Puppet 4, Windows and providers.

[Philip Wigg]

Hi,

I am trying to use the puppetlabs-dsc module on Windows 2012r2. I have
WMF5 installed on the Windows guest. I am trying to get this working
using Vagrant but I'm not actually using the vagrant provider in the
examples below.

I have a 'testclass' module installed just to show that Puppet is able
to find my modules and run otherwise. The modules are identical in
both scenarios.

Working:-

Puppet 3.8.2 without directory environments, just a 'manifests' and
'modules' directory.

PS C:\vagrant> puppet apply --modulepath .\modules .\manifests\default.pp
Notice: Compiled catalog for vagrant-2012-r2.global.root in
environment production in 0.19 seconds
Notice: /Stage[main]/Main/Dsc_windowsfeature[IIS]/ensure: created
Notice: Hello!
Notice: /Stage[main]/Testclass/Notify[Hello!]/message: defined
'message' as 'Hello!'
Notice: Finished catalog run in 26.78 seconds

It runs and installs the IIS Windows feature which is great.

Not working:-

Puppet 4.3.2 using directory environments with a single environment
called 'production'.

PS C:\vagrant> puppet apply --environmentpath .\environments
.\environments\production\manifests\default.pp
Warning: Facter: skipping external facts for
"C:/ProgramData/PuppetLabs/puppet/cache/facts.d": The request is not
supported
Notice: Compiled catalog for vagrant-2012-r2.global.root in
environment production in 0.19 seconds
Notice: Hello!
Notice: /Stage[main]/Testclass/Notify[Hello!]/message: defined
'message' as 'Hello!'
Error: Could not find a suitable provider for dsc_windowsfeature
Notice: Applied catalog in 0.16 seconds

Here I get an error 'Could not find a suitable provider for dsc_windowsfeature'.

It seems like 'puppet apply' is not finding or using the custom
providers in the puppetlabs-dsc module maybe?

Or is there an option I need to add to 'puppet apply'?

Kind regards,
Phil.

[Felix Frank]

Hi,

so the provider is available as a plugin in your module? It appears that
Puppet 4 does not load it successfully.

You should probably enable debug output and look for clues as to why
that is specifically.

(I half feel that `puppet apply` should first plugin-sync the Ruby code
to $vardir, but I'm not sure.)

HTH,
Felix