I recreated a node with the same name. I've run into this error setting up a node and bootstrapping it:
Starting Chef Client, version 11.16.4
[2014-11-24T18:51:13+00:00] INFO: *** Chef 11.16.4 ***
[2014-11-24T18:51:13+00:00] INFO: Chef-client pid: 4540
Creating a new client identity for node1 using the validator key.
[2014-11-24T18:51:15+00:00] INFO: Client key /etc/chef/client.pem is not present - registering
[2014-11-24T18:51:16+00:00] INFO: HTTP Request Returned 409 Conflict: Client already exists
[2014-11-24T18:51:16+00:00] INFO: HTTP Request Returned 403 Forbidden: error
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Chef encountered an error attempting to create the client "node1"
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Authorization Error:
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Your validation client is not authorized to create the client for this node (HTTP 403).
Possible Causes:
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* There may already be a client named "node1"
* Your validation client (chef-validator) may have misconfigured authorization permissions.
In this situation I did not delete the client. The node was recreated with the same name so the node and client both needed to be deleted. Here are the commands to do so.
knife node delete <node-name>
knife client delete <node-name>
In the above situation it must be:
knife node delete node1
knife client delete node1