If an invalid custom fact is added to a system Facter seems to have a generic error:

“Could not retrieve : non-sh interpreters are not currently supported”

To me this error indicates a problem with the interpreter line (first line of the script), which doesn’t apply to Facter scripts as far as I can tell. I’ve found two problems that can cause this error: 1) Missing the “setcode do […] end” stanza 2) Invalid file permissions (chmod 000 test_fact_invalid.rb)

To demonstrate:

[facter]# cat test_fact_invalid.rb

test_fact.rb¶

Facter.add(“test_fact_invalid”) do

setcode do¶

            "test value"

end¶

end [facter]# FACTERLIB=/var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/ facter | grep invalid Could not retrieve test_fact_invalid: non-sh interpreters are not currently supported [facter]# chmod 000 test_fact_invalid.rb [facter]# FACTERLIB=/var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/ facter | grep test_fact

Could not retrieve test_fact_invalid: non-sh interpreters are not currently supported¶

When test_fact_invalid.rb is moved out of the way and only a valid custom fact remains, the error disappears:¶

[facter]# cat test_fact.rb

test_fact.rb¶

Facter.add(“test_fact”) do

    setcode do
            "test value"
    end

end [facter]# FACTERLIB=/var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/ facter | grep test_fact test_fact => test value

[facter]#¶

I believe a more descriptive error message should be displayed when possible, or if not possible this message be changed to something even more generic which might help newbies such as myself debug.

Thanks!