installing puppet via rubygems (not recommended?)

[Dusty Doris]

I have an old fedora 9 machine running ruby 1.9.2-p290, that I'd like to install puppet on to run as a master.  In the documentation it says that installing from rubygems is not recommended.  Is there are particular reason why its not recommended?  Installing from source is also not recommended, is that a better/worse/same alternative?

Thanks

[Jakov Sosic]

If you're going to use Puppet for learning only, than it's ok to use
whatever way do yo fancy.

But for production it's generally a bad habit to mix up different
package systems. That practice will cost you dearly sooner or later.
Your OS has quality package management (rpm & yum) and you should always
manage software with it. If you're managing larger infrastructure it
will pay off to package software into OS native packages and distribute
it that way.

Alternatively, you can always try and fetch SRC.RPM from puppetlabs and
rebuild them for Fedora 9.

[Dusty Doris]

Thanks for the reply.  So there is nothing inherently wrong with the rubygems package that we would run into?  We already use rubygems for several services, so it seems like the easiest route for us.

Doing a yum install, it wanted to install version 0.24.  I will look into repackaging it though, that might work for us too.  

Thanks

[Nick Fagerlund]

Also keep in mind that Ruby 1.9.2 can be problematic! 1.9.3 works great with puppet 3, 1.9.2 has some kind of complicated known issues with puppet 2.7.

[Nick Fagerlund]

On Thursday, December 20, 2012 1:18:30 PM UTC-8, Nick Fagerlund wrote:

Also keep in mind that Ruby 1.9.2 can be problematic! 1.9.3 works great with puppet 3, 1.9.2 has some kind of complicated known issues with puppet 2.7.

(reference: http://docs.puppetlabs.com/guides/platforms.html#ruby-versions)

[Ramin K]

If you're dead set on using this box as a Puppet master, I'd build it
all within RVM with Ruby 1.8.7 or 1.9.3 if Puppet 3.x and execute it
inside Passenger/Rack. Should provide isolation from the Ruby you've
compiled, 1.9.2, and let you use gems locally as well. You'd still have
to figure out how to run the agent, but the master should work.

Caveat to the above is that it's non trivial to build.

Ramin

[jcbollinger]

On Thursday, December 20, 2012 1:45:42 PM UTC-6, Dusty Doris wrote:

Thanks for the reply.  So there is nothing inherently wrong with the rubygems package that we would run into?  We already use rubygems for several services, so it seems like the easiest route for us.

Doing a yum install, it wanted to install version 0.24.  I will look into repackaging it though, that might work for us too.  

The version offered to you, if any, is a matter of the yum repositories with which the system is configured.   Fedora 9 is pretty old, so PL no longer offers versions packaged specifically for that OS.  Fedora 9 is very close to RHEL 5, though, so one of the el5 repositories might be a good bet.  Specifically, try repo URL http://yum.puppetlabs.com/el/5/products/i386/ or http://yum.puppetlabs.com/el/5/products/x86_64/ for the main packages.

If yum cannot resolve all the needed dependencies then you could try adding http://yum.puppetlabs.com/el/5/dependencies/(i386|x86_64)/ as well.  You can also find source RPMs on that server if you poke around a little.  Those would give you a good leg up if you decide to package Puppet yourself.


John