Puppet users - Aug 2007 - Ideas about learning

I''m looking for some ideas about how to learn how to use puppet.  One 
of my main concerns is dorking up the machine I''m testing it on.

For this I''m using a VM.  So that concern is mainly taken care of.

If some of you experienced puppet users where going to do it all over, 
what parts would you try to learn first?

I have successfully been able to get a cronjob added to the VM.  This 
seems like such a small thing, but was quite exciting when it worked.

So it seems that a progression of steps that might help me learn how 
puppet works would be helpful.

For example, is it better to learn about how Factors work, first?  Or 
should I concentrate on what a Module does?

There is already good documentation on "Best practices" for directory 
layout and that has helped some.

The other part that seems a little hard at the moment is taking a task, 
"I want to automate managing cronjobs", and turning it into what needs
to be done in Puppet.

Thanks for any pointers.

Mike B.





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--On Wednesday, August 29, 2007 09:35:03 AM -0800 barsalou 
<barjunk@attglobal.net> wrote:
> The other part that seems a little hard at the moment is taking a task,
> "I want to automate managing cronjobs", and turning it into what
needs
> to be done in Puppet.
You should start with the SimplestPuppetInstallRecipe as a tutorial to the 
language.  After that, for the cron stuff, well, tell us what you''re
trying
to do and we can give you some advice on how best to set that up.

-- 
Digant C Kasundra <digant@stanford.edu>
Technical Lead, ITS Unix Systems and Applications, Stanford University

On Aug 29, 2007, at 12:35 PM, barsalou wrote:
>
> For example, is it better to learn about how Factors work, first?  Or
> should I concentrate on what a Module does?
This is a very good question and is not directly addressed AFAIK in  
the documentation -- in what order should the system be studied?

I''m not sure of a good answer, but it''s certainly worthwhile
trying
to come up with documentation that answers this question.  I know  
that Jeff McCune was going to take a crack at a document that went  
through the learning process people seem to use to learn Puppet, but  
I''m not he ever wrote it.  That would probably be a good start.
> There is already good documentation on "Best practices" for
directory
> layout and that has helped some.
>
> The other part that seems a little hard at the moment is taking a  
> task,
> "I want to automate managing cronjobs", and turning it into what
needs
> to be done in Puppet.
This is exactly the kind of documentation I would love to have --  
turning a problem into a solution.  "Here are the great things you  
can do with Puppet."

Maybe we should create a "I want to..." page that then has a bunch of
relatively simple answers, even with just pointers to other parts of  
the documentation.  Anyone want to take a crack at starting that?

  --
     First they came for the hackers. But I never did anything
  illegal with my computer, so I didn''t speak up.
     Then they came for the pornographers. But I thought there was
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     Then they came for the anonymous remailers. But a lot of nasty
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     Then they came for me. And by that time there was no one left
  to speak up.
                  -- Alara Rogers, Aleph Press
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  Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://madstop.com