Getting Started with Hiera

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Worker Bee

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Nov 15, 2012, 1:20:35 PM11/15/12
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Hi Everyone;

Can anyone direct me towards documentation on getting started with Hiera?  SPecifically, I ma looking for an easy way to verify post-install functionality.

I did visit the following page which is is blank...
http://docs.puppetlabs.com/hiera/1/puppet.html

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Martin Alfke

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Nov 16, 2012, 5:22:13 AM11/16/12
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Hi,
you will find a list of links covering hiera installation, configuration and examples.

hth,

Martin

Rajul Vora

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Nov 16, 2012, 12:19:11 PM11/16/12
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http://docs.puppetlabs.com/hiera/1/index.html is the only document I could find and some of the pages are empty or light on content. I also did git clone of the hiera project from github to read some of the docs / code / examples there.

Also, the Puppet function reference has no documentation (says "Undocumented") on the hiera, hiera_array, hiera_hash function. The ruby code for these functions has absolutely no comments either.

Good luck.

It would be interesting to hear what you had in mind in terms of using hiera to help verify post-install functionality.

Rajul

Jeffrey Watts

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Nov 19, 2012, 1:38:08 PM11/19/12
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I'd like to second Michael's suggestion.  Kelsey's various presentations involving Hiera and data bindings were all excellent, and really cleared things up for me.

Jeffrey.

On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 11:57 AM, Michael Hall <michae...@puppetlabs.com> wrote:
Yup, we have some work to do on this. I recently joined the Puppet Labs documentation team, and getting Hiera better documented is high on my list of priorities.

If you don't mind spending the time watching a video of a talk, I can recommend Kelsey Hightower's presentation at PuppetConf '12: 


It provides a walkthrough example that might help you get your arms around Hiera a little better. I've converted the slide deck to a PDF, but it's a little large so please email me directly if you'd like me to forward a copy to you. 

There are also a few notes on the Hiera github repo, including a note on how to make sure your hierarchy and data files are correctly configured:


Hope this helps a little, and we'll have more formal documentation out soon.

roadtest

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Dec 25, 2012, 11:21:11 PM12/25/12
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I wish hiera documentation can be brought up to date soon. That is sure to help many people who just start using hiera.

Thanks,

carl


On Monday, November 19, 2012 12:57:09 PM UTC-5, Michael Hall wrote:
Yup, we have some work to do on this. I recently joined the Puppet Labs documentation team, and getting Hiera better documented is high on my list of priorities.

If you don't mind spending the time watching a video of a talk, I can recommend Kelsey Hightower's presentation at PuppetConf '12: 


It provides a walkthrough example that might help you get your arms around Hiera a little better. I've converted the slide deck to a PDF, but it's a little large so please email me directly if you'd like me to forward a copy to you. 

There are also a few notes on the Hiera github repo, including a note on how to make sure your hierarchy and data files are correctly configured:


Hope this helps a little, and we'll have more formal documentation out soon.

Regards,
Michael

Michael Hall

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Jan 8, 2013, 9:12:47 PM1/8/13
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On Tuesday, December 25, 2012 at 8:21 PM, roadtest wrote:

I wish hiera documentation can be brought up to date soon. That is sure to help many people who just start using hiera.
We're a little further along today:

We've added documentation for the Hiera command line tool, which is useful for testing your Hiera hierarchy and data sources outside the context of a manifest. You can learn a lot about how Hiera works by starting with this tool: 


We've also fleshed out the documentation on Hiera data sources with examples for YAML and JSON, demonstrating how to return strings, hashes, arrays and interpolated Facter variables from your data sources:


Regards,
Michael

-- 
Michael Hall
Technical Writing and Toolsmithing at Puppet Labs
@pdxmph | 503.333.0109

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