How to set up :datadir: when using Hiera with Puppet and Vagrant

hierapuppetvagrant

I'd like to know how to set up :datadir: in hiera.yaml for optimal usage with Puppet and Vagrant. Currently I'm using vagrant 1.5.0 with virtualbox 4.2 on Ubuntu 13.10 with an Ubuntu 12.04 guest running puppet 3.1.1

I am trying to set up an environment similar to this blog post, Puppet Best Practices: Environment specific configs. Specifically, my Vagrantfile contains:

  config.vm.define "servername" do |servername|
    servername.vm.box = "precise-puppet-3"
    servername.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.213.2",
      virtualbox__intnet: "networkname"

    # Provision with puppet.
    servername.vm.provision :puppet do |puppet|
      puppet.hiera_config_path = "puppet/hiera.yaml"
      puppet.manifests_path = "puppet/manifests"
      puppet.module_path = "puppet/modules"
      puppet.manifest_file  = "servername.pp"
      puppet.facter = {
        "vagrant" => "1",
        "server" => "servername",
      }
    end
  end

I can confirm that the hiera_config_path is correct, because I get an error if I delete hiera.yaml.

puppet/hiera.yaml contains:

---
:backends: yaml
:yaml:
  :datadir: "manifests/configuration"
:hierarchy:
  - "%{::clientcert}"
  - "%{::environment}"
  - "virtual_%{::is_virtual}"
  - common
:logger: console

And, further, puppet/manifests/configuration/common.yaml contains:

---
myvar: "test"

Testing this from the commandline:

$ hiera -c hiera.yaml myvar
test

So far, so good. However, if I try to test this from within a puppet manifest file, the variable cannot be found, and I get an error. Example test:

$myvariable = hiera(myvar)
notice("My variable is: ${myvar}")

The error is:

Error: Could not find data item myvar in any Hiera data file and no default supplied at...

If I ssh into my machine via vagrant ssh, I can see that Vagrant is mounting my manifest directory at /tmp/vagrant-puppet-2. If I edit the hiera.yaml file, and replace :datadir: with the full path /tmp/vagrant-puppet-2/manifests/configuration, then my Puppet manifests can access my Hiera data. Can I do this with a relative path, though?

Best Answer

I found the solution while documenting my question. Change :datadir: to read:

  :datadir: "%{settings::manifestdir}/configuration"

Puppet will provide the path to the manifest directory in $settings::manifestdir. Storing the Hiera data inside the manifest directory is useful because Vagrant will mount this directory explicitly before running Puppet in the guest system, and other directories you might select for this purpose might not be available.

Related Solutions

Can Vagrant point to a directory of Puppet manifests for execution

Firstly, do I understand the "new" (non-import) way of calling multiple manifests correctly, in that a directory is to be pointed to in which all the *.pp files inside it will be executed?

Yes, you do. See here:

If you’re using the main manifest heavily instead of relying on an ENC, consider changing the manifest setting to $confdir/manifests. This lets you split up your top-level code into multiple files while avoiding the import keyword.

Moreover, manifest and modulepath are also getting deprecated in favor of directory environments and the manifest directory behavior, see here:

Now that directory environments are completed, config-file environments are deprecated. Defining environment blocks in puppet.conf will cause a deprecation warning, as will any use of the modulepath, manifest, and config_version settings in puppet.conf.

This is a pretty big change for a lot of deployments, but should be a good improvement in the long run.

And secondly, has Vagrant "caught up" with this new change to accommodate the referencing of directories in conjunction with Puppet's deprecation of "import"?

No, it has not; from their docs:

manifest_file (string) - The name of the manifest file that will serve as the entrypoint for the Puppet run. This manifest file is expected to exist in the configured manifests_path

For use with Vagrant, you're stuck with dealing with deprecation warnings for now, which is unfortunate. But, import's not slated for removal until 4.x, so this gives Vagrant some time to catch up.

Vagrant’s puppet provisioner not reading hiera.yaml backend correctly

Okay so it appears I ran into two different problems. The largest problem was that although I had a module that I created called "hieraconfig" which would copy my precreated hiera.yaml and common.json files to /etc/puppet, the jboss module which calls hiera was being executed first (although I included it after hieraconfig in manifest - see below). I tried to fix this to evaluate hierasetup first in the site.pp manifest, but it still ran the jboss module first:

stage { 'pre':
  before => Stage['main']
}

# add the hierasetup module to the new 'pre' run stage
class { 'hierasetup':
  stage => 'pre'
}

include ::hierasetup
include ::jboss

I have no current fix for this. But at least I know that part of the failure was that /etc/puppet/hiera.yaml and /etc/puppet/hieradata/common.json were not even present on the VM when hiera was being called from the jboss module, since hierasetup had not run yet. I made this work temporarily by using Vagrant's script provisioner instead of puppet to copy the files there for me.

The second issue was that because I thought those files were present the whole time I got quite confused about what "puppet.hiera_config_path" was supposed to do. Through various trial and error attempts here is what I have discovered:

puppet.manifests_path, puppet.modules_path, and puppet.hiera_config_path only point to paths on the host machine (in my case on OSX). Don't be fooled into thinking, if you use relative paths, that it is relative to the /vagrant mount on the VM, and not rather relative to the directory containing your Vagrantfile on the host machine (though that is obviously what gets mounted to /vagrant).
Each of those _path variables, IF and ONLY IF they are actually set in the Vagrantfile (otherwise default puppet directories will be searched), will cause Vagrant to copy the modules, manifests, and hiera config to subdirectories under /tmp/vagrant-puppet[-X] (with -X possibly being an additional number suffix like /tmp/vagrant-puppet-1) and tell puppet to look under /tmp for them.

If you have your puppet files already on the VM that you want to use but set the _path variables then Vagrant's puppet command is not going to find them, because it redirects puppet to /tmp/vagrant-puppet[-X] when you set them. You cannot change this destination on the VM, although the "vagrant up" output will notify you where they are being mapped like this:

default: /tmp/vagrant-puppet-1/manifests => /Users//vm_stuff/vagrant-fresh/puppet_files/manifests

default: /tmp/vagrant-puppet-1/modules-0 => /Users//vm_stuff/vagrant-fresh/puppet_files/modules

The path after the => arrow is the source directory on your host machine which you specified with the _path variables in the Vagrantfile. The path before the => arrow is the location on the VM where the source directory contents will be copied.

If you instead prefer Vagrant to have puppet look in default directories for files you have already placed on the VM (which you do not need copied by Vagrant for you into /tmp) then do not specify any _path variables in Vagrant. Alternately if neither the default locations or the /tmp location are satisfactory you may completely override the default Vagrant behavior by explicitly specifying where to look for each with the puppet.options variable, like this:

puppet.options = "--hiera_config=/path/to/hiera.yaml --modulepath '/path/to/modules/ --manifestdir /path/to/manifests/"

If anything fails and you have set --verbose && --debug as part of the puppet.options (possibly it will show without those set as well) you will get an error showing the actual puppet command sent via ssh to the guest VM, like this:

The following SSH command responded with a non-zero exit status.
Vagrant assumes that this means the command failed!

puppet apply --verbose --debug --modulepath '/tmp/vagrant-puppet-1/modules-0:/etc/puppet/modules' --manifestdir /tmp/vagrant-puppet-1/manifests --hiera_config=/tmp/vagrant-puppet-1/hiera.yaml --detailed-exitcodes /tmp/vagrant-puppet-1/manifests/site.pp || [ $? -eq 2 ]

As long as --hiera_config is pointing to the correct location/file in this command it should read your configuration with no problems. I had an issue temporarily (before I discovered that /etc/puppet/hieradata/common.json was not present on the VM) to where it would read the hiera.yaml but then fail due to common.json being absent.

All said and done though hiera looks in very specific locations depending on whether you set "puppet.hiera_config_path" or not, unless you manually override the puppet.options.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Can Vagrant point to a directory of Puppet manifests for execution

Vagrant’s puppet provisioner not reading hiera.yaml backend correctly

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