Puppet Installation

Installing the Puppet Master

Download and verify the appropriate PE tarball.

Tip: Be sure to download the full PE tarball, not the agent-only tarball. The agent-only tarball is used for package management-based agent installation which is not covered by this guide.
Unpack the tarball. (Run tar -xf <tarball>.)
From the PE installer directory, run sudo ./puppet-enterprise-installer.
When prompted, choose “Yes” to install the setup packages. (If you choose “No,” the installer will exit.)

At this point, the PE installer will start a web server and provide a web address: https://<install platform hostname>:3000. Please ensure that port 3000 is reachable. If necessary, you can close port 3000 when the installation is complete. Also be sure to use https.

Warning: Leave your terminal connection open until the installation is complete; otherwise the installation will fail.
Copy the address into your browser.
When prompted, accept the security request in your browser.

The web-based installation uses a default SSL certificate; you’ll have to add a security exception in order to access the web-based installer. This is safe to do.

You’ll be taken to the installer start page.
On the start page, click Let’s get started.
Next, you’ll be asked to choose your deployment type. Select Monolithic.
Provide the following information about the puppet master server:

a. Puppet master FQDN: provide the fully qualified domain name of the server you’re installing PE on; for example, master.example.com.

b. DNS aliases: provide a comma-separated list of aliases agent nodes can use to reach to the master; for example master.

c. SSH Username: provide the SSH username for the user connecting to the puppet master; in this case, root.
When prompted about database support, choose the default option Install PostgreSQL for me.
Provide the following information about the PE console administrator user:

a. Console superuser email address: provide the address you’ll use to log in to the console as the administrator.

b. Console superuser passphrase: create a password for the console login; as indicated, the password must be at least eight characters.
For SMTP Hostname use localhost.
Click Submit.
On the confirm plan page, review the information you provided, and, if it looks correct, clickContinue.

If you need to make any changes, click Go Back and make whatever changes are required.
On the validation page, the installer will verify various configuration elements (e.g., if SSH credentials are correct, if there is enough disk space, and if the OS is the same for the various components). If there aren’t any outstanding issues, click Deploy now.

The installer will then install and configure Puppet Enterprise. It may also need to install additional packages from your OS’s repository. This process may take up to 10-15 minutes. When the installation is complete, the installer script that was running in the terminal will close itself.

You have now installed the puppet master node. As indicated by the installer, the puppet master node is also an agent node, and can configure itself the same way it configures the other nodes in a deployment. Stay logged in as root for further exercises.

Log in to the Console

To log in to the console, you can select the Start Using Puppet Enterprise Now button that appears at the end of the web-based installer or follow the steps below.

On your control workstation, open a web browser and point it to the address supplied by the installer; for example, https://master.example.com. You will receive a warning about an untrusted certificate. This is because you were the signing authority for the console’s certificate, and your Puppet Enterprise deployment is not known to the major browser vendors as a valid signing authority.Ignore the warning and accept the certificate. The steps to do this vary by browser.
On the login page for the console, log in with the email address and password you provided when installing the puppet master.

The console GUI loads in your browser.

Installing the Puppet Enterprise Agent

Note: This procedure references RHEL and Debian, but it can be used for all supported platforms except Windows. For instructions on installing agents on Windows, refer to the Windows agent installation instructions.

Tip: If you don’t have internet connectivity, refer to Installing Agents in a Puppet Enterprise Infrastructure without Internet Access to choose a method that is suitable for your needs.

The puppet master that you’ve installed hosts a package repository for the agent of the same OS and architecture as the puppet master. When you run the installation script on your agent (for example, curl -k https://<master.example.com>:8140/packages/current/install.bash | sudo bash), the script will detect the OS on which it is running, set up an apt (or yum, or zypper) repo that refers back to the master, pull down and install the pe-agent packages.

Puppet Master Server: 172.16.3.100

CentOS Puppet Client Install: curl -k https://172.16.3.100:8140/packages/current/install.bash| bash

Note that if install.bash can’t find agent packages corresponding to the agent’s platform, it will fail with an error message telling you which pe_repo class you need to add to the master.

If your agent is the same OS and architecture as the puppet master, run the script above to set up the agent, and then continue on to Connecting Agents to the Master

If your master OS and architecture is different than the agent (for example, the master is on a node running RHEL6 and you want to add an agent node running Debian 6 on AMD64 hardware) follow this example:

On the console, click the Add classes button in the sidebar:
Search for the pe_repo::platform::debian_6_amd64 class in the list of classes, and click its checkbox to select it. Click the Add selected classes button at the bottom of the page.
Navigate to the master.example.com node page, click the Edit button, and begin typing “pe_repo::platform::debian_6_amd64” in the Classes field; you can select thepe_repo::platform::debian_6_amd64 class from the list of autocomplete suggestions.
Click the Update button after you have selected it.
Note that the pe_repo::platform::debian_6_amd64 class now appears in the list of classes for the master.example.com node.
Navigate to the live management page, and select the Control Puppet tab. Use the runonce action to trigger a puppet run.

The new repo will be created in /opt/puppet/packages/public. It will be called puppet-enterprise-3.3.0-debian-6-amd64-agent.
SSH into the Debian node where you want to install the agent, and run curl -k https://<master.example.com>:8140/packages/current/install.bash | sudo bash.

The installer will then install and configure the Puppet Enterprise agent.

You have now installed the puppet agent node. Stay logged in as root for further exercises.

Connecting Agents to the Master

After installing, the agent nodes are not yet allowed to fetch configurations from the puppet master; they must be explicitly approved and granted a certificate.

Approving the Certificate Request

During installation, the agent node contacted the puppet master and requested a certificate. To add the node to the console and to start managing its configuration, you’ll need to approve its request on the puppet master. This is most easily done via the console.

From the console, note the pending node requests indicator in the upper right corner. Click it to load a list of currently pending node requests.
Click the Accept All button to approve all the requests and add the nodes.

The puppet agents can now retrieve configurations from the master the next time puppet runs.

Testing the Agent Nodes

During this walkthrough, we will be running the puppet agent interactively. By default, the agent runs in the background and fetches configurations from the puppet master every 30 minutes. (This interval is configurable with the runinterval setting in puppet.conf.) However, you can also trigger a puppet run manually from the command line.

On the agent node, log in as root and run puppet agent --test on the command line. This will trigger a single puppet run on the agent with verbose logging.

Note: You may receive a -bash: puppet: command not found error; this is due to the fact that PE installs its binaries in /opt/puppet/bin and /opt/puppet/sbin, which aren’t included in your default $PATH. To include these binaries in your default $PATH, manually add them to your profile or run PATH=/opt/puppet/bin:$PATH;export PATH.
Note the long string of log messages, which should end with notice: Finished catalog run in [...] seconds.

You are now fully managing the agent node. It has checked in with the puppet master for the first time and received its configuration info. It will continue to check in and fetch new configurations every 30 minutes. The node will also appear in the console, where you can make changes to its configuration by assigning classes and modifying the values of class parameters.

Viewing the Agent Node in the Console

Click Nodes in the primary navigation bar. You’ll see various UI elements, which show a summary of recent puppet runs and their status. Notice that the master and any agent nodes appear in the list of nodes:
Explore the console. Note that if you click on a node to view its details, you can see its recent history, the Puppet classes it receives, and a very large list of inventory information about it. See here for more information about navigating the console.

You now know how to find detailed information about any node PE is managing, including its status, inventory details, and the results of its last puppet run.

Avoiding the Wait

Although the puppet agent is now fully functional on the agent node, some other Puppet Enterprise software is not; specifically, the daemon that listens for orchestration messages is not yet configured. This is because Puppet Enterprise uses Puppet to configure itself.

Puppet Enterprise does this automatically within 30 minutes of a node’s first check-in. To speed up the process and avoid the wait, do the following:

On the console, use the sidebar to navigate to the mcollective group:
Check the list of nodes at the bottom of the page for agent1.example.com — depending on your timing, it may already be present. If so, skip to “on each agent node” below.
If agent1 is not a member of the group already, click the Edit button:
In the nodes field, begin typing agent1.example.com’s name. You can then select it from the list of autocompletion guesses. Click the Update button after you have selected it.
On each agent node, run puppet agent --test again, as described above. Note the long string of log messages related to the pe_mcollective class.

In a normal environment, you would usually skip these steps and allow orchestration to come on-line when Puppet runs automatically.

The agent node can now respond to orchestration messages and its resources can be viewed live in the console.

Using Live Management to Control Agent Nodes

Live management uses Puppet Enterprise’s orchestration features to view and edit resources in real time. It can also trigger puppet runs and perform other orchestration tasks.

On the console, click the Live Management tab in the top navigation.
Note that the master and the agent nodes are all listed in the sidebar.

Discovering Resources

Note that you are currently in the Browse Resources tab.
Choose user resources from the list of resource types, then click the Find Resources button:
Examine the complete list of user accounts found on all of the nodes currently selected in the sidebar node list. (In this case, both the master and the agent node are selected.) Most of the users will be identical, as these machines are very close to a default OS install, but some users related to the puppet master’s functionality are only on one node:
Click on any user to view details about its properties and where it is present.

The other resource types work in a similar manner. Choose the node(s) whose resources you wish to browse. Select a resource type, click Find Resources to discover the resource on the selected nodes, click on one of the resulting found resources to see details about it.

Triggering Puppet Runs

Rather than using the command line to kick off puppet runs with puppet agent -t one at a time, you can use live management to run Puppet on several selected nodes.

On the console, in the live management page, click the Control Puppet tab.
Make sure one or more nodes are selected with the node selector on the left.
Click the runonce action to reveal the red Run button and additional options, and then click the Runbutton to run Puppet on the selected nodes.

Note: You can’t always use the runonce action’s additional options — with *nix nodes, you must stop the pe-puppet service before you can use options like noop. See this note in the orchestration section of the manual for more details.

You have just triggered a puppet run on several agents at once; in this case, the master and the agent node. The runonce action will trigger a puppet run on every node currently selected in the sidebar.

When using this action in production deployments, select target nodes carefully, as running it on dozens or hundreds of nodes at once can strain the Puppet master server. If you need to do an immediate Puppet run on many nodes, you should use the orchestration command line to do a controlled run series.

Installing Modules

Puppet configures nodes by applying classes to them. Classes are chunks of Puppet code that configure a specific aspect or feature of a machine.

Puppet classes are distributed in the form of modules. You can save time by using pre-existing modules. Pre-existing modules are distributed on the Puppet Forge, and can be installed with thepuppet module subcommand. Any module installed on the Puppet master can be used to configure agent nodes.

Installing a Forge Module

We will install a Puppet Enterprise supported module: puppetlabs-ntp. While you can use any module available on the Forge, PE customers can take advantage of supported modules which are supported, tested, and maintained by Puppet Labs.

On your control workstation, point your browser to http://forge.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs/ntp. This is the Forge listing for a module that installs, configures, and manages the NTP service.

On the puppet master, run puppet module search ntp. This searches for modules from the Puppet Forge with ntp in their names or descriptions and results in something like:

 Searching http://forgeapi.puppetlabs.com ...
 NAME             DESCRIPTION                                                 AUTHOR        KEYWORDS
 puppetlabs-ntp   NTP Module                                                  @puppetlabs   ntp aix
 saz-ntp          UNKNOWN                                                     @saz          ntp OEL
 thias-ntp        Network Time Protocol...                                    @thias        ntp ntpd
 warriornew-ntp   ntp setup                                                   @warriornew   ntp

We want puppetlabs-ntp, which is the PE supported NTP module. You can view detailed info about the module in the “Read Me” on the Forge page you just visited:http://forge.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs/ntp.

Install the module by running puppet module install puppetlabs-ntp:

 Preparing to install into /etc/puppetlabs/puppet/modules ...
 Notice: Downloading from http://forgeapi.puppetlabs.com ...
 Notice: Installing -- do not interrupt ...
 /etc/puppetlabs/puppet/modules
 └── puppetlabs-ntp (v3.0.1)

You have just installed a Puppet module. All of the classes in it are now available to be added to the console and assigned to nodes.

There are many more modules, including PE supported modules, on the Forge. In part two of this guide you’ll learn more about modules, including customizing and writing your own modules on either Windowsor *nix platforms.

Using Modules in the PE Console

Every module contains one or more classes. Classes are named chunks of puppet code and are the primary means by which Puppet configures nodes. The module you just installed contains a class calledntp. To use any class, you must first tell the console about it and then assign it to one or more nodes.

On the console, click the Add classes button in the sidebar:
Locate the ntp class in the list of classes, and click its checkbox to select it. Click the Add selected classes button at the bottom of the page.
Navigate to the default group page (by clicking the link in the Groups menu in the sidebar), click theEdit button, and begin typing “ntp” in the Classes field; you can select the ntp class from the list of autocomplete suggestions. Click the Update button after you have selected it.
Note that the ntp class now appears in the list of classes for the default group. Also note that thedefault group contains your master and agent.
Navigate to the live management page, and select the Control Puppet tab. Use the runonce action to trigger a puppet run on both the master and the agent. This will configure the nodes using the newly-assigned classes. Wait one or two minutes.
On the agent, stop the NTP service.

Note: the NTP service name may vary depending on your operating system; for example, on Debian nodes, the service name is “NTP.”
Run ntpdate us.pool.ntp.org. The result should resemble the following:

28 Jan 17:12:40 ntpdate[27833]: adjust time server 50.18.44.19 offset 0.057045 sec
Finally, restart the NTP service.

Puppet is now managing NTP on the nodes in the default group. So, for example, if you forget to restart the NTP service on one of those nodes after running ntpdate, PE will automatically restart it on the next puppet run.

Setting Class Parameters

You can use the console to set the values of the class parameters of nodes by selecting a node and then clicking Edit parameters in the list of classes. For example, you want to specify an NTP server for a given node.

Click a node in the node list.
On the node view page, click the Edit button.
Find NTP in the class list, and click Edit Parameters.
Enter a value for the parameter you wish to set (e.g., time.apple.com) in the box next to the serversparameter.

The grey text that appears as values for some parameters is the default value, which can be either a literal value or a Puppet variable. You can restore this value with the Reset value control that appears next to the value after you have entered a custom value.

For more information, see the page on classifying nodes with the console.

Viewing Changes with Event Inspector

The event inspector lets you view and research changes and other events. Click the Events tab in the main navigation bar. The event inspector window is displayed, showing the default view: classes with failures. Note that in the summary pane on the left, one event, a successful change, has been recorded for Nodes. However, there are two changes for Classes and Resources. This is because the NTP class loaded from the Puppetlabs-ntp module contains additional classes—a class that handles the configuration of NTP (Ntp::Config)and a class that handles the NTP service (Ntp::Service).

You can click on events in the summary pane to inspect them in detail. For example, if you click With Changes in the Classes: with events summary view, the main pane will show you that the Ntp::Configand Ntp::Service classes were successfully added when you triggered the last puppet run.

You can keep clicking to drill down and see more detail. You can click the previous arrow (left of the summary pane), the bread-crumb trail at the top of the page, or bookmark a page for later reference (but note that after subsequent puppet runs, the bookmarks may be different when you revisit them). Eventually, you will end up at a run summary that shows you the details of the event. For example, you can see exactly which piece of puppet code was responsible for generating the event; in this case, it was line 15 of the service.pp manifest and line 21 of the config.pp manifest.

If PE was unable to apply this class, the information would tell you exactly what piece of code you need to fix. In this case, you can see that PE is now managing NTP.

In the upper right corner of the detail pane is a link to a run report which contains information about the puppet run that made the change, including metrics about the run, logs, and more information. Visit thereports page for more information.

Pasted from: <https://docs.puppetlabs.com/pe/latest/quick_start.html>

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