Puppet Management with Dual Boot Workstation

[Neil M]

Hi everyone, I'm trying to figure out what is the best way to handle a single system that dual boots with a puppet client running in each.  In this case we are talking about Ubuntu 12.04 and Windows 8.  Should I just copy the certificate from one OS to the other?  Should I have a different certificate for each OS?  In this case can they have the same hostname, as it is the same IP address for both OSes?  Can I somehow use a different hostname for each that doesn't match DNS?  I understand from a client point of view it probably doesn't matter a whole lot, but I am also using Foreman (and I imagine Puppet Dashboard would have a similar issue) and I'd like to be able to check on the facts and status of both Ubuntu and Windows at any given time, not just the OS that happens to be running at the moment.  Thanks!

Neil

[Paul Tötterman]

Hi,

I'm trying to figure out what is the best way to handle a single system that dual boots with a puppet client running in each.  In this case we are talking about Ubuntu 12.04 and Windows 8.  Should I just copy the certificate from one OS to the other?  Should I have a different certificate for each OS?  In this case can they have the same hostname, as it is the same IP address for both OSes?  Can I somehow use a different hostname for each that doesn't match DNS?  I understand from a client point of view it probably doesn't matter a whole lot, but I am also using Foreman (and I imagine Puppet Dashboard would have a similar issue) and I'd like to be able to check on the facts and status of both Ubuntu and Windows at any given time, not just the OS that happens to be running at the moment.

Puppet nodes are usually not identified based on hostname, but rather based on certificate name (which is usually the same as hostname). You most likely do not want to just copy the certificate over. I just run the initial puppet runs with --certname $hostname-$os.$domain to have separate certificates for each installation. Also my puppet.conf template has certname = <%= @clientcert %> , so that whatever is specified on the command line on the first run sticks.

Cheers,

Paul

[Neil M]

Great, that makes sense, thanks!