Questions tagged [puppet]
Puppet is a configuration management tool (Unix & Windows) with its own Domain Specific Language.
1,797
questions
110
votes
7
answers
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How can the little guys effectively learn and use Puppet? [closed]
Six months ago, in our not-for-profit project we decided to start migrating our system management to a Puppet-controlled environment because we are expecting our number of servers to grow ...
- 1,709
83
votes
7
answers
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Why use Chef/Puppet over shell scripts?
New to Puppet and Chef tools. Seems like the job that they are doing can be done with shell scripting. Maybe it was done in shell scripts until these came along.
I would agree they are more readable. ...
- 1,059
72
votes
2
answers
34k
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Why is it so difficult to upgrade between major versions of Red Hat and CentOS?
"Can we upgrade our existing production EL5 servers to EL6?"
A simple-sounding request from two customers with completely different environments prompted my usual best-practices answer of "yes, but ...
- 198k
71
votes
6
answers
11k
views
What should NOT be managed by puppet?
I'm learning my way through configuration management in general and using puppet to implement it in particular, and I'm wondering what aspects of a system, if any, should not be managed with puppet?
...
- 5,886
69
votes
7
answers
43k
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automate dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
I'm using puppet to admin a cluster of debian servers. I need to change the timezone of each machine on the cluster. The proper debian way to do this is to use dpkg-reconfigure tzdata. But I can ...
razor
55
votes
6
answers
14k
views
Puppet vs Chef, pro and contra from users and use cases [closed]
I already googled and read the "to-puppet-or-to-chef-that-is-the-question" article.
I'm interested in use cases, real world implementations in which people had choosen one or the other on real ...
- 11k
40
votes
0
answers
6k
views
What advantages/features does Puppet or Chef offer over Salt (or vice versa)? [closed]
I am looking at rolling out a new configuration management tool to replace our home-grown solution. The defacto standards are Chef and Puppet, both of which are Ruby-centric (though can be used to ...
- 3,437
33
votes
5
answers
80k
views
Could not find class, and yet it is there
When doing a puppet agent call from a new image, I'm getting a err: Could not find class custommod error. The module itself is in /etc/puppet/modules/custommod same as all of the other modules we're ...
- 134k
32
votes
7
answers
31k
views
Do chef and puppet cost money?
I intend to use chef or puppet to do administration (I'm thinking more of chef as it's younger and I get a better feeling about it).
In both home pages I saw there is an "enterprise edition" that ...
- 711
29
votes
10
answers
14k
views
Are configuration management tools (Puppet, Chef) capable of keeping installed packages up to date?
This is probably a simple question for those of you already running configuration management tools. Are configuration management tools such as Puppet or Chef the right approach for keeping installed ...
- 4,879
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votes
5
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How can a Linux Administrator improve their shell scripting and automation skills?
In my organization, I work with a group of NOC staff, budding junior engineers and a handful of senior engineers; all with a focus on Linux. One interesting step in the way the company grows talent is ...
- 198k
28
votes
6
answers
12k
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Have a system that expires SSH keys every 90th day [closed]
I have a customer that now requires us to change every password every 90th day due to their interpretation of GDPR. That's fine for the web-based system we develop for them because we can just ...
- 280
28
votes
4
answers
43k
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Adding a random delay for a Linux command
I am using func to perform parallel commands on our servers.
The other day, we had an issue when a service restart of puppet via func made all our severs hit our puppetmaster at the same time.
My ...
- 10.9k
27
votes
7
answers
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Adding a yum repo to puppet before doing anything else
Is there a way to force puppet to do certain things first? For instance, I need it to install an RPM on all servers to add a yum repository (IUS Community) before I install any of the packages.
- 1,362
27
votes
1
answer
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How to update a package using puppet and a .deb file
I am trying to figure out the proper way to update/upgrade a deb package using puppet from a local source deb file. My current config looks like this...
class adobe-air-2-0-4 {
file { "/opt/air-...
- 764
26
votes
4
answers
8k
views
How can I pre-sign puppet certificates?
Puppet requires certificates between the client (puppet) being managed and the server (puppetmaster). You can run manually on the client and then go onto the server to sign the certificate, but how do ...
- 681
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7
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3k
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Puppet Security and Network Topologies
Background:
I am finally setting aside some time to join the 21st Century and look at Puppet.
As it stands today we version control all server configurations in a repository that is held internally ...
- 25.8k
24
votes
3
answers
21k
views
Configuration management: push versus pull based topology
The more established configuration management (CM) systems like Puppet and Chef use a pull-based approach: clients poll a centralized master periodically for updates. Some of them offer a masterless ...
- 2,922
23
votes
5
answers
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puppet: force service restart after configuration file was modified
how can i ensure that if new version of configuration file is downloaded via puppet from master repository to one of managed servers relevant service is restarted.
typical scenario - let's say there ...
- 30.2k
21
votes
2
answers
72k
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How to do a file/dir exists conditional in Puppet?
I'm trying to write a function in puppet that will do a fail if the passed directory path does not exist.
if File["/some/path"] always returns true, and if defined(File["/some/path"]) only returns ...
- 491
20
votes
5
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69k
views
How to tell what version of puppet you are running on centos?
I'm getting started with puppet on centos and was confused about a few things. First off a man page exists for puppet-master but not for puppetmaster even though the daemon in /etc/init.d is ...
- 1,592
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votes
2
answers
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Puppet: Node name seems dependent on reverse dns?
I seem to be running into a little bit of a problem understanding how to get this to work. I have a new server I'm building sitting behind the office NAT at work, its reverse dns maps to office....
- 713
18
votes
3
answers
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Adding an existing user to a group with puppet
Is it possible to add an existing user to a group with puppet 2.7.18?
We have two modules, each one defines one class :
module "user" creates all users, including user foo and user bar.
module "...
user130370
18
votes
5
answers
34k
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Is it possible to get aws ec2 instance id based on its IP address
I have list of IP addressed, I want to find if instances associated with the IP address are still running or terminated. I am launching and terminating lot of instances on daily basis, just want to ...
- 1,780
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votes
7
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How to add multiple dns names to my puppetmaster?
my puppet.conf on the master
[master]
certname = myname.mydomain.com
ca_server = myname.mydomain.com
certdnsnames = puppet;puppet.local;myname.dyndns.org;hivemind.local;
for my understanding with ...
- 1,535
18
votes
5
answers
31k
views
How do I access an environment variable in a puppet manifest?
How do I access an environment variable (from the puppet daemon's environment) in a puppet manifest?
- 2,409
17
votes
2
answers
41k
views
Adding lines to /etc/profile with puppet?
I use puppet to install a current JDK and tomcat.
package {
[ "openjdk-6-jdk", "openjdk-6-doc", "openjdk-6-jre",
"tomcat6", "tomcat6-admin", "tomcat6-common", "tomcat6-docs",
"...
- 445
17
votes
5
answers
2k
views
When is it appropriate to use a configuration manager (eg Puppet / Chef / Ansible)?
At my current workplace, I look after two VMware host machines, an OpenBSD physical machine, three Debian VM's, and six Windows Server VM's (2008/2012).
I'm considering implementing a configuration ...
- 183
17
votes
5
answers
5k
views
What's the strengths and weaknesses of existing configuration management systems? [closed]
I was looking up here for some comparisons between CFEngine, Puppet, Chef, bcfg2, AutomateIt and whatever other configuration management systems might be out there, and was very surprised I could find ...
17
votes
1
answer
53k
views
What is the meaning of holdoff time over in systemd services?
I have installed Puppet Enterprise on CentOS 7. I can see that several Puppet services fail to start saying holdoff time over. What does this mean?
Sep 03 20:50:16 l-pm1 systemd[1]: pe-puppetdb....
- 273
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votes
2
answers
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How to change the polling interval of the Puppet master?
By default, Puppet clients ask for updates every 30 minutes. I would like to change this interval. What is the most convenient way to do it?
- 283
16
votes
7
answers
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views
What are the right questions to ask when deciding whether to use Chef or Puppet?
I am about to start a new project which will, in part, require deploying many identical nodes of approximately three different classes:
Data nodes, which will run sharded instances of MongoDB.
...
- 1,328
15
votes
1
answer
8k
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Puppet: ensure a file is empty
I would like to be sure that the motd file is empty. I would love to do like this:
file { "/etc/motd":
ensure => empty
}
This obviously does not work.
Is there a simple way to ensure a file is ...
- 1,366
15
votes
2
answers
43k
views
New server unable to fetch configuration from Puppetmaster due to some ssl error
Three machines in the production environment had some hardware issues and were decommissioned. The infrastructure team has reinstalled them and gave them the same hostnames and IP addresses. The aim ...
- 10.8k
15
votes
2
answers
8k
views
Options for Multisite High Availability with Puppet
I maintain two datacenters, and as more of our important infrastructure starts to get controlled via puppet, it is important the the puppet master work at the second site should our primary site fail. ...
- 84.4k
15
votes
4
answers
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views
Managing an application across multiple servers, or PXE vs cfEngine/Chef/Puppet
We have an application that is running on a few (5 or so and will grow) boxes. The hardware is identical in all the machines, and ideally the software would be as well.
I have been managing them by ...
- 1,152
15
votes
3
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views
NFS with encrypted ubuntu home directory
I am having trouble getting NFS setup on with vagrant:
On my local machine I have installed NFS:
apt-get install nfs-common nfs-kernel-server
And in my Vagrantfile set it to be used:
config.vm....
user71736
15
votes
3
answers
3k
views
Pros and Cons of a Decentralized Puppet Architecture
We have around 300 RHEL servers that are currently connecting to a Puppetmaster server. However, we have noticed some performance bottlenecks and it is the point of failure in our system. I am ...
- 3,387
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votes
3
answers
3k
views
Puppet and launchd services?
We have a production environment configured with Puppet, and want to be able to set up a similar environment on our development machines: a mix of Red Hats, Ubuntus and OSX. As might be expected, OSX ...
- 201
14
votes
4
answers
33k
views
Puppet: Test if Resource is defined, or create it
I've been trying to figure out a way to test if a resource is already defined in another file, and if not create it? A quick example:
if File[$local_container] {
alert("Testing - It existed $...
- 713
14
votes
1
answer
3k
views
Why is r10k called r10k? [closed]
I am using r10k for a while now. I wonder what r10k means.
Questions
Why is the tool called r10k? Where does it stand for?
Attempts to answer the question
Neither the puppet docs, nor the internet ...
- 6,011
14
votes
1
answer
16k
views
How do I recursively mirror a directory and its contents with puppet?
Let's say I have a module with files/etc/foo/{conf0, conf1, conf2, conf3, etc}. It's simple enough to place each of these files when the number of them is small:
file { 'conf0':
path => '/etc/...
user67165
14
votes
3
answers
9k
views
Call Puppet function from Puppet template?
As of 0.24.8, can a Puppet template call a Puppet function?
I can get similar functionality by calling the function in my manifest, assigning the return value to a variable, and then using the ...
- 6,858
14
votes
3
answers
18k
views
How to manage mounted partitions (fstab + mount points) from puppet
I want to manage the mounted partitions from puppet which includes both modifying /etc/fstab and creating the directories used as mount points. The mount resource type updates fstab just fine, but ...
- 6,442
14
votes
2
answers
18k
views
Use puppet to set hostname?
Is there any way of setting a server's hostname using puppet?
I could write a custom type, but maybe there's a simpler way.
Thanks
[Edit]
Sorry, I should've mentioned I run puppet masterless, ...
- 905
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votes
3
answers
11k
views
How to manually create Puppet CA and certificates?
I am wondering how to manually (using openssl instead of puppet ca command) create CA that would be usable by Puppet? The goal would be to script creation of such CA's to deploy them on multiple ...
- 251
13
votes
5
answers
4k
views
Fixing services that have been disabled in /etc/default/ with puppet?
I'm using puppet to (theoretically) get npcd to start upon installation, however on Ubuntu, that service comes installed with the default setting in /etc/default/npcd of RUN="no":
$ cat /etc/...
- 20.5k
13
votes
3
answers
1k
views
Notified when a file controlled by puppet is going to be changed by yum
Is it possible to receive a notification on the console when a package containing a file that is controlled by puppet is about to change that file? Meaning, in yum when doing yum update, is it ...
- 611
13
votes
4
answers
12k
views
Puppet: Get users home directory
I am creating a user as follow
user { $username:
comment => "$name",
shell => "$shell",
managehome => false,
password => "$password",
groups => $groups
}
Now ...
- 4,443
13
votes
2
answers
7k
views
Puppet: how to create and manage unix users and groups
This last week I spent all effort into learning Puppet. Now I suffer from a mental buffer overflow and little confidence of ever being able to tame this beast. I came across many annotated examples ...
- 1,709