[chef] knide client delete leads to 403 "Forbidden" on Chef Server 12

[Mark Selby < >]

I have recently upgraded from Chef open source server 11 to Chef Server 12

We rebuild many of our hosts regularly.

In the past we simply run a 'knife client delete <name>' and let the validator recreate the client upon bootstrap. We leave the node intact and it converges as per it's saved run_list.

Under chef 12 when we try and do the same thing we get

[2015-01-04T13:51:00-08:00] ERROR: 403 "Forbidden"

[2015-01-04T13:51:00-08:00] FATAL: Chef::Exceptions::ChildConvergeError: Chef run process exited unsuccessfully (exit code 1)

It appears that the server does not like the new client key in the sense that it is not associated with the old node.

Any ideas how to get around this issue or suggestions for further debugging.