##1. Introduction
Puppet is a well-known software configuration utility. I use it to prepare Vagrant boxes. It can be seen as an abstraction layer, that helps one to define resources in a platform independent way.
A resource can be almost anything that you deal with when you set up a new server or reconfigure an existing one. It can be:
- a file (e.g.
/etc/hosts) - a single line in a file
- a deamon (e.g.
httpd,sshd) - a software package (e.g.
git,mc,lynx) - a command (e.g.
make ...,wget ...) - etc.
If you don’t know any software configuration solution Puppet is definitely worth trying.
##2. First step: resources
The first step to master Puppet is to get acquainted with resources.
The complete documentation for resources is available on Puppet’s site
##3. How to use the examples?
The examples I prepared are mostly trivial and self documented. To run them, one by one, create a local clone:
$ git clone git@github.com:by-examples/puppet-by-examples.git
$ cd puppet-by-examples
Then you need to boot the VM.
You can change the system within puppet-by-examples/Vagrantfile:
- Ubuntu 12.04
- Ubuntu 14.04
- CentOS 6.5
- CentOS 7.0
The instruction that follows was written for Ubuntu 14.04 (this is the default setting).
Run:
# Host OS
$ vagrant up
$ vagrant ssh
Once in guest, change the current directory to /vagrant:
# Guest OS
$ cd /vagrant
Now, you can run the Puppet examples that I have prepared.
The command:
$ puppet apply 01-resources/notify/notify-1.pp
will execute the example notify-1.pp.
To learn basics of Puppet:
- run the example
- take a look at the source code
##4. The Examples
I suggest you to work in the following order:
- notify (directory
01-resources/notify/) - file (directory
01-resources/file/) - array (directory
01-resources/array/) - package (directory
01-resources/package/) - define (directory
01-resources/define/) - download-file (directory
01-resources/download-file/) - ordering (directory
01-resources/ordering/) - stdlib (directory
01-resources/stdlib/) - well-known-modules (directory
01-resources/well-known-modules/)
Some of the examples need root privileges and additional software.
Take a look at the example
01-resources/well-known-modules/puppetlabs-apache-1.pp.
You will find in this example the following comment:
# Ubuntu
# sudo puppet module install puppetlabs-apache --version 1.2.0
# sudo puppet apply puppetlabs-apache-1.pp
# sudo apt-get install lynx-cur -y
# lynx by-examples.lh
It means, that in order to run the example in Ubuntu, you have to execute the following commands:
# Guest OS
$ sudo puppet module install puppetlabs-apache --version 1.2.0
$ sudo puppet apply puppetlabs-apache-1.pp
$ sudo apt-get install lynx-cur -y
$ lynx by-examples.lh
The command:
$ sudo puppet apply puppetlabs-apache-1.pp
will work only in
01-resources/well-known-modules/ directory.
You have to proceed it with:
cd 01-resources/well-known-modules/
##5. The Examples
You will find the source code of the example on GitHub.
##6. Reading list
