README.md

puppet

This repository contains the Puppet modules used to maintain and configure the servers and desktops used by the Open Computing Facility at UC Berkeley.

These modules are generally intended to be used on the latest Debian stable release, though probably also work on Debian-derived distros (such as Ubuntu).

This README outlines development practices for OCF volunteer staff members. If you're a member of the UC Berkeley community and interested in getting involved, check us out!

Making and testing changes

Puppet environments

Every staffer owns a puppet environment. A puppet environment is a copy of this repository which you can use for testing out changes to this puppet code.

Puppet environments are stored on the puppetmaster in /opt/puppet/env/. Each staffer's environment has the same name as their user name:

ckuehl@lightning:~$ ls -l /opt/puppet/env/
drwxr-xr-x 6 ckuehl  ocf  4.0K Nov  5 11:04 ckuehl
drwxr-xr-x 5 daradib ocf  4.0K Aug 11 22:53 daradib
drwxr-xr-x 5 tzhu    ocf  4.0K Sep  2 17:46 tzhu
drwxr-xr-x 6 willh   ocf  4.0K Oct  9 13:56 willh

The puppetmaster has the service CNAME puppet, so you can connect to it via ssh puppet.

You should make your changes in your puppet environment and test them before pushing them to GitHub to be deployed into production.

Setting up your puppet environment

If you're using your puppet environment for the first time, there's a little setup you'll have to do. cd into your puppet environment (/opt/puppet/env/you) and run:

you@lightning:/opt/puppet/env/you$ git pull
you@lightning:/opt/puppet/env/you$ make

This will update your puppet environment to the latest version on master and install the appropriate third-party modules and the pre-commit hooks.

Testing using your puppet environment

Before pushing, you should test your changes by switching at least one of the affected servers to your puppet environment and triggering a run. Changing environments requires root, so if you don't have root, you will need to ask a root staffer to change the environment.

If you have root, you can change a host's environment with the puppet-trigger command:

ckuehl@supernova:~$ ssh raptors
ckuehl@raptors:~$ sudo puppet-trigger -te ckuehl

This changes the environment to ckuehl and triggers a run.

Make sure to switch the environment back to production after pushing your changes.

Linting and validating the puppet config

We use pre-commit to lint our code before commiting. The main checks are:

• Parsing puppet manifests for syntax errors (puppet parser validate)
• Validating Ruby erb templates for syntax errors
• Linting puppet manifests to ensure a consistent style (puppet-lint)
• Running a bunch of standard Python linters (the same ones we use for all of our Python projects)

While some of the rules might seem a little arbitrary, it helps keep the style consistent, and ensure annoying things like trailing whitespace don't creep in.

You can simply run make install-hooks to install the necessary git hooks; once installed, pre-commit will run every time you commit.

Alternatively, if you'd rather not install any hooks, you can simply use make test to run the hooks on every file on-demand. This is what Jenkins will do before deploying your change.

Deploying changes to production

GitHub is the authoritative source for this repository; at all times, the production environment on the puppetmaster will be a clone of the master branch on GitHub (we use Jenkins to keep it up-to-date).

Pushing to GitHub will immediately update the production environment, but your changes will not take effect until the puppet agent runs on each server (every 30 minutes, at an arbitrary offset). You can use the puppet-trigger script if you want it to happen faster.

Conventions and styling

Naming conventions

All OCF modules that are primarily intended for OCF use (currently, all of them) should be prefixed with ocf_.

For modules that apply only to a specific service (such as the MySQL server), use the service CNAME (such as mysql) for the module name. Otherwise, use common sense to come up with a reasonable name (e.g. ocf_desktop).

For manifests that don't refer to a service but are commonly used, such as one that sets up LDAP/Kerberos authentication (used on every server) or the SSL bundle generation manifest (used by lots of servers), consider just creating a new class under the ocf module.

Try not to refer to servers by hostname (such as lightning). Instead, use the service CNAME (such as puppet) or the top-level variables $::hostname and $::fqdn.

Including third-party modules

Third-party modules can be helpful. Try to only use ones that are actively maintained.

We use r10k to include third-party modules in our config. This has benefits over storing them in a global directory on the puppetmaster (e.g. with the puppet module tool), and is easier to manage than using git submodules:

• This puppet config repository is self-contained
• Adding and updating modules can be tested in an environment before being inflicted on every server
• Staff members can test third-party modules without needing root on the puppetmaster
• Modules can be installed from Puppet Forge without needing to have a git repository

Styling

In lieu of an actual style guide, please try to make your code consistent with the existing code (or help write a style guide?), and ensure that it passes validation (including pre-commit).

Minimal config file management

Try to change as few things as possible; this makes upgrading to newer versions of packages and operating systems easier, as well as making it more obvious to future staffers what options you actually changed.

Instead of overwriting an entire config file just to change one value, try to use augeas (example) or sed to change just the necessary values.

Future improvements

• Trigger puppet runs automatically after production is updated
• Better monitoring of puppet runs (e.g. to see when a server has not updated recently, which is a common problem on desktops)