Puppet just made me about 3000% more efficient

I've spent the afternoon playing with puppet. It's brilliant and I wish I would have set it up sooner.

My test setup does the following:

• creates a file called /tmp/hello_world
• makes sure that screen and vim-enhanced
• makes sure ntp is installed, running and configured to start (using the default config)
• makes sure the perforce cli is installed
• make sure snmp is configured the way I like it
• /etc/resolv.conf is configured as I expect it

I can create classes that map to my different server rolls. I can make sure key configuration files are up to date -- if I had to change nameservers in /etc/resolv.conf due to IP changes, I'd have to log into every one of my boxes and manually change it. With puppet, it's a variable change and all my systems update.

The following configures your snmp server for you. Stick the following into a pp file:

define snmp_server($community = "public",
$location = "Unknown (edit /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf)",
$contact = "Root (configure /etc/snmp/snmp.local.conf)"
) {

file { "/etc/snmp/snmpd.conf":
ensure => present,
mode => "0644",
owner => "root",
group => "root",
content => template("snmpd.conf.erb"),
}

include snmp_apps
}

class snmp_apps {
package { net-snmp: ensure => installed, }
package { net-snmp-devel: ensure => installed, }
package { net-snmp-utils: ensure => installed, }

service { snmpd:
ensure => true,
enable => true,
subscribe => File["/etc/snmp/snmpd.conf"]
}
}

And this into a snmpd.conf.erb template file in your template directory:

com2sec notConfigUser default
group notConfigGroup v1 notConfigUser
group notConfigGroup v2c notConfigUser
view systemview included .1 <%= community %>
access notConfigGroup "" any noauth exact systemview none none
syslocation <%= location %>
syscontact <%= contact %>

Then configure your systems with:

snmp_server { "not used" : community => 'your_commnity', location => 'Springfield', contact => 'root@apple.com' }


Keep in mind that my configs are for Redhat/CentOS systems only -- but you could easily make these cross-unix compatible.