Installing Puppet Server

I will use puppetmaster as the hostname. You can use either vim or nano for text editing. If you have never used vim before, it will be easier for you to use nano.

$ sudonano /etc/hostname

Use CTRL + X and Y to save.

I will use puppetmaster.example.com.. Use the following command to edit the /etc/hosts file:

 $ sudonano /etc/hosts

Change the contents as follows. Use your own IP according to your network.

127.0.0.1       localhost
127.0.1.1       puppetmaster.example.com
10.10.10.10      puppetmaster.example.com puppetmaster

To verify that the changes are effective, use the hostname and hostname -f commands.

For your server, give a static IP and define your gateway and nameserver IPs.

First, define your IP gateway and subnet mask. For this, we will edit the /etc/network/interfaces file. Following is the sample detail I have added for my Puppet Master:

$ sudonano /etc/network/interfaces

As you can see, the details are self-explanatory:

Now, let's set the nameserver IPs. To set NS records, we need to edit /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/base, as follows:

$ nano /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/base

The sample contents of this file are shown in the following screenshot. In our example, we are using the Google DNS IPs. Here, you can use your company's DNS IPs.

After saving the file, reboot the server. After rebooting, you can check using the following command whether you have the correct IP, netmask, and broadcast:

$ ifconfig

Check whether the gateway is correct using the following command:

$ route -n

Lastly, check whether nameserver works correctly. Run the nslookup command and enter any address, as follows:

$ nslookup

As you can see in the preceding screenshot, it checks from 8.8.8.8. Now we can say that our network settings are correct. To exit nslookup, you can use the exit command.

We will first add the Puppet repositories for installation. Secondly, we will update the repositories. Lastly, we will update our server before installing Puppet.

Here are the details to add the Puppet repositories:

$ sudowget https://apt.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs-release-trusty.deb
$ sudodpkg -ipuppetlabs-release-trusty.deb

Now, update the repository info, as follows:

$ sudo apt-get update

Lastly, install the updates, as follows:

$ sudo apt-get upgrade -y

Now, it is time to install Puppet Master and its agent on your server. We will also do some configurations. The command to install Puppet is as follows:

$ sudo apt-get install -y puppetmaster puppet

Now, let's make sure that Puppet Master starts automatically. For this purpose, we need to edit /etc/default/puppetmaster. You need to change the START=no value to START=yes. If it is already yes, you can leave this as it is and continue. You also need to enable puppet agent on the server. We will edit the /etc/default/puppet file. Again, we need to make sure that START=yes exists. We also need to change the server details for the puppet agent. Change the /etc/puppet/puppet.conf file and enter the server details. Just after [main], add the line server=puppetmaster.example.com.

After making the changes, we will restart the services as shown here:

$ sudo service puppetmaster restart
$ sudo service puppet restart

Check whether they are running using the following commands:

$ sudo service puppetmaster status
$ sudo service puppet status

As you can see in the preceding screenshot, the services are running without any problem. So we completed the installation of Puppet Master and Puppet agent on our server.