[Spacewalk-list] Spacewalk and Puppet integration

[Erling Ringen Elvsrud]

2010/6/15 Miroslav Suchý <msuchy at redhat.com>:
> On 06/15/2010 12:58 PM, Erling Ringen Elvsrud wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have been experimenting a bit with a setup that integrates Spacewalk
>> 0.8 and Puppet 0.25.x.
>
> I'm sure you know you can directly manage configuration files using
> Spacewalk. Yes Puppet can do a lot of things Spacewalk could not.
> I just want to ask what *you* are missing. Which feature of Puppet you would
> like to see in Spacewalk.

Often when a configuration file is pushed to a system additional
actions are required, like restarting a service. For instance a basic
configuration of ntp on a server may require:

- Pushing a few configuration files
- Enabling and starting ntpd
- Making sure the ntpd package are installed.

This can be expressed in one place in a short an simple way in Puppet:

class ntp-client {
  package { "ntp":
     ensure => present,
  }
  service { "ntpd":
     enable => true,
     ensure => running,
     require => Package["ntp"]
  }
  file { "/etc/ntp.conf":
     ensure => present,
     owner => root,
     gorup => root,
     mode => 0644,
     source => "puppet://$server/system/ntp.conf"
  }

  # ....
}

Without a configuration management system like Puppet and only using
Spacewalk I most likely would have needed to perform manual steps to
complete the configuration of ntp.

Best regards,

Erling Ringen Elvsrud