Puppet - How to set up - A simple Puppet Master and Puppet Client setup

Let me illustrate a simple set up of Puppet master and Puppet client, where a file /tmp/puppet-test-file will be automatically created in client once it is setup in Puppet master.

Puppet Master - 192.168.1.33

Puppet Client - 192.168.2.101

Setting up Puppet Master

Install puppet, puppet-server, facter 

      yum install puppet puppet-server facter

Puppet’s principal configuration file is puppet.conf

   In OpenSource Puppet, puppet.conf file is generally in the path

    /etc/puppet/puppet.conf

  In Puppet Enterprise:

    /etc/puppetlabs/puppet/puppet.conf

When running Puppet Master as normal user, puppet.conf file can be placed in

   /home/user/.puppet/puppet.conf

Here we are using OpenSource puppet. So edited /etc/puppet/puppet.conf file to add the following content

[master]

  certname=192.168.1.33

Create Puppet site.pp file

    touch /etc/puppet/manifests/site.pp

Initialize site.pp with following contents

    import ‘nodes.pp’

Now create a file nodes.pp for Node Definitions

   touch /etc/puppet/manifests/nodes.pp

Add default node definitions in nodes.pp, so that it becomes applicable to all the agents connecting to it.

node default {

       file { "/tmp/puppet-test-file":
         replace => "no", # this is the important property
         ensure  => "present",
         content => "From Puppet\n",
         mode    => 644,
       }

}

Start Puppet Master

  service puppet master start

Puppetmaster listens on port 8140

   netstat -anp | grep ruby

Puppet Client(192.168.2.101) configuration steps

Install puppet and facter

  yum install puppet facter

Edit /etc/puppet/puppet.conf to add master server details

   server=192.168.1.33

Before starting puppet service in client machine(192.168.1.33), run the command

    puppet agent —test

  Exiting: no certificate found and waitforcert is disabled

In the puppet master(192.168.1.33) run the command

  puppet cert list

  "centos32" (18:B9:34:16:B9:37:1C:59:7D:2B:DF:EE:FE:0F:C9:8A)



Now accept the cert request by running the following command in puppet master(192.168.1.33)

   puppet cert sign centos32

notice: Signed certificate request for centos32

notice: Removing file Puppet::SSL::CertificateRequest centos32 at '/var/lib/puppet/ssl/ca/requests/centos32.pem'

In puppet client(192.168.2.101, centos32) start the puppet client  

        service puppet start

On puppet client(agent - 192.168.2.101), now just observe the entries for puppet in /var/log/messages

Jan 19 11:41:07 centos32 puppet-agent[2027]: (/Stage[main]//Node[default]/File[/tmp/puppet-test-file]/ensure) created

Jan 19 11:41:07 centos32 puppet-agent[2027]: Finished catalog run in 0.04 seconds

Verification

Check if the file /tmp/puppet-test-file is present in puppet client machine 192.168.2.101

[root@centos32 ~]# ls -l /tmp/puppet-test-file 

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12 Jan 19 11:41 /tmp/puppet-test-file