Occasionally, the system date/time will drift between client and server. If this drift is greater than a couple of minutes, the Chef Server will throw a 401 unauthorized and the request will not be forwarded to the Compliance server.
On the Chef Server you can see this in the following logs:
# chef-server-ctl tail
==> /var/log/opscode/nginx/access.log <==
192.168.200.102 - - [28/Aug/2016:14:57:36 +0000] "GET /organizations/brewinc/nodes/vagrant-c0971990 HTTP/1.1" 401 "0.004" 93 "-" "Chef Client/12.14.38 (ruby-2.3.1-p112; ohai-8.19.2; x86_64-linux; +https://chef.io)" "127.0.0.1:8000" "401" "0.003" "12.14.38" "algorithm=sha1;version=1.1;" "vagrant-c0971990" "2013-09-25T15:00:14Z" "2jmj7l5rSw0yVb/vlWAYkK/YBwk=" 1060
==> /var/log/opscode/opscode-erchef/crash.log <==
2016-08-28 14:57:36 =ERROR REPORT====
{<<"method=GET; path=/organizations/brewinc/nodes/vagrant-c0971990; status=401; ">>,"Unauthorized"}
==> /var/log/opscode/opscode-erchef/erchef.log <==
2016-08-28 14:57:36.521 [error] {<<"method=GET; path=/organizations/brewinc/nodes/vagrant-c0971990; status=401; ">>,"Unauthorized"}
==> /var/log/opscode/opscode-erchef/current <==
2016-08-28_14:57:36.52659 [error] {<<"method=GET; path=/organizations/brewinc/nodes/vagrant-c0971990; status=401; ">>,"Unauthorized"}
==> /var/log/opscode/opscode-erchef/requests.log.1 <==
2016-08-28T14:57:36Z erchef@127.0.0.1 method=GET; path=/organizations/brewinc/nodes/vagrant-c0971990; status=401; req_id=g3IAA2QAEGVyY2hlZkAxMjcuMC4wLjEBAAOFrgAAAAAAAAAA; org_name=brewinc; msg=bad_clock; couchdb_groups=false; couchdb_organizations=false; couchdb_containers=false; couchdb_acls=false; 503_mode=false; couchdb_associations=false; couchdb_association_requests=false; req_time=1; user=vagrant-c0971990; req_api_version=1;
Additionally, the chef_gate log will contain a similar message:
# /var/log/opscode/chef_gate/current
2016-08-28_15:01:34.88702 [GIN] 2016/08/28 - 15:01:34 | 401 | 13.650403ms | 192.168.200.102 | POST /compliance/organizations/brewinc/inspec
2016-08-28_15:01:34.88704 Error #01: Authentication failed. Please check your system's clock.
In the event of a malformed or unset token, the Chef Compliance server will log the token error:
==> /var/log/chef-compliance/core/current <==
2016-08-28_20:41:46.17496 20:41:46.174 ERR => Token authentication: %!(EXTRA *errors.errorString=malformed JWS, only 1 segments)
2016-08-28_20:41:46.17498 [GIN] 2016/08/28 - 20:41:46 | 401 | 53.824µs | 192.168.200.102 | GET /owners/base/compliance/linux/tar
==> /var/log/chef-compliance/nginx/compliance.access.log <==
192.168.200.102 - - [28/Aug/2016:21:23:46 +0000] "GET /api/owners/base/compliance/linux/tar HTTP/1.1" 401 0 "-" "Ruby"
If the audit cookbook report handler prints this stacktrace and you are using the chef-server-automate reporter:
Running handlers:
[2017-12-21T16:21:15+00:00] WARN: Compliance report size is 1.71 MB.
[2017-12-21T16:21:15+00:00] ERROR: 413 "Request Entity Too Large" (Net::HTTPServerException)
/opt/chef/embedded/lib/ruby/2.4.0/net/http/response.rb:122:in `error!'
/opt/chef/embedded/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/chef-13.6.4/lib/chef/http.rb:152:in `request'
/opt/chef/embedded/lib/ruby/gems/2.4.0/gems/chef-13.6.4/lib/chef/http.rb:131:in `post'
/var/chef/cache/cookbooks/audit/libraries/reporters/cs_automate.rb:37:in `block in send_report'
...
and the Chef Infra Server Nginx logs confirm the 413 error:
==> /var/log/opscode/nginx/access.log <==
192.168.56.40 - - [21/Dec/2017:11:35:30 +0000] "POST /organizations/eu_org/data-collector HTTP/1.1" 413 "0.803" 64 "-" "Chef Client/13.6.4 (ruby-2.4.2-p198; ohai-13.6.0; x86_64-linux; +https://chef.io)" "-" "-" "-" "13.6.4" "algorithm=sha1;version=1.1;" "bootstrapped-node" "2017-12-21T11:35:31Z" "GR6RyPvKkZDaGyQDYCPfoQGS8G4=" 1793064
you most likely hit the erchef request size in Chef Infra Server. Prior to Infra Server 13.0, the default was ~1MB. Infra Server 13.0 and later default to ~2MB.
As an example, to set the limit to ~3MB, add the following line in Chef Server's /etc/opscode/chef-server.rb:
opscode_erchef['max_request_size'] = 3000000
and run chef-server-ctl reconfigure to apply this change.
If a Compliance report is not becoming available in the Chef Automate UI or API and this error shows up in the logstash logs:
/var/log/delivery/logstash/current
2017-12-21_13:59:54.69949 DEBUG: Ruby filter is processing an 'inspec_profile' event
2017-12-21_14:00:16.51553 java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
2017-12-21_14:00:16.51556 Dumping heap to /opt/delivery/embedded/logstash/heapdump.hprof ...
2017-12-21_14:00:16.51556 Unable to create /opt/delivery/embedded/logstash/heapdump.hprof: File exists
2017-12-21_14:00:18.50676 Error: Your application used more memory than the safety cap of 383M.
2017-12-21_14:00:18.50694 Specify -J-Xmx####m to increase it (#### = cap size in MB).
2017-12-21_14:00:18.50703 Specify -w for full OutOfMemoryError stack trace
you have reached the java heap size(-Xmx) limit of logstash. This is automatically set during automate-ctl reconfigure to 10% of the system memory.