Puppet users - Feb 2010 - Using templates from a custom type

Hi Puppet-People

I''m playing around with writing a custom resource type for managing my
Apache configs and I would like to use templates.  I happened across
Puppet::Util::ResourceTemplate, which seems to do the tricky stuff but
the bit I''m struggling with is getting the template across from the
puppet server to the puppet client.

I have a module with these files:

config/puppet/modules/eec-mike/manifests/init.pp
config/puppet/modules/eec-mike/templates/mikeapache.erb
config/puppet/modules/eec-mike/lib/puppet/type/mike_apache.rb

My ''mike_apache'' type is defined in mike_apache.rb and through
the magic
of pluginsync, this file is transported to the client and run at the
appropriate time.  When I call Puppet::Util::ResourceTemplate.new(), I
need to pass it the pathname of the template.  No matter what I give it,
it dies with a "Template ... does not exist" exception.

It would appear that if I refer to the template from a .pp file I would
do something like:  

  content => template("eec-mike/mikeapache.erb")

and somehow Puppet would work out that it needed to sync the
mikeapache.erb file from the eec-mike/templates directory on the server.
That seems to be the bit that''s missing when I refer to a template from
the Ruby code implementing a custom type.

Am I venturing into uncharted territory or am I missing some obvious way
of getting the module templates directory synced across to the client?

Cheers
Grant



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On Feb 17, 10:07 pm, Grant McLean <gr...@mclean.net.nz>
wrote:
> It would appear that if I refer to the template from a .pp file I would
> do something like:  
>
>   content => template("eec-mike/mikeapache.erb")
Yes.
> and somehow Puppet would work out that it needed to sync the
> mikeapache.erb file from the eec-mike/templates directory on the server.
No.  template() is a Puppet function, and like all Puppet functions,
it is evaluated by the Puppetmaster.  It therefore does not sync the
erb file with clients, and it does not have any access to the client
system.  Your custom resource may sync the resulting value, however,
without regard to how the value was generated.


John

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On Feb 17, 10:07 pm, Grant McLean <gr...@mclean.net.nz>
wrote:
> I''m playing around with writing a custom resource type for
managing my
> Apache configs and I would like to use templates.
Are you sure you need a custom resource type?  It might be easier and
more maintainable to use a Puppet define wrapped around one or more
File resources, especially if you''re going to use templates to
generate the content.


John

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> On Feb 17, 10:07 pm, Grant McLean <gr...@mclean.net.nz> wrote:
>> I''m playing around with writing a custom resource type for
managing my
>> Apache configs and I would like to use templates.
>
> Are you sure you need a custom resource type?  It might be easier and
> more maintainable to use a Puppet define wrapped around one or more
> File resources, especially if you''re going to use templates to
> generate the content.
the apache module @ [1] has different kinds of defines to create vhost  
entries. Most of them follow certain conventions so that defining a  
standard vhost is really only a bunch of lines, whoever you''re able to
tweak nearly each aspect of a vhost.

It is used and known to run on CentOS and debian hosts.

cheers pete

[1] http://git.puppet.immerda.ch/?p=module-apache.git;a=summary

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On Thu, 2010-02-18 at 05:53 -0800, jcbollinger wrote:
> On Feb 17, 10:07 pm, Grant McLean <gr...@mclean.net.nz> wrote:
> > It would appear that if I refer to the template from a .pp file I
would
> > do something like:  
> >
> >   content => template("eec-mike/mikeapache.erb")
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > and somehow Puppet would work out that it needed to sync the
> > mikeapache.erb file from the eec-mike/templates directory on the
server.
> 
> No.  template() is a Puppet function, and like all Puppet functions,
> it is evaluated by the Puppetmaster.  It therefore does not sync the
> erb file with clients, and it does not have any access to the client
> system.  Your custom resource may sync the resulting value, however,
> without regard to how the value was generated.
Thank you very much for that explanation John.  In hindsight, it
probably should have been obvious.  I''ll go back and rework my plans.

Thanks
Grant

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On Thu, 2010-02-18 at 15:36 +0100, Peter Meier wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-02-18 at 05:59 -0800, jcbollinger wrote: 
> >On Feb 17, 10:07 pm, Grant McLean <gr...@mclean.net.nz> wrote:
> > > I''m playing around with writing a custom resource type
for managing my
> > > Apache configs and I would like to use templates.
> >
> > Are you sure you need a custom resource type?  It might be easier and
> > more maintainable to use a Puppet define wrapped around one or more
> > File resources, especially if you''re going to use templates
to
> > generate the content.
Actually, I''m quite sure I don''t *need* to use a custom
resource type.
I am able to implement a solution with define+File resources, but I
wanted to try using a custom resource in order to reduce the amount of
boilerplate and repetition in my defines.  The result was much more
concise.
> the apache module @ [1] has different kinds of defines to create vhost  
> entries. Most of them follow certain conventions so that defining a  
> standard vhost is really only a bunch of lines, whoever you''re
able to
> tweak nearly each aspect of a vhost.
That seems to address a different use case to my situation.  In my
current project very few of the Apache instances use vhosts.  We use the
template to generate a complete config file for an Apache server which
is dedicated to performing one particular role in the application.
Having all the roles generated out of a single template has proven to
vastly simplify the management.

Thanks
Grant

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