puppetlabs/puppet · error · Puppet::HTTP::ProtocolError

Location response header is missing

Error message

Location response header is missing

What it means

After a 301/302/307, Puppet::HTTP::Redirector#parse_location reads the Location response header to build the next request. RFC-compliant redirects must include it; when the header is absent the redirect cannot continue and Puppet::HTTP::ProtocolError is raised.

Source

Thrown at lib/puppet/http/redirector.rb:81

      new_request[header] = value
    end

    # mimic private Net::HTTP#addr_port
    new_request['Host'] = if (location.scheme == 'https' && location.port == 443) ||
                             (location.scheme == 'http' && location.port == 80)
                            location.host
                          else
                            "#{location.host}:#{location.port}"
                          end

    new_request
  end

  private

  def parse_location(response)
    location = response['location']
    raise Puppet::HTTP::ProtocolError, _("Location response header is missing") unless location

    URI.parse(location)
  rescue URI::InvalidURIError => e
    raise Puppet::HTTP::ProtocolError.new(_("Location URI is invalid: %{detail}") % { detail: e.message }, e)
  end
end

View on GitHub (pinned to e227c27540)

Solutions

1. Inspect the raw response (curl -i) and fix the server/proxy to send 'Location: <absolute-or-relative-url>'.
2. If the endpoint should not redirect at all, correct the route returning the 3xx.
3. Point the client at the final URL so no redirect is involved.

Example fix

# nginx - before
location /puppet {
  return 302;
}

# after
location /puppet {
  return 302 https://puppet.internal:8140/puppet;
}

begin
  client.get(uri)
rescue Puppet::HTTP::ProtocolError => e
  raise unless e.message.include?('Location response header is missing')
  # inspect the 3xx manually and decide: follow the real URL or fail loudly
  raise
end

When it happens

Trigger: A server or intermediary returns 301/302/307 without a Location header (redirect_to is only called for those codes); auth portals or proxies emitting status 302 with an HTML body but no header; header stripped by a middlebox.

Common situations: Custom endpoints or misconfigured nginx/haproxy rules using 'return 302' without a URL; application servers that signal redirects via body meta-refresh; security appliances rewriting responses.

Related errors

• Failed to parse Retry-After header '%{retry_after}' as an in
• 'put' requires a 'content-type' header
• 'post' requires a 'content-type' header
• Too many HTTP redirections for %{addr}
• No content type in http response; cannot parse

AI-assisted analysis of puppetlabs/puppet@e227c27540 (2026-08-21). Data as JSON: /api/errors/63f5e33c2e9f43a1. Report an issue: GitHub.