Grouping Servers

[AB]

I was hoping to get info on a best practise or potentially an aim for a best practise that puppet development is working towards.

I would like to group our servers so that I can use the files server to hand out files in a hierarchal order starting with hostname, groupname, default file. I would also like to set the groupname in node.pp.  So far I have tried this using custom facts but it does not seem to be consistent.  I have read some posts for people trying to use mcollective but at this point I am not using it.  What I want to try next is to build the puppetgroup.rb file under /usr/lib64/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/facter/ that sets the fact but my thinking is I will be setting the fact during the first run and hence the fact I need to control config files is not loaded and the default config will be loaded and I will have to wait till the second puppet run (in some cases this could break a server's function), for the new fact to be used.

Some examples to show how I am implemented

node.pp

**snip**

node 'puppetclient2' inherits default {

        $group="deb"                     #set group for this server

        include puppetgroup           #setup fact for this server

        include nginx_conf             #apply an nginx.conf file to server, I use this method for iptables, sysctl.conf and etc_hosts

}

****

class puppetgroup.pp   #the sourcing of the new environment variable is inconsistent...sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't,

******

class puppetgroup {

   Exec { path => "/usr/kerberos/sbin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/root/bin" }

        file {"/etc/profile.d/puppetgroup.sh":

        owner => root,

        group => root,

        mode  => 755,

        content => "export FACTER_puppetgroup=\"$group\"",

   }

   exec { "source puppetgroup": 

    subscribe   => File["/etc/profile.d/puppetgroup.sh"], 

    refreshonly => true, 

    command     => "bash -c 'source /etc/profile'", 

 } 

}

************

class nginx_conf  # Applying an nginx.conf depending on machine.

*****class nginx_conf {

file { "/opt/nginx/conf/nginx.conf":

            source   => [

                "puppet:///files/classes/nginx/nginx_conf.$hostname",

                "puppet:///files/classes/nginx/nginx_conf.$puppetgroup",

                "puppet:///files/classes/nginx/nginx_conf"

                ],

            mode     => "644",

            checksum => md5,

            replace => "yes",

            ensure  => "present",

    }

}

*******

Any thoughts on how to make this approach consistently happen?  Or a new approach that can do the same?  Can a force a reload of the facts at the end of running the puppetgroup.pp class?

Many thanks for any help.

Andre

[AB]

No worries figured it out, just wasn't thinking outside the box.    Ended up getting rid of the fact or using facter and just using the variable straight away.

for others interest:

node.pp

$group="role"

source   => [

                "puppet:///files/classes/nginx/nginx_conf.$hostname",

                "puppet:///files/classes/nginx/nginx_conf.$group",

                "puppet:///files/classes/nginx/nginx_conf"

                ],

AB