I'm setting up a puppetmaster (2.7.6) in ec2 via gems (on rhel6) and I'm running into problems with the cert names and getting the master able to talk to itself.

my puppet.conf looks like this:

[main]
  logdir = /var/log/puppet
  rundir = /var/run/puppet
  vardir = /var/lib/puppet
  ssldir = $vardir/ssl
  pluginsync = true
  environment = production
  report = true
  certname = master

When I start the puppetmaster process the ssl directory looks like:

ssl/private_keys/master.pem
ssl/crl.pem
ssl/public_keys/master.pem
ssl/ca/ca_crl.pem
ssl/ca/signed/master.pem
ssl/ca/ca_crt.pem
ssl/ca/ca_pub.pem
ssl/ca/ca_key.pem
ssl/certs/ca.pem
ssl/certs/master.pem

I have an /etc/hosts entry on the box to point the 'puppet' hostname to localhost so that I don't have to change the 'server' option.

When I run the agent I get the following:

# puppet agent --test
info: Retrieving plugin
err: /File[/var/lib/puppet/lib]: Failed to generate additional resources using 'eval_generate: Server hostname 'puppet' did not match server certificate; expected master
err: /File[/var/lib/puppet/lib]: Could not evaluate: Server hostname 'puppet' did not match server certificate; expected master Could not retrieve file metadata for puppet://puppet/plugins: Server hostname 'puppet' did not match server certificate; expected master
err: Could not retrieve catalog from remote server: Server hostname 'puppet' did not match server certificate; expected master
warning: Not using cache on failed catalog
err: Could not retrieve catalog; skipping run
err: Could not send report: Server hostname 'puppet' did not match server certificate; expected master

If I specify the certname as the server (with corresponding hosts entry) I get:

# puppet agent --test --server master 
info: Retrieving plugin
err: /File[/var/lib/puppet/lib]: Could not evaluate: Could not retrieve information from environment production source(s) puppet://master/plugins
info: Caching catalog for master
info: Applying configuration version '1321805956'
notice: Finished catalog run in 0.05 seconds

Which is success of a sort, that source error will bite me later when I'm applying manifests. I've tried a couple of other variations with using the ec2 private hostname and gotten mixed results.

I'd like to avoid setting server = 'x' and use dns/hosts to control what 'puppet' resolves to in order to decide which server (plays easier with availability zones, etc)