Augeas_file resource type

What is this?

There are two main approaches when managing a file from Puppet:

• Manage the file in parts:

  • native resource (host, mailalias, augeasproviders resource types, etc.)
  • concat resource
  • augeas resource
  • file_line resource

• Manage the file in its entirety:

  • file resource with content (template, variables)
  • file resource with source (using fileserver or local file)
  • native resources with purging

One case that is not possible with these is to:

• use a local file as a template
• modify it to create a target file

The augeas_file type allows to do that. It typically allows to use an example configuration file provided by a system package and tune it to create a configuration file, idempotently.

Requirements

• Augeas >= 1.0.0
• ruby-augeas >= 0.5.0

Usage

Standalone

You can use augeas_file to manage a file entirely with one resource, listing Augeas changes in the changes parameter:

# augeas_file doesn't manage file rights
# use the file resource type for that
file { '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/jessie.list':
  ensure => file,
  owner  => 'root',
  group  => 'root',
}
augeas_file { '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/jessie.list':
  lens    => 'Aptsources.lns',
  base    => '/usr/share/doc/apt/examples/sources.list',
  changes => ['setm ./*[distribution] distribution jessie'],
}

You might want to wrap this in a defined resource type:

define apache::userdir (
  $directory,
) {
  file { $title:
    ensure => file,
    owner  => 'www-data',
    group  => 'root',
  }
  augeas_file { $title:
    base    => '/usr/share/doc/apache2.2-common/examples/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf',
    lens    => 'Httpd.lns',
    changes => [
      "set Directory/arg '\"${directory}\"'",
      'rm Directory/directive/arg[.="Indexes"]',
    ],
  }
}

apache::userdir { '/var/www/blog/conf/userdir.conf':
  directory => '/var/www/blog/htdocs',
}

Triggering augeas resources

The augeas_file has the possibility of working with other augeas resources whose incl parameter matches their name:

file { '/var/www/blog/conf/userdir.conf':
  ensure => file,
  owner  => 'www-data',
  group  => 'root',
  mode   => '2570',
}

augeas_file { '/var/www/blog/conf/userdir.conf':
  base => '/usr/share/doc/apache2.2-common/examples/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf',
}

augeas { 'userdir directory':
  incl    => '/var/www/blog/conf/userdir.conf',
  lens    => 'Httpd.lns',
  changes => 'set Directory/arg "\"/var/www/blog/htdocs\""',
}

augeas { 'userdir no indexes':
  incl    => '/var/www/blog/conf/userdir.conf',
  lens    => 'Httpd.lns',
  changes => 'rm Directory/directive/arg[.="Indexes"]',
}

This allows to split the changes into individual resources.