Puppet Server Provisioner

Type: puppet-server

The puppet-server Packer provisioner provisions Packer machines with Puppet by connecting to a Puppet master.

Basic Example

The example below is fully functional and expects a Puppet server to be accessible from your network.

{
  "type": "puppet-server",
  "extra_arguments": "--test --pluginsync",
  "facter": {
    "server_role": "webserver"
  }
}

Configuration Reference

The reference of available configuration options is listed below.

The provisioner takes various options. None are strictly required. They are listed below:

• client_cert_path (string) - Path to the directory on your disk that contains the client certificate for the node. This defaults to nothing, in which case a client cert won't be uploaded.

• client_private_key_path (string) - Path to the directory on your disk that contains the client private key for the node. This defaults to nothing, in which case a client private key won't be uploaded.

• execute_command (string) - The command-line to execute Puppet. This is a template engine. Therefore, you may use user variables and template functions in this field. In addition, you may use the following extra variables:

  • ClientCertPath: The value set in the template option client_cert_path.
  • ClientPrivateKeyPath: The value set in the template option client_private_key_path.
  • FacterVars: Additional facts to set when executing Puppet, joined for use in a command. This is internal and not settable by the user.
  • PuppetNode: The hostname of the Puppet node, set in puppet_node.
  • PuppetServer: The hostname of the Puppet server, set in puppet_server
  • PuppetBinDir: The directory that the Puppet binary is in.
  • Sudo: Returns false when PreventSudo is set, and true when it is not.
  • WorkingDir: The value provided in the working_directory option. See below for execute_command's default value.

• extra_arguments (array of strings) - Additional options to pass to the Puppet command. This allows for customization of execute_command without having to completely replace or subsume its contents, making forward-compatible customizations much easier to maintain.

  This string is lazy-evaluated so one can incorporate logic driven by template variables as well as private elements of ExecuteTemplate (see source: provisioner/puppet-server/provisioner.go).

  [
    {{if ne "{{user environment}}" ""}}--environment={{user environment}}{{end}}
  ]
  

• facter (object of key/value strings) - Additional facts to make available to the Puppet run.

• guest_os_type (string) - The remote host's OS type ('windows' or 'unix') to tailor command-line and path separators. (default: unix).

• ignore_exit_codes (boolean) - If true, Packer will ignore failures.

• prevent_sudo (boolean) - On Unix platforms Puppet is typically invoked with sudo. If true, it will be omitted. (default: false)

• puppet_bin_dir (string) - Path to the Puppet binary. Ideally the program should be on the system (unix: $PATH, windows: %PATH%), but some builders (eg. Docker) do not run profile-setup scripts and therefore PATH might be empty or minimal. On Windows, spaces should be ^-escaped, i.e. c:/program^ files/puppet^ labs/puppet/bin.

• puppet_node (string) - The name of the node. If this isn't set, the fully qualified domain name will be used.

• puppet_server (string) - Hostname of the Puppet server. By default "puppet" will be used.

• staging_dir (string) - Directory to where uploaded files will be placed (unix: "/tmp/packer-puppet-masterless", windows: "%SYSTEMROOT%/Temp/packer-puppet-masterless"). It doesn't need to pre-exist, but the parent must have permissions sufficient for the account Packer connects as to create directories and write files. Use a Shell provisioner to prepare the way if needed.

• working_directory (string) - Directory from which execute_command will be run. If using Hiera files with relative paths, this option can be helpful. (default: staging_directory)

• elevated_user and elevated_password (string) - If specified, Puppet will be run with elevated privileges using the given Windows user. See the powershell provisioner for the full details. This is a template engine. Therefore, you may use user variables and template functions in this field, including {{ build `Password`}} to use the password being used by the communicator to connect to your instance.

Parameters common to all provisioners:

• pause_before (duration) - Sleep for duration before execution.

• max_retries (int) - Max times the provisioner will retry in case of failure. Defaults to zero (0). Zero means an error will not be retried.

• only (array of string) - Only run the provisioner for listed builder(s) by name.

• override (object) - Override the builder with different settings for a specific builder, eg :

  {
    "type": "shell",
    "script": "script.sh",
    "override": {
      "vmware-iso": {
        "execute_command": "echo 'password' | sudo -S bash {{.Path}}"
      }
    }
  }
  

• timeout (duration) - If the provisioner takes more than for example 1h10m1s or 10m to finish, the provisioner will timeout and fail.

Execute Command

By default, Packer uses the following command (broken across multiple lines for readability) to execute Puppet:

cd {{.WorkingDir}} &&
    {{if ne .FacterVars ""}}{{.FacterVars}} {{end}}
    {{if .Sudo}}sudo -E {{end}}
    {{if ne .PuppetBinDir ""}}{{.PuppetBinDir}}/{{end}}
  puppet agent --onetime --no-daemonize --detailed-exitcodes
    {{if .Debug}}--debug {{end}}
    {{if ne .PuppetServer ""}}--server='{{.PuppetServer}}' {{end}}
    {{if ne .PuppetNode ""}}--certname='{{.PuppetNode}}' {{end}}
    {{if ne .ClientCertPath ""}}--certdir='{{.ClientCertPath}}' {{end}}
    {{if ne .ClientPrivateKeyPath ""}}--privatekeydir='{{.ClientPrivateKeyPath}}' {{end}}
    {{if ne .ExtraArguments ""}}{{.ExtraArguments}} {{end}}

The following command is used if guest OS type is windows:

cd {{.WorkingDir}} &&
    {{if ne .FacterVars ""}}{{.FacterVars}} && {{end}}
    {{if ne .PuppetBinDir ""}}{{.PuppetBinDir}}/{{end}}
  puppet agent --onetime --no-daemonize --detailed-exitcodes
    {{if .Debug}}--debug {{end}}
    {{if ne .PuppetServer ""}}--server='{{.PuppetServer}}' {{end}}
    {{if ne .PuppetNode ""}}--certname='{{.PuppetNode}}' {{end}}
    {{if ne .ClientCertPath ""}}--certdir='{{.ClientCertPath}}' {{end}}
    {{if ne .ClientPrivateKeyPath ""}}--privatekeydir='{{.ClientPrivateKeyPath}}' {{end}}
    {{if ne .ExtraArguments ""}}{{.ExtraArguments}} {{end}}

Default Facts

In addition to being able to specify custom Facter facts using the facter configuration, the provisioner automatically defines certain commonly useful facts:

• packer_build_name is set to the name of the build that Packer is running. This is most useful when Packer is making multiple builds and you want to distinguish them in your Hiera hierarchy.

• packer_builder_type is the type of the builder that was used to create the machine that Puppet is running on. This is useful if you want to run only certain parts of your Puppet code on systems built with certain builders.