey/Chocolateyconfig[cachelocation]: Skipping because provider prefetch failed
Debug: /Stage[main]/Windows::Chocolatey/Chocolateyconfig[cachelocation]: Resource is being skipped, unscheduling all events
Debug: Prefetching windows resources for chocolateysource
Debug: Gathering sources from 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\config\chocolatey.config'.
Line: 1
Position: 47
Last 80 unconsumed characters:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
Warning: /Stage[main]/Windows::Chocolatey/Chocolateysource[chocolatey]: Skipping because provider prefetch failed
Debug: /Stage[main]/Windows::Chocolatey/Chocolateysource[chocolatey]: Resource is being skipped, unscheduling all events
Warning: /Stage[main]/Windows::Chocolatey/Chocolateysource[stable]: Skipping because provider prefetch failed
Debug: /Stage[main]/Windows::Chocolatey/Chocolateysource[stable]: Resource is being skipped, unscheduling all events
Warning: /Stage[main]/Windows::Chocolatey/Chocolateysource[testing]: Skipping because provider prefetch failed
Debug: /Stage[main]/Windows::Chocolatey/Chocolateysource[testing]: Resource is being skipped, unscheduling all events
Debug: Class[Windows::Chocolatey]: Resource is being skipped, unscheduling all events

[mhashizume]

Thank you for reporting this @andryua , I saw you also opened an issue in the Chocolatey module. We will chat with the modules team and see if we can determine where the issue lies.

[andryua]

Hi! Can you help me? I using chocolatey 0.15 or 1.31 not latest version. And one more - we configuring chocolatey by puppet and after update to 8.8.1 - puppet agent always rerewrited config.xml (chocolatey config file). now we using 8.7.0 - that version working ok.

[andryua]

if i update to chocolatey lates version - error still exist on puppet agent 8.10.0

[andryua]

puppet-chocolatey breaks chocolatey.config when modified

Debug: Prefetching windows resources for chocolateysource
Debug: Gathering sources from 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\config\chocolatey.config'.
Debug: Loaded source '{:name=>"chocolatey", :location=>"https://community.chocolatey.org/api/v2/", :ensure=>:present, :priority=>"0", :bypass_proxy=>false, :admin_only=>false, :allow_self_se
Notice: /Stage[main]/Windows::Chocolatey/Chocolateysource[chocolatey]/ensure: ensure changed 'present' to 'disabled'
Debug: Executing: '[redacted]'
Debug: Gathering sources from 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\config\chocolatey.config'.
Error: /Stage[main]/Windows::Chocolatey/Chocolateysource[chocolatey]: Could not evaluate: Malformed XML: Content at the start of the document (got '')
Line: 1
Position: 47
Last 80 unconsumed characters:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
Debug: Gathering sources from 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\config\chocolatey.config'.
Error: /Stage[main]/Windows::Chocolatey/Chocolateysource[stable]: Could not evaluate: Malformed XML: Content at the start of the document (got '')
Line: 1
Position: 47
Last 80 unconsumed characters:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
Debug: Gathering sources from 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\config\chocolatey.config'.
Error: /Stage[main]/Windows::Chocolatey/Chocolateysource[testing]: Could not evaluate: Malformed XML: Content at the start of the document (got '')
Line: 1
Position: 47
Last 80 unconsumed characters:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
Debug: Prefetching windows resources for chocolateyfeature
Debug: Gathering features from 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\config\chocolatey.config'.
Error: Could not prefetch chocolateyfeature provider 'windows': Malformed XML: Content at the start of the document (got '')
Line: 1
Position: 47
Last 80 unconsumed characters:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
Warning: /Stage[main]/Windows::Chocolatey/Chocolateyfeature[allowEmptyChecksums]: Skipping because provider prefetch failed
Debug: /Stage[main]/Windows::Chocolatey/Chocolateyfeature[allowEmptyChecksums]: Resource is being skipped, unscheduling all events
Debug: Prefetching windows resources for chocolateyconfig
Debug: Gathering sources from 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\config\chocolatey.config'.
Error: Could not prefetch chocolateyconfig provider 'windows': Malformed XML: Content at the start of the document (got '')
Line: 1
Position: 47
Last 80 unconsumed characters:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
Warning: /Stage[main]/Windows::Chocolatey/Chocolateyconfig[cachelocation]: Skipping because provider prefetch failed
Debug: /Stage[main]/Windows::Chocolatey/Chocolateyconfig[cachelocation]: Resource is being skipped, unscheduling all events
Debug: Class[Windows::Chocolatey]: Resource is being skipped, unscheduling all events

[andryua]

after investigation - problem in REXML. Last working version is - 3.3.2. Newest version - puppet agent sending errors. (puppet agent 8.9.0 upgrated to rexml - 3.3.6)

[joshcooper]

@andryua Thanks, could you provide a minimal XML reproduction that triggers the bug?

[andryua]

this is config file (i renamed it into txt)
chocolatey.txt

i validated it on online xml validators - everything is ok

[andryua]

new investigation result - after check UTF-8 parameter - everything work fine (without errors), if unckecked - not good. But I can't use this parameter :(

[joshcooper]

The problematic config contains a byte order mark (BOM) maybe there was a regression in rexml with respect to stripping the BOM out?

❯ od -tc ~/Downloads/chocolatey.txt | head -1
0000000 357 273 277   <   ?   x   m   l       v   e   r   s   i   o   n

❯ od -t x1 ~/Downloads/chocolatey.txt | head -1
0000000 ef bb bf 3c 3f 78 6d 6c 20 76 65 72 73 69 6f 6e

[andryua]

Maybe. I don't know. So, what do You recommend me?

[andryua]

Chocolatey support answered:

The problematic config contains a byte order mark (BOM) maybe there was a regression in rexml with respect to stripping the BOM out?

This appears to be an upstream issue in REXML, which needs to be fixed there.

I don't think that there is realistically anything that we (Chocolatey) can do here, sorry!```

[gep13]

👋 Chocolatey Team Memer here. Just to expand further on this...

@andryua said...
Chocolatey support answered:

This was being discussed in our Discord channel here:

https://discord.com/channels/778552361454141460/897088817293574154/1326489091021471789

The encoding of the chocolatey.config file is UTF-8-BOM (as can be seen here), and it has been for at least 11 years (April 16, 2014 which is the date of the last commit that I can easily see in the repository).

So nothing has changed with the encoding on this configuration file from a Chocolatey perspective in that time.

I tend to agree with this comment from @joshcooper:

maybe there was a regression in rexml with respect to stripping the BOM out?

If there is anything that we can do to help, please let me know.

[andryua]

Hi! Maybe, I found how to resolve this issue:
puppetlabs-chocolatey using (all files in this subdirectories - https://github.com/puppetlabs/puppetlabs-chocolatey/tree/main/lib/puppet/provider):
config = REXML::Document.new File.read(choco_config)
its a problem, because that function open file in one string with BOM symbols, but if using this
config = REXML::Document.new File.open(choco_config)
it will be using UTF8 with BOM too (like chocolatey.config using) and puppet dont sent errors anymore (i tested by myself)
and one more thing - enabling UTF8 WorlWide support in windows 10/11 is not necessarily