CODEWITHSUNDEEP
puppet
miracle2k
miracle2k

Reputation: 32077

Is there really no easy way to test puppet scripts on a remote machine?

I'm experimenting with Puppet scripts for deployment.

I find the hardest part about the process of writing those scripts is iteratively testing them.

I don't want to puppet apply on my local development machine, that liable to screw stuff up. I have a clean-slate remote box where I want to apply. I also don't see how a puppetmaster can help me; I might be using a puppetmaster at a later point for production deployments, but for now, I just want to get my code working.

So I put together a quick shell script that would rsync the different directories from my local puppet module path to /tmp on the remote machine, and then run puppet apply. This is terribly inconvenient. It's slow, especially if we're talking about a syntax error.

I think what I want really is something like a puppetd <-> puppetmaster connection, where puppetd on the remote machine receives an already compiled manifest. Just an adhoc-one over a SSH connection, without having to actual setup an Puppetmaster, dealing with certificates etc. puppet apply user@host.

There seems to be nothing of the sort, but how do other people deal with this? I experience of working on a Puppet script is incredibly frustrating to me, as is.

Upvotes: 6

Views: 7120

Answers (7)

whummer
whummer

Reputation: 497

You may be interested in citac, a toolkit for automated testing of Puppet scripts. It is available on Github: https://github.com/citac/citac

Citac systematically executes your Puppet manifest in various configurations, imitating transient system faults, different resource execution orders, and more. The generated test reports inform you about issues with non-idempotent resources, convergence-related issues, etc.

The tool uses Docker containers for execution, hence your system remains untouched while testing. State changes are tracked during execution of the Puppet script, and detailed test reports are generated.

To get an idea of which bugs the tool is able to detect, a large-scale evaluation with more than 150 public Puppet scripts has been performed. The results are available here: http://citac.github.io/eval/ Please feel free to provide feedback, pull requests, etc. Happy testing!

Upvotes: 0

pwan
pwan

Reputation: 2914

I stumbled across rump while looking at another question. If you're using git, it might be useful. There's a slide deck available.

From the README.md: "Rump helps you run Puppet locally against a Git checkout."

Upvotes: 0

user3492421
user3492421

Reputation:

Why don't you want to run a puppetmaster? It's created for exactly this situation.

If you absolutely cannot run a puppetmaster, then you would have to wrap your puppet calls in another script that first downloads the file (with curl or wget) and apply them after a successful download. Given that the puppetmaster is a fairly simple application to run, I don't see how not using it would be any better.

Upvotes: 0

liquidki
liquidki

Reputation: 1294

Vagrant is the most useful environment for rapid infrastructure development that I've found. It most closely (99%) will mirror your production setup, and you can account for those tiny differences in puppet so everything works as expected. It takes about 30 minutes to get going with it and will pay you back many times over in saved time messing around with file copy scripts :)

If it's helpful to visualize, on my desktop I have 3 terminals side by side:

Terminal 1) Editing puppet manifests, classes, ruby code, etc Terminal 2) Running 'vagrant provision' which simply does a puppet apply along with any facts you want to pass, etc. Terminal 3) 'vagrant ssh' into the box so I can poke around as puppet is doing its work

Hope this helps!

Upvotes: 1

Daniel
Daniel

Reputation: 10245

I usually have two levels of testing for my Puppet scripts.

Unit tests for quick feedback: Written using rspec-puppet, these compile a Puppet catalog for the class/define/etc being tested, and make assertions about it. Run locally each time I make a minor change, and on the build server each time I check in. The tests run quickly (<10 seconds), and pick up syntax and dependency issues.

Functional tests to make sure it really works: Written using Cucumber with the Aruba library. When I'm finished implementing a feature and the unit tests for it pass, these tests provision a VM (using Vagrant) with the appropriate Puppet manifest(s), log in, and make assertions about the VM's state. The tests themselves look something like:

Given I am SSHed into Vagrant box "webserver"
When I type "php --version"
Then the output should include "PHP 5.4.11"

Upvotes: 2

Lee Lowder
Lee Lowder

Reputation: 713

I would also take a look at puppet rpsec tests, using rspec-puppet and puppetlabs-spec-helper. The rspec-puppet-init will break puppet doc and geppetto and maybe some other things due to the symlinks, and there are some issues with hiera, but the tests are easy to setup otherwise and work well, and can also be tied into jenkins/hudson.

Upvotes: 3

Mark Roggenkamp
Mark Roggenkamp

Reputation: 144

I'd recommend using Vagrant. If you're not testing the puppet master setup you can use the built in provisioner integration.

Once you have everything setup you can run vagrant provision or just run puppet apply on the vagrant vm.

Here's a related article you may find helpful as well.

Upvotes: 9

Related Questions