How to manage mounted partitions (fstab + mount points) from puppet

Question

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 using file for creating the mount points is a bit tricky.

For example, by default the owner of the directory is root and if the root (/) of the mounted partition has another owner, puppet will try to change it and I don't want this. I know that I can set the owner of that directory, but why should I care what's on the mounted partition? All I want to do is mount it. Is there a way to make puppet not to care about the permissions of the directory used as the mount point?

This is what I'm using right now:

define extra_mount_point(
    $device,
    $location = "/mnt",
    $fstype = "xfs",
    $owner = "root",
    $group = "root",
    $mode = 0755,
    $seltype = "public_content_t"
    $options = "ro,relatime,nosuid,nodev,noexec",
) {
    file { "${location}/${name}":
        ensure  => directory,
        owner   => "${owner}",
        group   => "${group}",
        mode    => $mode,
        seltype => "${seltype}",
    }

    mount { "${location}/${name}":
        atboot  => true,
        ensure  => mounted,
        device  => "${device}",
        fstype  => "${fstype}",
        options => "${options}",
        dump    => 0,
        pass    => 2,
        require => File["${location}/${name}"],
    }
}

extra_mount_point { "sda3": 
    device   => "/dev/sda3",
    fstype   => "xfs",
    owner    => "ciupicri",
    group    => "ciupicri",
    $options => "relatime,nosuid,nodev,noexec",
}

In case it matters, I'm using puppet-0.25.4-1.fc13.noarch.rpm and puppet-server-0.25.4-1.fc13.noarch.rpm.

---

P.S. undef works fine for owner, group and permissions, but not for SELinux. If the partitions are already mounted, puppet complains:

puppetd[18052]: Failed to set SELinux context system_u:object_r:public_content_t:s0 on /mnt/sda3
puppetd[18052]: (/File[/mnt/sda3]/seluser) seluser changed 'unconfined_u' to 'system_u'
puppetd[18052]: Failed to set SELinux context unconfined_u:object_r:mnt_t:s0 on /mnt/sda3
puppetd[18052]: (/File[/mnt/sda3]/seltype) seltype changed 'public_content_t' to 'mnt_t'

The permissions of the mounted partition are:

drwxr-xr-x. root root unconfined_u:object_r:public_content_t:s0 /mnt/sda3/

while the permissions of mount point created by puppet are:

 drwxr-xr-x. root root system_u:object_r:mnt_t:s0       /mnt/sda3/

---

P.P.S. I have reported a bug for this strange behavior.

Answer 1

You can tell Puppet not to manage a given metaparameter by setting it to undef.

file { "${location}/${name}":
    ensure                  => directory,
    owner                   => undef,
    group                   => undef,
    mode                    => undef,
    selinux_ignore_defaults => true,
}

In this event, if the directory doesn't exist before mounting, it will be created as the user and group which puppetd was started as (presumably root:wheel) and with a default umask. Puppet won't care about what these are set to at the time of creation or on any subsequent runs.

---

Alternatively, if you wanted to trade a little complexity for assurance, you could use a custom fact to determine what the active mounts are and a switch statement to set the directory permissions depending on whether it is pre- or post- mounted.

Answer 2

Not really an answer but this has been fixed in puppet 2.6.7: http://projects.puppetlabs.com/issues/3999

Answer 3

I have a custom fact (works with Linux only ATM) that will return all the currently mounted local mounts on a system. It's horribly simple, but works for me -- looks like you might find some use for it as well. Anyway, I threw it up on github: https://github.com/justintime/puppet/tree/master/justintime-localmounts