Assigning a dynamic role to be used by hiera

[JeremyCampbell]

I need to define data for roles so I add the 'role' dynamic data source.

- "%{::environment}/%{::clientcert}"
- "%{::clientcert}"
- "%{::environment}
- "%{::role}"
- common

Our site.pp uses a hostname regex to classify nodes into roles e.g.

node /^ns\d+$/ {
  include role::nameserver
}

Can we add the $role variable to the role class and hiera will use it? e.g.

class role::nameserver {
  $role = 'nameserver'
  include base
  include bind
  include shorewall
}

Would this work? Is there a better pattern that doesn't involve having to define custom facts on the servers?

[Chad Huneycutt]

Yes, that will work. We actually do something slightly ickier, so the
data all stays in hiera:

hiera hierarchy:
- nodes/%{hostname}
- ...
- roles/%{role}

nodes/foo.yaml:
...
role: desktop
classes:
- "roles::%{role}"

node default {
$role = hiera('role')
include hiera('classes')
}


- Chad

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--
Chad M. Huneycutt

[Ellison Marks]

you might want to explicitly top-scope role, ie.

$::role = 'nameserver'

Not sure if that will matter in this case, but I don't think it can hurt.

As an aside, we set our role variable with facter.d on the nodes themselves, as we don't have hostnames that easily work out to roles.

[JuanBrein]

Today looking for a solution to this I came up with a nice solution. I know this is old but I'm posting it just in case is useful for somebody:

on hiera.yaml:

:hierarchy:
  - 'host/%{::domain}/%{::hostname}'
  - 'domain/%{::domain}'
  - 'role/%{system_role}'
  - 'common'

on site.pp

node default {

  $system_role = get_system_role()

}

and get_system_role is a custom function:

require 'yaml'

module Puppet::Parser::Functions

  newfunction(:get_system_role, :type => :rvalue) do |args|

    hostname = lookupvar('fqdn')

    enc = %x[/etc/puppet/node.rb #{hostname}]

    yaml = YAML::load enc

    system_role = yaml['classes'].keys.first.scan(/::([a-z]*)/).flatten[0]


  end

end

This is asuming you use an ENC to assign classes like foreman / cobbler or pe

Cheers

Juan