Puppet users - Aug 2008 - testing a configuration change

Hi,
I am looking into some configuration management tools and puppet seems
to be one of the more interesting to use in our setup.

One of the things I am unable to find, is how to run tests. After a
change of e.g. resolv.conf, I would like to run a test lookup (e.g.
host) and that should give a valid result. If not I want to get an
error message somewhere so we can have a closer look why the change
wasn''t successful. A little bit similar to (j)unit tests in software
development. Is possible to do such tests in puppet in a fashionable
way?

Thanks,
Bram.
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On Wed, 6 Aug 2008 05:33:23 -0700 (PDT)
Bram <brambi@gmail.com> wrote:
> One of the things I am unable to find, is how to run tests. After a
> change of e.g. resolv.conf, I would like to run a test lookup (e.g.
> host) and that should give a valid result. If not I want to get an
> error message somewhere so we can have a closer look why the change
> wasn''t successful. A little bit similar to (j)unit tests in
software
> development. Is possible to do such tests in puppet in a fashionable
> way?
You can get programs and services to "watch" (can''t remember
the actual
phrase, sorry) a file, so you could create a script that "watches"
resolv.conf and have that test a domain and email/log the results when
resolv.conf changes.

Otherwise, it''s possibly a "do you know ruby? No? well start
learning..." kinda moment! :o)

cheers,

M.
-- 
Matthew Macdonald-Wallace
matthew@truthisfreedom.org.uk
http://www.truthisfreedom.org.uk

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> A little bit similar to (j)unit tests in software
> > development. Is possible to do such tests in puppet in a fashionable
> > way?
>

Bram,

I''ve been thinking about this more and more.  There are really a many
levels
to ''testing''.

A PuppetUnit framework would be great, but the unit test level isn''t
really
what you are describing.  I believe your test is closer to a
''functional''
test, which is great, but much less methodologically defined in practice
(when compared to unit testing).

As the Puppet community matures and shares tips and tricks, I believe there
will be emergent solutions born of necessity.

I''d love to hear what you come up with, or what other people are doing
to
verify their Puppet driven infrastructure.

Andrew

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Andrew Shafer schrieb:
>> A little bit similar to (j)unit tests in software
>>> development. Is possible to do such tests in puppet in a
fashionable
>>> way?
> 
> 
> Bram,
> 
> I''ve been thinking about this more and more.  There are really a
many levels
> to ''testing''.
> 
> A PuppetUnit framework would be great, but the unit test level
isn''t really
> what you are describing.  I believe your test is closer to a
''functional''
> test, which is great, but much less methodologically defined in practice
> (when compared to unit testing).
> 
> As the Puppet community matures and shares tips and tricks, I believe there
> will be emergent solutions born of necessity.
> 
> I''d love to hear what you come up with, or what other people are
doing to
> verify their Puppet driven infrastructure.
I believe that most of the stuff one really wants to test is, as you 
say, of the integration/functional/acceptance testing level. Much of 
that could be done by adding more checks and plugins to things like 
nagios (nrpe anyone?), collectd or munin.

Also, the necessity of checking such things is completely independet of 
puppet or any other management strategy, because the complexities of the 
systems are most of the times again magnitudes beyond that of a single 
piece of software.


Regards, DavidS

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