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Table of Contents
Puppet seemed a bit obtuse to get started with (I found myself jumping around lots of different documentation pages), but it didn't seem so bad after I actually got started.
Getting Started
When initially trying Puppet, I installed the latest version of puppet-server on CentOS 5 using the packages at http://tmz.fedorapeople.org/repo/puppet/. That was version 2.6.4. Note that the version in EPEL/Fedora 13 is not that old–they jumped from version 0.25 to version 2.6 (see http://www.puppetlabs.com/2dot6/.
I found these pages helpful:
One thing mentioned in a few of the pages was the "–mkusers" option; this shouldn't be required if puppet was installed with an OS package.
Files
The layout of files is partially described in Puppet Best Practices. The layout of module files is described in Module Organization.
Notes
Print Message on Client
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4135426/how-to-print-something-when-running-puppet-client
The functions like 'err', 'warning', 'notice' log messages on the server.
The notify type sends a message to the client log, at the notice level (and will be shown when running puppetd --test):
notify {"The value is: ${yourvar}": }
Troubleshooting
err: Could not request certificate: No route to host
Remember to let connections through the firewall (TCP port 8140). D'oh!
