Puppet

Puppet

Overview

Competitors to Puppet
Local Installation
Linux installs
Config
Resources
Start service
Manifests Declaration
Puppet Module
PuppetMaster Server
Resource Declaration
More Learning Resources
More on IoT

This article currently contains my notes about installing and using Puppet.

Competitors to Puppet

Puppet is used to automate a way to ensure that all servers have consistent configuration. was created in 2005 by Luke Kanies. Commercialization began in 2011 at puppet.com.

Also in the configuration management software market:

SaltStack Enterprise
Enterprise Chef (requires Ruby skills)
Ansible
CF Engine (first relased 1993)

In 2016, Puppet is seeing customers move to Ansible. But Puppet skills are still in demand.

Puppet can do this across different versions of different operating systems! This is possible because Puppet manifest files are declarative in that they specify the configuration desired (the “what”), whereas server shell scripts are more complicated since they specify procedural (the “how”), which differ for different operating systems.

Local Installation

https://Virtualbox.org/wiki/downloads

https://www.VagrantUp.com/downloads.html

Linux installs

Install an Apache web server on Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install apache2

On Redhat:

sudo yum install httpd
yum repolist

Puppet install on CentOS:

sudo yum install puppet-agent #CentOS
sudo apt-get install puppet-agent 
sudo rpm -Uvh \
https://yum.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs-release-pc1-e1-7-noarch.rpm

Puppet 4 introduced Puppet-collections to ensure that dependency packages such as heira, facter, and ruby are consistent to a given Puppet version.

On Ubuntu, “trusty” is the code name for the 14.04 Debian repo:

wget https://apt.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs-release-pc1-trusty.deb
sudo dpkg -i puppetlabs-release-pc1-trusty.deb
sudo apt-get update

Puppet all-in-one client install (without the -y to see dependencies):

sudo yum install puppet-agent #CentOS
sudo apt-get install puppet-agent #Ubuntu

Config

Verify on any platform:
```
puppet agent --version
```
Instead of printing all values, specify specific values:
```
puppet config print certname
puppet config print { confdir rundir  ssldir  vardir  runinterval }
```
NOTE: The default environmenttimeout is 5 minutes when a server is checked for changes.

The runinterval default is 1800 (30 minutes).

confdir yields where the conf directory is (changed from “puppet” in v3):
```
/etc/puppetlabs/puppet
```
vardir yields where the variable directory is (changed from v3):
```
/opt/puppetlabs/puppet/cache
```
PROTIP: Add in the path within your bash profile file symlinks to folder:
```
<strong>/opt/puppetlabs/bin</strong>
```
the symlinks resolve to:
```
/opt/puppetlabs/puppet/bin
```
Direct editing takes a few less microseconds to run (and faster to read) than checking every time:
```
if ! echo $PATH | grep -q /opt/puppetlabs/bi ; then
   export PATH=$PATH:/opt/puppetlabs/bin
fi
```

Edit secure_path in visudo file:

sudo visudo

Add to end:

secure_path=/sbin:/bin/:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin<strong>:/opt/puppetlabs/bin</strong>

Resources

For an individual’s information:
```
sudo puppet resource user bob
```

Pipe status info about a service to a manifest file:

sudo puppet resource service puppet > puppet-service.pp

the response in the file is:

service { 'puppet':
  ensure => 'stopped',
  enable => 'false',
}

Pipe the status info to a manifest file:

PROTIP: Like Ansible, Puppet configurations are idempotent (a combination of two Latin words “idem” = the same and “potent”=power), meaning that the same script runs several times will result in the same result. Something not created will be created when the job runs. Something created already will not result in a “already exists” error.

Resource declarations are text files ending in .pp. The Puppet Apply program reads such files.

They specify each node’s Type (Package, File, or Service) , Title (such as ‘ntp’), Attributes/Parameters, Provider:

node 'appserver01' {
  package { 'ntp':
    ensure => 'installed';
  }
  file { '/etc/readme.txt':
    ensure  => 'present',
    content => "This file.",
  }
  file { 'Readme':
    ensure  => 'present',
    content => "This file.",
    path => "/etc/readme.txt",
  }
  service { 'ntpd':
    ensure  => 'running',
    enable  => true,
  }
}

List available resources:
```
sudo puppet describe --list
```

Start service

   systemctl start puppet

Then:

   sudo puppet apply puppet-service.pp

Manifests Declaration

Text files ending in .pp are Puppet manifest declarations read by the Puppet Apply program.

Create a “hello world” manifest

To validate:

sudo puppet parser validate puppet-service.pp

To run dynamically, instead of a .pp file:

sudo puppet apply -e "notify { 'Hello world!' : }"

Example responses are rather verbose:

Notice: Compiled catalog for centos7 in environment production in 0.05 seconds
Notice: Hello world!
Notice: /Stage[main]/Main/Notify[Hello world!]/message: defined 'message' as 'Hellow world!'
Notice: Applied catalog in 0.05 seconds

To view the last file:
```
cat !$
```
PROTIP: See Puppet’s Style Guide

Puppet Module

Puppet modules in module forge.

Install a custom module:

sudo puppet module install theurbanpenguin/puppet_vim
include puppet_vim

What modules have been installed?

sudo puppet module list

These are storred in:

/etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/production/modules

PuppetMaster Server

A PuppetMaster server, a Ruby on Rails app running on Linux (Centos).

When working in the cloud, many are moving away from PuppetMaster servers but still using Puppet server definition files.

Each node runs an agent which can be Unix (BSD and Mac OSX), even Windows.

Nodes connect to the PM over port 8140.

The master creates and maintains a catalog of nodes.

The facter collects facts from each node (OS, CPU, network, block devices, etc.).

Resource Declaration

More Learning Resources

Ben Piper (@_benpiper) in

Puppet Fundamentals for System Administrators for Beginners Feb 11, 2015 5h 31m provides https://github.com/benpiper/puppet-fundamentals-lab to show how to use Git to manage Puppet configurations which bring up a Puppet Master on CentOs controlling PHP-based MediaWiki website based on Apache and MySQL on both CentOS 6.5 and Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS. Each servers requires 2 GB RAM and 20 GB disks. Additionally, a winadmin 2008 R2 server for Admin. is stood up using 40 GB.

Andrew Mallett (from the UK at @theurbanpenguin) created in-depth video tutorials using CentOS 7.2 and Ubuntu 14.04 KVMs, which both use the same systemd upstart service manager commands.

Will Button

Building, Testing, and Deploying Professional Puppet Modules Jul 20, 2016 3h 54m

More on IoT

This is one of a series on IoT:

NOTE: Pages about GE’s Predix have been removed.

Wilson Mar