Daily Puppet - 1

Puppet is an open source framework and toolset for managing the configuration of computer systems.

From sometime, I wanted to learn some tricks on Puppet.This weekend I finally made up my mind and did some very basic stuff with puppet

My goal was to push a file resource from the puppet server to the client. I used the Ubuntu 12.04 machines for testing. If one doesn’t want to install the whole thing then, pre-configured VM can be downloaded from http://info.puppetlabs.com/download-learning-puppet-VM.html

So, lets start.

Installing Puppet master on Linux

aptitude install puppetmaster

Installing Puppet client

aptitude install puppet

Connecting the Puppet Client to the Server

puppet cert –sign “desktop”

We have to sign the client

puppet cert –sign “desktop”

Output :

notice: Signed certificate request for my-desktop

notice: Removing file Puppet::SSL::CertificateRequest my-desktop at ‘/var/lib/puppet/ssl/ca/requ

Creating the First Manifest

On the server move to folder /etc/puppet/manifests, create a “node.pp” file,

gedit nodes.pp


node ‘my-desktop’ {

                               file { “/tmp/hello.txt”:

                              content => “Hello, My First Manifest”,

                             }

}

Create “site.pp” in the same folder

gedit sites.pp

import ‘nodes.pp’

$puppetserver = ‘ubuntu.home’

From the client run the command

puppet agent –test

Output :

info: Caching catalog for my-desktop

info: Applying configuration version ’1370675206′

notice: Finished catalog run in 0.03 seconds

After this when we check the /tmp/ folder , we can see the file is in tmp folder on the client.

What Just happened ?

I am a beginner on the puppet. My Explanations may not be right, but these are my observations.

We installed a Puppet Master server

We installed a Puppet client

Added the client to the Puppet Masters visibility,i.e. server-client interaction

Created first Manifest. A “Manifest” is a puppet’s way of telling the configuration information to the client.Example :

If we see the nodes.pp file, there is a Resource, which a “File Resource”, called “hello.txt” defined for a client “my-desktop with the content “Hello, My first Manifest ”. A resource should be applied to the client when client requests it. This can be a package or file etc. (this case it is a file).

When puppet client contacts the server for the resource, it will get the file in its “tmp ” folder. (Resource is “/tmp/hello.txt”)

So for now, this just a beginning of my date with Puppet.