Can't install Facter 1.7.0 on Amazon Linux using PuppetLabs Yum repositories

Question

I've installed Puppet using the setup guide but it seems I'm only able to install Puppet packages from the amzn-* repos, even though I have installed the PuppetLabs EL6 Yum repository using the instructions provided by PuppetLabs.

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-1-239 ~]$ rpm -qa | grep facter
facter-1.6.18-7.25.amzn1.noarch

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-1-239 ~]$ sudo yum upgrade facter
Loaded plugins: priorities, update-motd, upgrade-helper
1048 packages excluded due to repository priority protections
No packages marked for update

I need to install at least Facter 1.7.0 so that a fix is included to determine the osfmamily correctly.

How do I install Facter 1.7.0 on Amazon Linux (2014.09.2)?

Answer 1

The packages are not showing up as updates very probably because of priority settings.
You could fix that by:

echo -e "[main]\nenabled = 0" > /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/priorities.conf

However, Amazon has broken compatibility with RHEL 6 by upgrading Ruby to version 2.0.
Installing packages from that repository will very likely break your Puppet and facter installation.
https://docs.puppetlabs.com/guides/install_puppet/install_el.html#supported-versions:

This information applies to RHEL itself, as well as any distributions that maintain binary compatibility with it, including but not limited to CentOS, Scientific Linux, Oracle Linux, and Ascendos.

With that change Amazon AMI can not be considered a supported version anymore.
That doesn't mean Amazon AMI is not a supported platform, just that those packages are not compatible!
Your best bet would be to use rubygems to install facter and probably puppet as well from (also suggested here: https://tickets.puppetlabs.com/browse/PUP-2132).
You could also try to reverting your system ruby default version back to 1.8 (https://tickets.puppetlabs.com/browse/PUP-2132#comment-108357) which appears to be working for some people too.

Otherwise you'll need to stick to the version provided by Amazon or of course stop using Amazon AMI and switch to a supported version (this is what I would do...).