This could well be a horrendous one to debug. If, as I expect you will need manifest or manifest-snippets to debug I should be able to get some cut down version over to you.
I am applying a Puppet manifest to a 'bare metal' build. One class, utilities::puppetclientconf, admittedly not in a respectable dependency chain, changes /etc/puppet/puppet.conf. Puppet then wants to reparse and continue applying classes. It them barfs with Could not retrieve dependency 'File/etc/puppet' at /etc/puppet/modules/utilities/manifests/init.pp:291. This dependency *does* exist somewhere else in the class.
Logs and a couple of manifest snippets attached.
Oct 15 16:31:52 engpsr0155 puppetd[23546]: (//engpsr0155/base/utilities::puppetclientconf/File[/etc/puppet/puppet.conf]) Filebucketed to main with sum 7571487c3a26a4a087b29fcd787cfe57
Oct 15 16:31:52 engpsr0155 puppetd[23546]: (//engpsr0155/base/utilities::puppetclientconf/File[/etc/puppet/puppet.conf]/source) replacing from source puppet:///utilities/testpuppet.conf with contents {md5}daa7e7ee745a0f657720f85fa9c32de5
Oct 15 16:31:53 engpsr0155 puppetd[23546]: (//engpsr0155/base/services::setup/services::redhat/Service[gpm]/ensure) ensure changed 'running' to 'stopped'
Oct 15 16:31:57 engpsr0155 Installed: tk.x86_64 8.4.13-3.fc6
Oct 15 16:31:57 engpsr0155 Installed: tclx.x86_64 8.4.0-5.fc6
Oct 15 16:31:58 engpsr0155 Installed: emacspeak.noarch 23.0-2.1
Oct 15 16:31:58 engpsr0155 puppetd[23546]: (//engpsr0155/base/packages::setup/rhel5-packagegroups::dmzbase/rhel5-packagegroups::editors/Package[emacspeak]/ensure) created
Oct 15 16:31:58 engpsr0155 puppetd[23546]: (//engpsr0155/base/filemode::setup/filemode::redhat_filemode/filemode::filemode[/usr/bin/newgrp]/File[/usr/bin/newgrp]/mode) mode changed '4755' to '711'
Oct 15 16:31:58 engpsr0155 puppetd[23546]: (//engpsr0155/base/definittab::setup/definittab::definittab[std]/Inittab[~~]/ensure) created
Oct 15 16:31:58 engpsr0155 puppetd[23546]: (Filebucket[/var/lib/puppet/clientbucket]) Adding /etc/inittab(3b107ced0981045ff867f1b10eabb891)
Oct 15 16:32:02 engpsr0155 Installed: ntp.x86_64 4.2.2p1-5.el5
Oct 15 16:32:02 engpsr0155 puppetd[23546]: Reparsing /etc/puppet/puppet.conf
Oct 15 16:32:02 engpsr0155 puppetd[23546]: (//engpsr0155/base/ntp::setup/Package[ntp]/ensure) change from absent to present failed: Could not retrieve dependency 'File[/etc/puppet]' at /etc/puppet/modules/utilities/manifests/init.pp:291
Oct 15 16:32:06 engpsr0155 Installed: gnuplot.x86_64 4.0.0-12
Oct 15 16:32:06 engpsr0155 Installed: gnuplot-emacs.x86_64 4.0.0-12
