Keyboards wear out; that's a scientific fact. As a small measure to prevent this, I'm making all the code examples in the forthcoming second edition of The Puppet 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 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 repo directory, run:
vagrant plugin install vagrant-vbguest
vagrant up
...
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
4.9.2
Try the 'Hello, world' example:
puppet apply /vagrant/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
To make sure you have the latest version of Puppet installed, run the following commands (answer y to any prompts):
curl https://apt.puppetlabs.com/DEB-GPG-KEY-puppet |sudo apt-key add
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y puppetlabs-release-pc1
sudo apt-get install -y puppet-agent
To check that Puppet is installed and working, run this command (you may get a different version number, which is fine):
sudo /opt/puppetlabs/bin/puppet --version
4.10.0
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.