Problems in Ch. 4 of Pro Puppet 2nd Edition

[Jon Forrest]

Again, nothing that a good proof edit couldn't fix.

Jon Forrest
----

(U) Pg. 100 Listing 4-2 shows package resource definitions appearing as
the result
of running 'puppet resource service'. Are we supposed to do anything
with these definitions?

(U) Pg. 100 In Listing 4-2 why aren't standard 'yum install' or
'service' commands used?

(U) Pg. 101 How is a reader supposes to know what an NPM provider or RVM is?

(T) Pg 101 "Often installing Passenger" ->
"Often, installing Passenger"

(T) Pg 103 "will consume some time is to run" ->
"will consume some time to run"

(T) Pg. 103 "facter fqdn." ->
"facter fqdn"

(T) Pg. 103 "Pro-puppet-master-centos-II" ->
"pro-puppet-master-centos-II"

(E) Pg. 103 "stored in the environment as a standard environment
variable" ->
"stored in a standard environment variable"

(T) Pg. 105 "ServerName attribute of" ->
"ServerName attribute in"

(C) Pg. 106 You should mention that the notice about installing Emacs
is just an example. New readers might think that they should see this
exact line.

(U) Pg. 108 Figure 4-1 looks like there are 3 machines behind the load
balancer,
but the Note makes it clear that there is really just 1 machine there.

(E) Pg. 111 "the puppet user, as this parameter decides" ->
"the puppet user since this determines"

(E) Pg. 111 "sure to modify" ->
"sure to replace"

(C) Pg. 111 "Step 3" vs. "four lines". You should decide on a convention
for including numbers in text. Either they should be all numeric (e.g.
3, 4) or all text (e.g. three, four).

(E) Pg. 111 "Pass the request along" ->
"Pass the request"

(M) Pg. 111, 112 There are 3 places that the front-end load balancer
configuration
file is mentioned, saying that it appears in Listing 4-14. This actually
appears in Listing 4-13.

(E) Pg. 111 "are listed, port 18140 and 18141" ->
"are listed, running on ports 18140 and 18141"

(T) Pg. 112 "look to" ->
"look at"

(T) Pg. 112 "mail.pro-puppet..com" ->
"mail.pro-puppet.com"

(T) Pg. 112 "back- end" ->
"back-end"

(E) Pg. 112 "HTTP systems" ->
"HTTP servers"

(T) Pg. 113 "logged into" ->
"logged in"

(E) Pg. 115 "is also available" ->
"also appears"

(T) Pg. 115 "let's bring back both workers back online" ->
"let's bring both workers back online"

(E) Pg. 120 "Use the puppet agent command to generate a certificate" ->
"Use the puppet agent command to generate a certificate signing request"
(The title for List 4-34 also needs to be modified). (This is correct on
Pg 124).

(E) Pg. 121 "used the ls utility" ->
"used ls"

(E) Pg. 122 "with a single thread" ->
"with a single core"

(M) Pg. 123 "which were defined in Listing 4-38" ->
"which were defined in Listing 4-37"

(C) Pg. 126 "First, remove the ssl/ca directory on the secondary CA server"
This step isn't necessary if you use the -a option to rsync, which makes
the destination an exact copy of the source.

(E) Pg. 127 "a one-minute cron job" ->
"a cron job that runs every minute"

(C) Pg. 127 The font used in the paragraph starting "This uses the rsync
utility" is wrong.
It's using the console font from from the "crontab -l" example.

(E) Pg. 128 "we get a test run as shown" ->
"we make a test run as shown"

(T) Pg. 130 "You performed twosimple" ->
"You performed two simple"

(M) Pg. 130 "We could also use DNS round robin to easily redirect
and consolidate all certificate requests to a single Puppet CA worked".
This is exactly the opposite of what DNS round robin does. It's odd
that this mistake exists here since the following paragraph explains DNS
round robin correctly.

(E) Pg. 130 "a portion of the Puppet agent systems" ->
"some Puppet agents"

(E) Pg. 131 "As in our HTTP load balancing" ->
"As in HTTP load balancing"

(E) Pg. 131 "the Puppet agent supports the configuration of a Puppet CA
server" ->
"the Puppet agent can be configured to use a Puppet CA server"

(U) Pg. 131 "The Puppet agent configuration should set the --ca_server
configuration option"
How? Does this go in puppet.conf where the other configuration options go?
If so, why is the option name shown with the '--' characters?

(E) Pg. 131 "written down in puppet.conf" ->
"specified in puppet.conf"

(T) Pg. 131 I see both "HA proxy" and "HA-proxy" used. However,
according to http://haproxy.1wt.eu, its name is "HAproxy".
This needs to be corrected in many places in the rest of this chapter.

(T) Pg. 131 "impenetrable to the HA proxy" ->
"impenetrable to HAproxy"

(U) Pg. 131 "populating client configs to set the caserver configuration
option"
In addition to the awkward wording, it isn't clear how to set the
caserver option. Also,
is this the same --ca_server option I mentioned above?

(U) Pg. 134 What does it mean to "segment" a Puppet infrastructure?

(U) Pg. 134 What does running a "load-balancing virtual IP" mean?

(T) Pg. 134 "to speak" ->
"that speaks"

(E) Pg. 134 "The Linux machine uses a BGP or OSPF or other routing
protocol link" ->
"The machine running Quagga uses a routing protocol link"

(U) Pg. 134 The paragraph explaining anycast is extremely unclear.

(E) Pg. 134 "and local code" ->
"and local Puppet manifests"

(U) Pg. 135 What does it mean that the Git directories "pollute" the
structure shown?

(U) Pg. 137 The sentence mentioning facts_format and facts_query
has no value because these two parameters don't actually appear in
Listing 4-68.

(E) Pg. 138 "the systems may start to thrash" ->
"it may start to thrash"

(E) Pg. 138 "The Example.com operator" ->
"Example.com"

[Spencer Krum]

Hi Jon,

My name is Spencer Krum. I am one of the authors of Pro Puppet. I want to thank you for going through the book with such a fine toothed comb. I wish I had known you were so committed to making this book a success months ago. I would have gotten you an advance copy so you could have helped make the final version better.

From what I understand from Apress, we don't have the ability to directly address these problems in newly sold versions of the book. These errors will be with us until a 3rd edition comes out, maybe sometime around Puppet 4.

Here is what we can do. I have created a github repository to collect the errata in a single place. https://github.com/pro-puppet/pro-puppet-errata
I don't think we can get that link added to the front matter, but we can probably get it added to the description of the book on Amazon, and can link to it in the online/supplemental materials. This repository is one central place we can collect all the errors/corrections about Pro Puppet 2n'd edition, not just yours.

I've already added your ch1-4 reviews to that project. Would you be willing to work on the rest of the chapters with us? If you feel comfortable with git/github I can give you contributor access or I can add the text if you want to send it to me. I think collecting all the errors in the github repository is a better solution than posting them all to separate messages to the Puppet users mailing list, a list of over a thousand people.

What do you think?

Thanks,
Spencer

[Alessandro Franceschi]

Hei Jon,

your text correction and errors hunting skills are impressive.

I'm writing a book about Puppet too and am definitively in time to correct it before printing.
There are already technical reviewers doing a great work, but I think you can add great value to the contents and their correctness.

Let me know if you are available.

Regards

Al

[Jon Forrest]

On 3/5/2014 1:26 PM, Alessandro Franceschi wrote:
> Hei Jon,
> your text correction and errors hunting skills are impressive.

Thanks. I try.

> I'm writing a book about Puppet too and am definitively in time to
> correct it before printing.
> There are already technical reviewers doing a great work, but I think
> you can add great value to the contents and their correctness.
>
> Let me know if you are available.

Will this book be open source? I'm not really interested in working
for money so I generally only work on open source books since this lets
me return a favor to the author as thanks for releasing a free book.

Pro Puppet 2nd edition isn't open source, I know. I'm not
really sure why I'm doing it. Apress has given me an eBook copy
but that was after I did the first 3 chapters. Maybe I'm doing
it because this will probably become the predominant Puppet book
(unless yours is better). It's too bad this book has so many issues.
I wasn't expecting this when I started. It's almost as if nobody proof
read it, although its editor tells me otherwise.

Jon Forrest

[Alessandro Franceschi]

On Friday, March 7, 2014 5:16:41 AM UTC+1, Jon Forrest wrote:

On 3/5/2014 1:26 PM, Alessandro Franceschi wrote:
> Hei Jon,
> your text correction and errors hunting skills are impressive.

Thanks. I try.

> I'm writing a book about Puppet too and am definitively in time to
> correct it before printing.
> There are already technical reviewers doing a great work, but I think
> you can add great value to the contents and their correctness.
>
> Let me know if you are available.

Will this book be open source? I'm not really interested in working
for money so I generally only work on open source books since this lets
me return a favor to the author as thanks for releasing a free book.

That's a point that I appreciate and respect.

Alas, the book won't be open source.

Given the remarkable amount of time I'm pouring into it I like to think that is can be considered the "missing Puppet book", with plenty of topics are hardly faced in existing books. Anyway, this is definitively a biased opinion.

If you are nevertheless interested in giving it a look before it goes to print, let me know.

I'm truly impressed by the amount of mistakes you've been able to find out from a book that has already been scrutinised by various other reviewers and I'm pretty sure you'd find various of them also on mine.

Best regards

Al

[Jon Forrest]

On Wednesday, March 5, 2014 10:29:07 AM UTC-8, Spencer Krum wrote:
Hi Jon,

> My name is Spencer Krum. I am one of the authors of Pro Puppet. I want to thank you for going through the book with such a fine toothed comb.
> I wish I had known you were so committed to making this book a success months ago. I would have gotten you an advance copy so you could
> have helped make the final version better.

What concerns me most is how Apress could have released a book with so many issues.
Somehow their production process broke down.

> From what I understand from Apress, we don't have the ability to directly address these problems in newly sold versions of the book.
> These errors will be with us until a 3rd edition comes out, maybe sometime around Puppet 4.

I'm sorry to hear that. That seems like a long time to wait. What's worse is that people who don't read this email list
will have no idea that this book is full of issues. Even now, after I've been releasing these lists for ~2 weeks, the
errata page on the Apress web site (http://www.apress.com/9781430260400) still says there are no errata for this book.
That's not fair.

> Here is what we can do. I have created a github repository to collect the errata in a single place.
> https://github.com/pro-puppet/pro-puppet-errata
> I don't think we can get that link added to the front matter, but we can probably get it added to the description of
> the book on Amazon, and can link to it in the online/supplemental materials. This repository is one central place
> we can collect all the errors/corrections about Pro Puppet 2n'd edition, not just yours.
> I've already added your ch1-4 reviews to that project. Would you be willing to work on the rest of the chapters with us?

Since I haven't received any money from Apress, nor will I request anything other than my own copy of the book (which
they've now given me), I'm not inclined to formally work on this project (see below)

> If you feel comfortable with git/github I can give you contributor access or I can add the text if you want to send it to me.
> I think collecting all the errors in the github repository is a better solution than posting them all to separate messages
> to the Puppet users mailing list, a list of over a thousand people.
> What do you think?

What I'm planning on doing is continuing on as I have been. I'm going to post my lists, chapter
by chapter, to this list. You, and anybody else, are free to do whatever you want with them, such as putting
them up on GitHub. I clearly label these postings so anyone who isn't interested in them can easily
skip them.

Is this a reasonable approach?

Jon Forrest

P.S. Have you considered putting the sources for Pro Puppet 2nd ed. up on GitHub the way
Scott Chacon did for Pro Git?

[Spencer Krum]

Hi Jon,

I'll ask my editor to link the errata from the github repository to the eratta page on the Apress website. I want to assure you we went through several rounds of editing, but errors are always going to fall through. Thanks so much for reading attentively and posting your feedback. I'm sorry you don't want to help us more formally. I don't think its realistic to open source the book at this point, but I'll open the conversation with Apress and the other authors.

Thanks again,
Spencer

[Jon Forrest]

On 3/11/2014 10:32 AM, Spencer Krum wrote:
> Thanks so much for reading attentively and posting your feedback. I'm
> sorry you don't want to help us more formally.

I want to make it clear that the reason for this is because since
this is a closed-source book, I'd need some form of payment for
a formal relationship (I've done massive free edits of Pro Git and
Managing Jenkins because these are open-source books). At this point,
such things only complicate my taxes and make me feel obligated to
get things done to meet deadlines. Since I have a fulltime day job
I can't commit to anything with fixed deadlines. It wouldn't be fair
to you or Apress.

> I don't think its realistic to open source the book at this point, but I'll open the
> conversation with Apress and the other authors.

OK. If you do change your mind then I'd be more than glad to work with
you.

Jon

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the
> Google Groups "Puppet Users" group.
> To unsubscribe from this topic, visit
> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/puppet-users/dzXe29iNwtQ/unsubscribe.
> To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to
> puppet-users...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion on the web visit
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-users/52ee6a2c-8cbd-4d2d-a687-4a5cee33aa6a%40googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.