Puppet: System Administration Automated

Support

Puppet on RedHat/CentOS

Installation

A lot of work has gone into support of these highly popular platforms. Since yum appears to be the wave of the future, community member David Lutterkort maintains a yum repository for users of RedHat, CentOS and other compatible strains of UNIX. This repository is kept up-to-date, so the version available there should be sufficient for most purposes.

If you find that a newer version than what is available from the _unstable tree is required, please refer to the instructions for building Puppet from the Git repository.

Compatability

Most of the OS-dependent functionality is managed by providers in Puppet, which provide a layer of abstraction between Puppet and the OS. Before you use a particular provider, you may want to look at the Provider Suitability Report, which serves as a compatibility matrix for Puppet resource types using different providers.

RedHat is well-supported in Puppet, and the rpm and yum package providers is especially well-rounded. Because of the popularity of this platform, Puppet development and support often directly benefits users of this platform.

Known issues

  • When trying to set the password through puppet, CentOS can give the error Provider useradd does not support features manages_passwords; not managing attribute password. This means you need to install the libshadow package on the client.
  • With RHEL 5.0-5.2, rpm -q misreports a query of package.arch with a blank line and zero return code, even if it is installed. This means you can't use the package type to force the install of multiple architectures of packages because the provider barfs on the faulty input. Installation of the default architecture still works. Should be fixed in RHEL5.3.