The Puppet 5 Beginner's Guide, 3rd Edition

Keyboards wear out; that's a scientific fact. As a small measure to prevent this, I'm making all the code examples in the third edition of The Puppet 5 Beginner's Guide freely available to download and use in this repo, so you don't have to type them in from the book. You'll find them in the examples directory.

If you're already using Puppet, you can dive straight in and look at the examples. You can read, use, and modify them without needing to buy the book, although obviously I will be happier if you do. (Buy two copies, in case you leave one on the bus by mistake.)

Throughout the book, we'll be developing a complete, working example infrastructure, which you can use as a basis for your own. You can view and download it at the Puppet 5 Beginner's Guide demo repo.

If you're new to Puppet, a great way to try it out quickly is to use a Vagrant virtual machine, which will run on your own computer, and there's a specific Vagrant image recommended for use with this book. Follow the instructions below to install Virtualbox and Vagrant, and you'll be able to run the examples in this repo in just a few minutes.

Download and install Virtualbox.

Download and install Vagrant.

In the puppet-beginners-guide-3 repo directory, run:

scripts/start_vagrant.sh
...

Machine booted and ready!

Connect to the VM with the following command:

vagrant ssh

You now have a command line shell on the VM. Check that Puppet is installed and working:

puppet --version
5.2.0

Try the 'Hello, world' example:

sudo puppet apply /examples/file_hello.pp
Notice: Compiled catalog for localhost in environment production in 0.07 seconds
Notice: /Stage[main]/Main/File[/tmp/hello.txt]/ensure: defined content as '{md5}22c3683b094136c3398391ae71b20f04'
Notice: Applied catalog in 0.01 seconds

cat /tmp/hello.txt
hello, world

Well, that was easy! Reward yourself with a big cup of tea and a slice of cake. It's important to keep your strength up.