abacusresearch / puppet-module-facter

Puppet module to manage Facter

puppet-module-facter

Table of Contents

1. Module Description - What the module does and why it is useful
2. Setup - The basics of getting started with facter
   • What facter affects
   • Beginning with facter
3. Usage - Configuration options and additional functionality
4. Limitations - OS compatibility, etc.
5. Development - Guide for contributing to the module

Module description

This module manages facter, specifically the facts.d directory, symlinks to facter that are in your PATH and the ability to define external facts.

Setup

What facter affects

Ensure that /etc/facter/facts.d exists with the correct permissions and populate it with facts.txt which is used for external facts. It can optionally create a symlink such as /usr/local/bin/facter to point to facter in the puppet package that may not be in your $PATH.

It has defined types for specifying external facts. This allows you to seed already known information on the system. facter::fact is for traditional key=value where the value is a string. facter::structured_data_fact allows values to be structured data such as arrays and hashes. To achive this, the structured data is converted to YAML format.

Beginning with facter

Declare the main class as demonstrated below.

Usage

You can manage all interaction with facter through the main facter class. To specify external facts, use the facter::fact defined type.

You can optionally specify a hash of external facts in Hiera.

facter::fact

---
facter::facts_hash:
  role:
    value: 'puppetmaster'
  location:
    value: 'RNB'
    file: 'location.txt'

The above configuration in Hiera would produce /etc/facter/facts.d/facts.txt with the following content.

role=puppetmaster

It would also produce /etc/facter/facts.d/location.txt with the following content.

location=RNB

facter::structured_data_fact

---
facter::structured_data_facts_hash:
foo:
  data:
    my_array:
    - one
    - two
    - three
    my_hash:
      k: v
bar:
  data:
    bar_array:
    - one
    - two
    - three
  file: bar.yaml
  facts_dir: /factsdir

The above configuration would create /etc/facter/facts.d/facts.yaml with the fact my_array. It would create /factsdir/bar.yaml with the fact bar_array.

Minimum usage

include facter

Parameters for configuration

Please consult the REFERENCE.md file for all parameters.

Limitations

This module is compatible with the latest release of Puppet versions 5 and 6. It supports all POSIX like platforms as well as Windows. See .travis.yml for an exact matrix of tested Ruby and Puppet versions.

Development

See CONTRIBUTING.md for information related to the development of this module.