How can one communicate the $confdir to the catalog builder?

[jcbollinger]

I'm writing a module for Puppet self-management, or at least I think I am.  I was surprised to not find very much along those lines on the Forge, and maybe I should take that as a bad sign, but I want to explore it at least a little bit.  Maybe I just didn't find the right search terms -- searching there for "puppet" is not very useful.

Anyway, I've run into a snag with a threshold issue: how to find the config file(s) to manage in the first place.  I know where Puppet stores its config files by default, for various versions of Puppet and for various operational contexts, but with the existence of the --confdir option that can be specified on a per-run basis, it is not safe to assume that the config files that informed the current Puppet run is in the default location (and those are the ones I want to manage).  In any case, I'm lazy, so I'd rather get Puppet to tell me what it already knows than try to recompute it.

But there does not seem to be a standard fact that communicates this information (at least, 'puppet facts' does not print one), and I'm not seeing any appealing ways to extract the necessary information from a custom fact's runtime context.  I do see at least one nasty, tricksome, system-dependent way, but I'm more likely to chuck the whole idea than go there.  Am I missing some clean way to write a custom fact for this purpose?  Or does someone have an alternative to suggest?


Thanks,

John

[Henrik Lindberg]

Have you read the documentation regarding $settings ?
https://puppet.com/docs/puppet/5.5/lang_facts_and_builtin_vars.html#puppet-master-variables

- henrik


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[jcbollinger]

Thanks, Henrik, I'm not sure I had read those in detail, since they come under the heading of variables set by the master, and the whole problem is that the master doesn't have the wanted information.  Still, having now read them, I find that the documentation seems to agree with my expectations.  In particular:

Note that, other than $environment and $clientnoop, the agent node’s settings are not available in manifests. If you wish to expose them to the master in this version of Puppet, you will have to create a custom fact.

Creating a custom fact to report on the agent's dynamic $confdir setting, as recommended by those docs, is precisely what I would like to do.  What I'm struggling with is how the fact implementation can determine the value for such a fact, inasmuch as the value I want is a property of the puppet (agent) process on whose behalf Facter is computing facts.

John

[Henrik Lindberg]

> Creating a custom fact to report on the agent's /dynamic/ $confdir

> setting, as recommended by those docs, is precisely what I would like to
> do.  What I'm struggling with is how the fact implementation can
> determine the value for such a fact, inasmuch as the value I want is a
> property of the puppet (agent) process on whose behalf Facter is
> computing facts.
>

I recall now that we have a ticket with a request to make agent settings
available on the master side. No progress on that for quite some time
though. Not sure if ticket is still open or if it was closed in the last
big triage. I assume it could be implemented as sending all of the
settings as one fact. Or - indeed as you plan, just the actual setting
you are interested in.

[Trevor Vaughan]

Hey John,

We added this to 'simplib' a while ago. We named it 'simp_puppet_settings' so we didn't get name smashed whenever Puppet Inc decides to incorporate it.

https://github.com/simp/pupmod-simp-simplib/blob/master/lib/facter/simp_puppet_settings.rb

Thanks,

Trevor

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[jcbollinger]

On Sunday, April 15, 2018 at 9:11:48 PM UTC-5, Trevor Vaughan wrote:

Hey John,

We added this to 'simplib' a while ago. We named it 'simp_puppet_settings' so we didn't get name smashed whenever Puppet Inc decides to incorporate it.

https://github.com/simp/pupmod-simp-simplib/blob/master/lib/facter/simp_puppet_settings.rb

That looks great, thanks!

And it works with Facter 3?  I guess I'll find out.

John

[Trevor Vaughan]

Hey John,

We've tested it all the way through a running Puppet 5 from upstream at this point.

Feedback is most welcome!

Trevor

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[jcbollinger]

On Monday, April 16, 2018 at 8:45:18 AM UTC-5, Trevor Vaughan wrote:

Hey John,

We've tested it all the way through a running Puppet 5 from upstream at this point.

Feedback is most welcome!

Trevor

Hey Trevor,

simp/simplib looks like it has a lot of useful tools and features, and clearly it can teach me some things I didn't know.  Thanks again for that.

It's a lot more than I want at the moment, however.  I may well come back to it, but for the moment I just appropriated your approach to accessing the current run's settings (I didn't even take the whole fact).  I can confirm that it indeed does work with Puppet 5.4.0 / Facter 3, so it is precisely what I was looking for.

Cheers,

John