Common errors

In addition to knowing how to use the puppet lookup command, knowing some common errors can be useful in debugging Hiera.

1. Error:

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   Error: Could not run: (<unknown>): mapping values are not allowed in this context at line 2 column 8
   Error: Could not run: (<unknown>): did not find expected '-' indicator while parsing a block collection at line 1 column 1

   Cause:

   The opening --- could be malformed. If it gets converted into a unicode character, such as —, or if there is a space at the start of the line ---, or in between the three dashes - --, you might get an error like this.

2. Error:

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   Error: Could not run: (<unknown>): mapping values are not allowed in this context at line 3 column 10

   Cause:

   This can be caused by using tabs for indentation instead of spaces. In general, avoid tab characters in yaml files.

3. Error:

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   Error: Could not run: Hiera type mismatch: expected Hash and got String
   Error: Could not run: Hiera type mismatch: expected Hash and got Array
   Error: Could not run: Hiera type mismatch: expected Array and got Hash

   These types of errors often happen when you use hiera_array() or hiera_hash(), but one or more of the found values are of a data type incompatible with that lookup.