Default Puppet 4 settings for file locations

[Chris Spence]

Whilst evaluating a move to puppetsever/puppet 4 I couldn't help but notice that the default location for 'vardir' has moved to /opt/puppetlabs/puppet/cache

This is a bit worrisome, because that's not either /var or /var/opt and breaks the principle of least surprise.  It's worse than that though Jim, because the puppetserver package actually alters the config files to put this setting in the [master] setting (I raised a bug for this)

So the historical sensible default which pointed to a bit of filesystem which for the majority of sane folks will be a well managed bit of disk (adequately sized, for example, and not eating into ones root filesystem because someone at least glanced at the FHS) has changed to one that requires overriding, I expect, in the pretty much every case.

Why has the vardir moved from /var?

[John Bollinger]

I cannot give an authoritative answer, but I suppose it moved as part of the reorganization to an AIO bundle, so that everything was together under one directory.  Although I have been critical of this reorganization in the past, I had not considered this particular angle.

FHS is rather direct on this point: "Package files [of packages installed under /opt] that are variable (change in normal operation) must be installed in /var/opt", and "Variable data of the packages in /opt must be installed in /var/opt/<subdir>, [...] except where superseded by another file in /etc."  I suppose the clause about the file location being superseded by a configuration file could be construed as supporting the new default, but I find that a bit contrived -- it should be at the sysadmin's discretion that exceptions to the standard layout are made, not at the package provider's.

People do vary as to how seriously they take the FHS, but it would be better, I think, for Puppet to stick to it carefully.  Folks who don't care about FHS aren't going to be nearly as inconvenienced by Puppet complying as folks who do care will be by Puppet not complying.


John

[Chris Spence]

I agree - sticking to FHS seems like the right place for Puppet as a best practice.

I'll raise a bug on this to accompany the bug I've already raised about the puppetserver package blatting config in packages that don't belong to it to non-default values in a rather dangerous way - https://tickets.puppetlabs.com/browse/SERVER-766