Customize Puppet settings in the main configuration file, called puppet.conf
.
When Puppet documentation mentions “settings,” it usually means the main settings. These are the
settings that are listed in the configuration reference. They are valid in puppet.conf
and
available for use on the command line. These settings configure nearly all of Puppet’s core features.
auth.conf
and puppetdb.conf
. These files exist for several reasons:
-
The main settings support only a few types of values. Some things just can’t be configured without complex data structures, so they needed separate files. (Authorization rules and custom CSR attributes are in this category.)
-
Puppet doesn’t allow extensions to add new settings to
puppet.conf
. This means some settings that are supposed to be main settings (such as the PuppetDB server) can’t be.
Puppet Server configuration
Puppet Server honors almost all settings in puppet.conf
and picks them up automatically. However, for some tasks, such as configuring the webserver or an
external Certificate Authority, there are Puppet Server-specific configuration files and settings.
For more information, see Puppet Server: Configuration.
Settings are loaded on startup
When a Puppet command or service starts up, it gets values for all of its settings. Any of these settings can change the way that command or service behaves.
A command or service reads its settings only one time. If you need to reconfigured it, you must restart the service or run the command again after changing the setting.
Settings on the command line
Settings specified on the command line have top priority and always override settings from the config file. When a command or service is started, you can specify any setting as a command line option.
$ sudo puppet agent --test --noop --certname temporary-name.example.com
Basic settings
For most settings, you specify the option and follow it with a value. An equals sign between the two (=)
is optional, and you can optionally put values in quotes.
All three of these are equivalent to setting certname = temporary-name.example.com
in
puppet.conf
.
--certname=temporary-name.example.com
--certname temporary-name.example.com
--certname "temporary-name.example.com"
Boolean settings
Settings whose only valid values are true
and false
, use a shorter format. Specifying the option alone sets the setting to true
. Prefixing the option with no-
sets it to false.
-
--noop
is equivalent to settingnoop = true
inpuppet.conf
. -
--no-noop
is equivalent to settingnoop = false
inpuppet.conf
.
Default values
If a setting isn’t specified on the command line or in puppet.conf
, it falls back to
a default value. Default values for all settings are listed in the configuration reference.
Some default values are based on other settings — when this is the case, the default is shown using the other setting as
a variable (similar to $ssldir/certs
).
Configuring locale settings
Puppet supports locale-specific strings in output, and it detects your locale from your system configuration. This provides localized strings, report messages, and log messages for the locale’s language when available.
Upon startup, Puppet looks for a set of environment variables on *nix systems, or the code page setting on Windows. When Puppet finds one that is set, it uses that locale whether it is run from the command line or as a service.
For help setting your operating system locale or adding new locales, consult its documentation. This section covers setting the locale for Puppet services.
Checking your locale settings on *nix and macOS
locale
command. This outputs the settings
used by your current shell.
$ locale
LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=
To see which locales are supported by your system, run locale -a
, which outputs a list of available
locales. Note that Puppet might not have localized strings for every available locale.
set
command. For example, this command lists the set environment variables and
searches for those containing LANG
or LC_
:
sudo set | egrep 'LANG|LC_'
Checking your locale settings on Windows
Get-WinSystemLocale
command from
PowerShell.
PS C:\> Get-WinSystemLocale
LCID Name DisplayName
---- ---- -----------
1033 en-US English (United States)
To check your system’s current code page setting, run
the chcp
command.
Setting your locale on *nix with an environment variable
You can use environment variables to set your locale for processes started on the command line. For most Linux distributions, set the LANG
variable to your preferred locale, and
the LANGUAGE
variable to an empty string. On SLES, also set the LC_ALL
variable to an empty string.
export LANG=ja_JP.UTF-8
export LANGUAGE=''
export LC_ALL=''
export
statements to:
/etc/sysconfig/puppet
on RHEL and its derivatives-
/etc/default/puppet
on Debian, Ubuntu, and their derivativesAfter updating the file, restart the Puppet service to apply the change.
Setting your locale for the Puppet agent service on macOS
LANG
setting in the /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.puppetlabs.puppet.plist
file.
<dict>
<key>LANG</key>
<string>ja_JP.UTF-8</string>
</dict>
After updating the file, restart the Puppet service to apply the change.
Setting your locale on Windows
On Windows, Puppet uses the LANG
environment variable
if it is set. If not, it uses the configured region, as set in the Administrator tab of the Region control panel.
Set-WinSystemLocale en-US
Disabling internationalized strings
Use the optional Boolean disable_i18n
setting to disable the use of
internationalized strings. You can configure this setting in puppet.conf
. If set
to true
, Puppet disables localized strings in log messages, reports,
and parts of the command line interface. This can improve performance when using Puppet modules, especially
if environment caching is disabled, and even if you don’t need
localized strings or the modules aren’t localized. This setting is false
by default in
open source Puppet.
If you’re experiencing performance issues, configure this setting in the [master]
section of the Puppet master’s puppet.conf
file. To force unlocalized messages, which are in English by default, configure this section in a
node’s [main]
or [user]
sections
of puppet.conf
.