Puppet is a¹⁾ powerful open source tool to automate the configuration of and software management on Unix-like²⁾ operating systems. This posting is a distillate of the resources I collected during my Puppet learning phase. I hope it helps to get an overview about what Puppet can do for you and how to use it (plus providing existing Puppet users some new ideas or tips).

Selected slides and presentations (overview, use-cases, experts, tips)

• Puppet for dummies - ZendCon 2011 Edition
• Developing infrastructures with Puppet (JS slides, use the ← and → key)
• Being a Puppet Master: Automating Amazon EC2 with Puppet & Friends
• Puppet 101 - Puppet @ Stanford University
• Lessons learned when introducing puppet in an existing large scale corporate environment
• Puppet at Loggly
• One-Man Ops with Puppet & Friends
• Are we compliant?
• A Puppet Approach To Application Deployment And Automation In Nokia
• Puppet Modules Standards and Interoperability
• Kickstart & Puppet, Booking.com
• Puppet at High Scale

How to start

• Puppet Labs Docs: Learning Puppet, especially “Part one: Serverless Puppet” teaches the basics.
• Puppet Labs Docs: Language Guide
• Puppet CookBook - A collection of task oriented solutions in Puppet
• http://docs.puppetlabs.com/ in general, especially Reference Shelf and Puppet Guides
• Puppet Wiki: Documentation Start
• Variable Scope and Puppet as of 2.7

Puppet vs. [insert other tool here]

• Comparison of open source configuration management software
• Puppet versus Chef: 10 reasons why Puppet wins
• What are the right questions to ask when deciding whether to use Chef or Puppet?
• CFEngine vs Puppet

“Masterless” (Puppet without central server)

• Global vs local puppet management
• Scaling Puppet with Git
• Puppet at Loggly
• Master-less: What do I lose?

Source code standards

• Puppet Labs Code Style Guide
• Puppet Manifest Documentation³⁾
• Puppet References

Source code tools

• Geppetto: A Puppet IDE (Eclipse)
• Puppet editing like a pro
• Puppet versioning like a pro

Testing

• Puppet Wiki: Testing
• Testing Modules in the Puppet Forge
• Verifying Puppet: Checking Syntax and Writing Automated Tests
• Puppet unit testing like a pro
• rspec-puppet README
• Tests, Example42's foo module

Useful source code, modules, blue prints, examples, inspiration

• Example42
• Puppet Wiki: Complete Configuration, Git repository of David Schmit
• Puppet Labs GitHub Account
• Camptocamp.com GitHub Account
• immerda.ch gitweb
• puzzle.ch gitweb
• Puppet Forge

Design patterns, module organization strategies

• Puppet Modules Standards and Interoperability (JS slides, use the ← and → key)
• Using Parameterized Classes
• Why should I use a puppet parameterized class?
• ReUse Your (Puppet) Modules!
• Stanford Puppet Best Practices
• Understanding Example42 modules
• Customize Example42 Puppet Modules
• The next generation of Example42 Puppet modules
• Best practices on organizing modules
• Managing resource dependencies
• Puppet Labs Source Code Standard / Style Guide
• Puppet versioning like a pro
• Design Pattern for Dealing with Data

Puppet security (basic thoughts)

• Puppet Security and Network Topologies
• Securing and Extending Puppet for World Domination (JS slides, use the ← and → key)
• Puppet at High Scale
• Managing sensitive strings with puppet
• Secret variables in Puppet with Hiera and GPG

Miscellaneous but useful

• Automatic Monitoring with Puppet and Nagios
• Puppet source file trick
• Cobbler - the Linux install and update server
• Alerting on Failed Puppet Status
• Deploy our own software using Puppet?
• CentOS 6 + Puppet 2.7 + mCollective + Foreman + RabbitMQ + Apache + Passenger
• Puppet errors explained
• Puppet Labs Docs: Passenger

Starting points to find more useful content:

• Presentations and slides:
  • Puppet Labs on SlidesShare, YouTube and Vimeo
  • Puppet Camp (provides links to presentations hold at previous camps)
  • Puppet Blog: Videos/Slides from PuppetConf Available
• "Puppet Users" Google Group ( Hint: How to subscribe to a Google Group with a custom email address)
• Planet Puppet
• Planet DevOps: Category puppet
• UnixDaemon Blog: Category /tools/puppet
• Masterzen's Blog
• Server Fault: Tagged with puppet
• Google

• Puppet 2.7 Cookbook
  • Buy it at Amazon.com
  • Buy it at Amazon.de
  • Preview at Google Books
• Pro Puppet
  • Buy it at Amazon.com
  • Buy it at Amazon.de
  • Preview at Google Books

• Puppet Labs provides YUM and APT repositories. If you need a newer Puppet version than the one offered by your distro repository, have a look at yum.puppetlabs.com and apt.puppetlabs.com. You might need to tinker a little bit to get a working repository file.
  Fedora YUM repository example:

  puppetlabs.repo

  [puppetlabs-products-fedora]
  name=Puppet Labs - Products
  baseurl=http://yum.puppetlabs.com/fedora/f\$releasever/products/\$basearch/
  gpgkey=http://yum.puppetlabs.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-puppetlabs
         http://yum.puppetlabs.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-reductive
  enabled=1
  gpgcheck=1
   
  [puppetlabs-dependencies-fedora]
  name=Puppet Labs - Dependencies
  baseurl=http://yum.puppetlabs.com/fedora/f\$releasever/dependencies/\$basearch/
  gpgkey=http://yum.puppetlabs.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-puppetlabs
         http://yum.puppetlabs.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-reductive
  enabled=1
  gpgcheck=1

• Puppet is also useful in very small IT environments like e.g. your home network. Even with only one system to maintain, you may want to automate things e.g. for fast re-installation (a central Puppetmaster server is not mandatory, cf. so called “masterless” mode → puppet apply site.pp). Compare the situation with a source code VCS: Thousands of developers are using something like Git for their source code, even if they are the only developer of a specific project. The reason is that Git is not just a tool for “big teams and corporations”. It provides functionality every developer can benefit from. Same for Puppet: even if you got only a few computers to maintain, you may want to automate things plus documenting your setup by doing so. Puppet provides functionality every administrator can benefit from.

• Google PageRank Check
• Google PageRank (PR) / Backlink (BL) - Update History since January 2006
• Wie kann man den eigenen PageRank auf Unterseiten vererben
• PageRank

• Rückenblitzer im Klassenraum
  Oh my god, this country is getting strange. Medieval times.
• 42.000 Euro Roaming-Gebühren - Diekmanns Telekom-Schulden
  I really hope EU finally bans roaming fees.
• Doktorand mit 18 - Das Wunder von Halle
• Telekom darf IP-Adressen sieben Tage speichern
• Umweltgifte als Ursache für ADHS unterschätzt
• DL-InfoV: Neue Pflichtangaben für Dienstleister

• Why innerHTML can ruin your AJAX applications
• IE innerHTML Memory Leak
• The Problem With innerHTML
• Alternatives to innerHTML

• Strong CAPTCHA Guidelines v1.2 (PDF)
• ECMAScript 5 Strict Mode, JSON, and More
  Strict Mode in EXMAScript 5/JavaScript helps out in a couple ways…
• 20 Useful PHP + jQuery Components & Tuts for Everyday Project
• Use Relative Protocol URL Address to Automatically Determine Web Address Protocol (HTTP or HTTPS)
  WTF? Using “//example.com” as href/src-value instead of “http(s)://example.com” seems to work for browsers
• Web-Typografie 2.0 - Individuelle Schriften für das Internet, weitgehend barrierefrei
• Developer Preview auf Internet Explorer 9
• CACert VhostTaskForce
  “Currently the different browsers, servers and CAs all implement different and incompatible ways to use SSL certificates for several VHosts on the same server. The VHost SSL Taskforce tries to find an agreement between those way.”
• The Seven Deadly Sins Of JavaScript Implementation
• Browsersize - wie andere die eigene Website sehen
• Verarbeiten großer verteilter Datenmengen mit Hadoop
• Bücher zum Programmieren für iPhone & Co.
• Gandalf, libGD and all the like
  RTFM before using libGD with MS VC++ .NET/2008

• Mit Keykeriki v2 drahtlose Tastaturen abhören
  Open-Source-Gerät Keykeriki fängt Signale drahtloser Geräte ab
• EFF - List of Printers Which Do or Do Not Display Tracking Dots
• Speichert Facebook gelöschte Daten und Nutzerverhalten?
  Zitat: “Wir behalten alle Daten. Auch dann, wenn der Nutzer sie gelöscht hat.”
• HTTPS-DNS
  Interesting project: DNS traffic will be tunneled through a HTTPS-keyed connection to uncensored DNS-Servers.
• SSL for free - Setting up free certificates
  If CAcert is not right for you…
• SSL für lau - Kostenlose Zertifikate einrichten
  Falls CAcert nicht in Frage kommt…
• Please don't port philosophy with code!
  Quote: “One of my pet peeves is Linux installers for proprietary software requiring root permissions.”
• Wepawet
  Wepawet is a service for detecting and analyzing web-based malware. It currently handles Flash, JavaScript, and PDF files.
• 10 Immutable Laws of Security
  …linking a MS page seems strange to me in this context
• Rijndael chipher - 128bit version encryption
  Slides (Flash) about how AES is working
• The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security
• Bitland.Net Security Notes
• Dancho Danchev's Blog - Mind Streams of Information Security Knowledge

• Distracted by Everything (90min video)
  M.I.T. students are among the world's smartest and most wired. They constantly multitask with their tech tools.
• Simple Desktops
  Wonderful basic/simple wallpapers
• in 1998, i made a C++ program to calculate pi to a billion digits.
• Coremark - CPU Core Benchmarking
  Testing a processor’s basic structure - compare online.
• Deskcut - Easily Create URL Shortcuts In Ubuntu
  Ever tried creating a URL shortcut with Firefox in Ubuntu only to find yourself frustrated?
• Food for The Eagle
• Rock Your Firefox - Destroy The Web
• Dropbox: find filename which may make problems on Windows
• Project cencored
  Interesting project which describes itself as a collector of cencored and underreported articles
• Rational Team Concert for Open Source Development: Experiences with RSSOwl
  Rational Team Concert is the new project development tool of choice for RSSOwl
• Verrückte Gesetze - Sterben verboten
  Insane laws, only in America? Well… nope.
• Engpässe in der Tumormedizin - Krebsärzten gehen die Diagnosemittel aus
  Seriously, WTF?
• Die Finanzen von ARD und ZDF - Wo Milch und Honig fließen
• Blühende Autobahnen
• Das Schwächeln der Sonne
  “Die Erderwärmung ist ins Stocken geraten: Seit zehn Jahren steigt die globale Durchschnittstemperatur nicht weiter an.”
• Witzabmahnung von komsa an 100partnerprogramme.de
• English Language Difficulties
  “It's vs Its”, “All Together vs Altogether” and many more…
• Namensschilder als Kommunikationshilfe
  Interesting idea about adding random characteristic beside the name of persons to get them talking about
• Spotify - eine Zusammenfassung
• Das unknackbare Paßwort
  IBM Fail, special chars auto-replace
• Informationen rund um das Schwarz-Surfen
• Tauss-Anwalt: Staatsanwaltschaft betreibt "perfide Stimmungsmache"

• Chrometric - A browser to see your website like color blind persons (via)
• Colorblind Wep Page Filter - An online filter to see your website like color blind persons (via)
• Einfach für alle - Allgemeine Anlaufstelle zum Thema Barrierefreies Webdesign

nginx is my favorite webserver on my developer machines… and this is a small bookmark dump

General

• Alternative web servers compared: lighttpd, nginx, LiteSpeed and Zeus
• Apache vs Nginx : Web Server Performance Deathmatch
• Benching Lighttpd vs Nginx (static files)
• WikiVS - Lighttpd vs nginx
• Nginx, my new favorite front end for mongrel cluster
• Nginx vs Pound: Klarer Sieg für Nginx als Loadbalancer
• nGinx vs Lighttpd - web server of choice
• Goodbye Lighty. Hello nginx.
• nixCraft category: nginx

Install and config

• FreeBSD: Nginx Virtual Hosting Configuration
• Linode Library - Hosting Websites with Nginx
• Nginx "how to" - Fast and Secure Web Server
• How do I convert mod_rewrite (QSA option) to Nginx equivalent?
• How to Stop Crashing / Hanging of php-cgi / spawn-fcgi with nginx / lighttpd
• nginx, php, upload and error 413: entity too large
• How to auto-restart spawn-fcgi
• Nginx Hacking Tips including some useful hints how to port Apache mod_rewrite rules to nginx
• FreeBSD Base System (de)

• heise Netze - Signing emails with DomainKeys Identified Mail
• heise Netze - E-Mails signieren mit DKIM
• Coding Horror: So You'd Like to Send Some Email (Through Code)
• Spam-Golem - Warum der Mail-Versand zum Glücksspiel zu verkommen droht (c't-Archiv, 2/2008, Seite 118) (kostenpflichtiger Download)
• DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)

• The drama button
• More nice buttons...
• Who calls me? Reverse Phone Number Lookup
• Abgespeist - Denn Etiketten lügen wie gedruckt
• Welcome to Everything
• Tim Ferriss: 7 Great Principles for Dealing with Haters
• Europäische Ursprünge - amerikanische Zukunft?
  “Ein extropisches oder hypermodernes Denken könnte die Lähmung Europas überwinden, die ihren Ausdruck in der Postmoderne gefunden hat.”
• Teilchenbeschleuniger am CERN - Urknall vertagt
  “Allein von ALICE gilt es die Events aus 100 Millionen Datenkanälen auszuwerten, ATLAS liefert ebenso viele Informationen, CMS und LHCb stehen dem nur wenig nach. […] Direkt an der Quelle entsteht ein Strom von einem PByte/s.”
• USA Erklärt - Die Grobstruktur der USA (oder wo man vor Bush am sichersten ist)
• 15 Hilarious Divorce Cakes
• Nice swedish broadband speed test