Nonconformist Ubuntu based distro users

[Corey Osman]

Hi,

Curious how many of you are using a Ubuntu derivative for specialized use cases. There are many reasons to do so with use cases ranging from cryptocurrency mining hardware to a government hardened distro.  Also popular distros like Xubuntu, PopOS and LinuxMint have opinionated software configurations that some of us prefer and fall into this unsupported grey area as well.

The problem with using a niche or custom distro is that puppet and other tools do not officially support the distro.  However these tools are completely capable of running on the distro with little issue. 

One issue I found with facter regarding lsb-release file.  

https://tickets.puppetlabs.com/browse/FACT-2953

So my questions are:

Are you using puppet on your special distro?

Do you pay for open source puppet support or have PE ?

What distro are you using?

What use case do you have?

What issues have you had with puppet and your special distro?

Corey

NWOPS, LLC

@nwops on Puppet Slack

[A Manzer]

I'm currently using Puppet Enterprise (under 10 nodes) on my personal network.  I've run into some of the same issues that you have.

I run Kubuntu on my desktop, which works perfectly as an Ubuntu derivative.  I've used KDE Neon (another Ubuntu derivative) briefly in the past too, and from what I recall, it was fine. 

Pop!_OS was not fine, as even though most Puppet modules would have worked just fine, it identifies as Pop instead of Ubuntu, so most modules just bail.  I abandoned Pop!_OS partially because of that (along with other reasons).

I've also tried to use Puppet on Raspbian, using the Ruby agent, and it's got similar problems to what you describe.  The Facts OS hash just doesn't quite match what stock Debian does, so a few modules I've tried to use don't work right.

How do I fix all this?  Change my OS usually.  On my desktop, I stick to OSs that PE supports.  And I'm thinking of changing my RPIs to Ubuntu, rather than Raspbian.  And I run a couple VMs using CentOS.

I've also forked a module before and patched it for Raspbian compatibility for myself.  Another time, I just had to install the `lsb-release` package to get the OS facts hash to a place where the module could use it.

All in all, since this is my personal network, I'm pretty flexible with what I can do; changing an OS isn't a big deal.  I generally don't have hard requirements that I have to meet.

At work, where I also use PE, we stick to Ubuntu-proper, and CentOS, mostly as headless VMs (not desktops).  But that's for wider compatibility reasons that just PE.

[Dirk Heinrichs]

Am Freitag, den 05.03.2021, 18:27 -0800 schrieb A Manzer:

I run Kubuntu on my desktop, which works perfectly as an Ubuntu derivative. 

Kubuntu (as well as the other xUbuntu's) are NOT derivatives. They are Ubuntu flavours which just install a different default desktop. You can install a vanilla Ubuntu and then install "kubuntu-desktop" to turn it into Kubuntu (or, the other way round: Install Kubuntu and remove "kubuntu-desktop" to get a vanilla Ubuntu).

Bye...

Dirk

-- 

Dirk Heinrichs

Senior Systems Engineer, Delivery Pipeline

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[Corey Osman]

I am thinking we can make a whole module out of this issue and fix the problem with puppet code. This problem appears in other tooling as well.  I have the following in my code now which patches the lsb-release file and appears to make things works.

https://gist.github.com/logicminds/0816ab9c3cd485a7270bc2795ec2b94f

Keeping track of all the flavors and codenames is annoying but can easily be done in hieradata with a giant hash.

I can start a module if anyone wants to contribute.   Other ideas welcomed.  I won't be conforming as I am not able to use Ubuntu on my specialized hardware.