Re: [Puppet Users] Puppet Configuration - Running --configprint generates long list of values

[Craig White]

On Jun 20, 2012, at 12:38 PM, Mike Reed wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I fairly new to puppet and google groups so I'll apologize in advance for not conforming to "normal" posting methods.
>
> I've recently installed puppetmaster on a fresh copy of Ubuntu 10.04LTS and after running: sudo puppet --configprint all, I get a long list of parameters and values echoed back to my shell. My question is where do these parameters and values come from? I've taken a look at my puppet.conf file (which I believe is located in the proper place of: /etc/puppet/puppet.conf) and it looks like this:
>
> [main]
> logdir=/var/log/puppet
> vardir=/var/lib/puppet
> ssldir=/var/lib/puppet/ssl
> rundir=/var/run/puppet
> factpath=$vardir/lib/facter
> templatedir=$confdir/templates
>
> [master]
> # These are needed when the puppetmaster is run by passenger
> # and can safely be removed if webrick is used.
> ssl_client_header = SSL_CLIENT_S_DN
> ssl_client_verify_header = SSL_CLIENT_VERIFY
>
> Clearly these values of the ''--configprint -all" command are coming from somewhere else and I can't seem to find the answer.
>
> I've read that puppet will read values from a users home directory if the puppet service is not running as root but I'm not sure that's something I should be concerned with at the moment.
----
--configprint will supplement anything not specifically configured in puppet.conf with its own defaults. Thus you can 'override' any of the defaults by specifically declaring them in the appropriate section of puppet.conf

Craig

[Nick Fagerlund]

On Wednesday, June 20, 2012 12:38:58 PM UTC-7, Mike Reed wrote:

 My question is where do these parameters and values come from?  I've taken a look at my puppet.conf file...

Defaults! Even if you only SET a few settings in puppet.conf, all of the POSSIBLE settings still have values. These default values are set in a file called defaults.rb, which is part of Puppet's code. See it here: https://github.com/puppetlabs/puppet/blob/master/lib/puppet/defaults.rb Or you can see the config reference at http://docs.puppetlabs.com/references/latest/configuration.html --- that explains most of the default values.

You'll notice that many settings are set *in terms of* other settings, so that you end up only really having to set a small core group of settings.

What is that small core group? Well... that's kind of tricky to tease out, actually. The historical context is that we've tended to make every global constant in Puppet's code into a configurable setting, and the result is that we have over 200 of them. We know that's a problem; a lot of the work we're doing these days can be summarized as "reduce configuration, make things more knowable." But once you add a configurable knob, someone might start using it, and removing it becomes a lot harder than not having put it in would have been.

But the list of the most important settings here (http://docs.puppetlabs.com/guides/configuring.html#puppets-settings) is a good place to start. You won't need to know much more than that for a while.

[Mike Reed]

Thank you for the reply Craig.  That makes sense and points me in the right direction.

Thanks again,

Mike

[Mike Reed]

Hey Nick,

Thank you for the reply.  I'll take a look at the defaults.rb file and see what I can make of it.  The explanation regarding the "core group" settings is most helpful and makes perfect sense. 

Again, thanks for the informative links and the info.

Cheers,

Mike