A collection of task oriented solutions in Puppet

Topics

 

You want to set a default $PATH for all execs

Challenge

You’ve had enough of specifying a complete ‘path =>’ on each exec and you want a more global solution

Solution

# put this somewhere global, like site.pp
Exec { path => [ "/bin/", "/sbin/" , "/usr/bin/", "/usr/sbin/" ] }

# uses the globally specified path
exec { "make_foo_state":
    command => "mkdir -p /tmp/foo/state",
}

# overrides the global path for this command
exec { "my_local_command":
    command => "my_special_local_command",
    path    => "/usr/local/sbin/",
}

Explanation

Adding a path to every exec is annoying, easy to forget and leads to unneeded duplication. By placing the Exec shown above in a global location (like your site.pp file) all execs will use that path by default, while still allowing you to add extra directories to the path where needed.