augeasproviders: alternative Augeas-based providers for Puppet

This module provides alternative providers for core Puppet types such as host and mailalias using the Augeas configuration library. It also adds some of its own types for new functionality.

The advantage of using Augeas over the default Puppet parsedfile implementations is that Augeas will go to great lengths to preserve file formatting and comments, while also failing safely when needed.

These providers will hide all of the Augeas commands etc., you don't need to know anything about Augeas to make use of it.

If you want to make changes to config files in your own way, you should use the augeas type directly. For more information about Augeas, see the web site or the Puppet/Augeas documentation.

Types and providers

The following builtin types have an Augeas-based provider implemented:

• host
• mailalias

The following other types have a provider implemented:

• mounttab from puppetlabs-mount_providers

The module adds the following new types:

• apache_directive for updating generic Apache HTTP Server configs
• apache_setenv for updating SetEnv entries in Apache HTTP Server configs
• kernel_parameter for adding kernel parameters to GRUB Legacy or GRUB 2 configs
• nrpe_command for setting command entries in Nagios NRPE's nrpe.cfg
• pam for files inside /etc/pam.d/
• pg_hba for PostgreSQL's pg_hba.conf entries
• puppet_auth for authentication rules in Puppet's auth.conf
• shellvar for shell variables in /etc/sysconfig or /etc/default etc.
• sshd_config for setting configuration entries in OpenSSH's sshd_config
• sshd_config_subsystem for setting subsystem entries in OpenSSH's sshd_config
• sysctl for entries inside Linux's sysctl.conf
• syslog for entries inside syslog.conf

Lots of examples are provided in the accompanying documentation (see docs/examples.html) and are also published on the web site. If this is a git checkout, you will need to run make in docs/ to generate the HTML pages.

Type documentation can be generated with puppet doc -r type or viewed on the Puppet Forge page.

For builtin types and mounttab, the default provider will automatically become the augeas provider once the module is installed. This can be changed back to parsed where necessary.

Classes

augeasproviders::instances

This class allows the types provided by this module to be defined using the classes' parameters or top-scope variables.

NOTE: The classes' parameters take presedence over the top-scope variables.

Set the sysctl entry net.ipv4.ip_forward to 1:

class { 'augeasproviders::instances':
  sysctl_hash => { 'net.ipv4.ip_forward' => { 'value' => '1' } },
}

The following example is the same as above but using a top-scope variable.

node 'foo.example.com' {
  $augeasproviders_sysctl_hash = {
    'net.ipv4.ip_forward' => { 'value' => '1' },
  }
  
  include augeasproviders::instances
}

Parameters

#####TYPE_hash

All types have a TYPE_hash parameter, where TYPE is the resource type. These parameters accept a Hash to define that type's resources.

#####resource_defaults

A Hash that contains the default values used to create each resource. See manifests/params.pp for the format used.

Variables

#####augeasproviders_TYPE_hash

All types have a augeasproviders_TYPE_hash variable, where TYPE is the resource type. These variables accept a Hash to define that type's resources.

Requirements

Ensure both Augeas and ruby-augeas 0.3.0+ bindings are installed and working as normal.

See Puppet/Augeas pre-requisites.

Installing

On Puppet 2.7.14+, the module can be installed easily (documentation):

puppet module install domcleal/augeasproviders

You may see an error similar to this on Puppet 2.x (#13858):

Error 400 on SERVER: Puppet::Parser::AST::Resource failed with error ArgumentError: Invalid resource type `kernel_parameter` at ...

Ensure the module is present in your puppetmaster's own environment (it doesn't have to use it) and that the master has pluginsync enabled. Run the agent on the puppetmaster to cause the custom types to be synced to its local libdir (puppet master --configprint libdir) and then restart the puppetmaster so it loads them.

Planned

The following builtin types have Augeas-based providers planned:

• ssh_authorized_key
• port, once #5660 is done
• yumrepo, once #8758 is done

Other ideas for new types are:

• /etc/system types

Compatibility

Puppet versions

Puppet Versions	2.7 -> 3.4	>= 3.4
compatibility	yes	yes
shared handler	no	yes

Augeas versions

Augeas Versions	0.10.0	1.0.0	1.1.0	1.2.0
FEATURES
case-insensitive keys	no	yes	yes	yes
PROVIDERS
apache_directive	yes	yes	yes	yes
apache_setenv	yes	yes	yes	yes
host	yes	yes	yes	yes
kernel_parameter (grub)	yes	yes	yes	yes
kernel_parameter (grub2)	yes	yes	yes	yes
mailalias	yes	yes	yes	yes
mounttab (fstab)	yes	yes	yes	yes
mounttab (vfstab)	no	yes	yes	yes
nrpe_command	yes	yes	yes	yes
pg_hba	no	yes	yes	yes
puppet_auth	no	yes	yes	yes
shellvar	yes	yes	yes	yes
sshd_config	yes	yes	yes	yes
sshd_config_subsystem	yes	yes	yes	yes
sysctl	yes	yes	yes	yes
syslog (augeas)	yes	yes	yes	yes
syslog (rsyslog)	no	yes	yes	yes

Issues

Please file any issues or suggestions on GitHub.