On May 30, 3:36 pm, S Ahmed <sahmed1...@gmail.com> wrote: > Other than learning on to build a puppet repo, what other > skills/tutorials/docs can you point me to do learn how to admin a puppet > setup.
When you say "build a Puppet repo", I guess you're talking about writing manifests. That is probably the most significant aspect of using Puppet, so you're cutting out a lot when you exclude it. > What sort of day to day issues to you guys run into, and what are they > command line tools that I should learn? For Puppet itself, you need to know the varied modes of the "puppet" command for controlling the agent, the certificate authority, etc. > /var/log/syslog seems to be the place to look for any issues for things like > agent's not being able to connect or problems with the catalog. > > I know this is a open ended question, but I want to be prepared :) Puppet automates a variety of system administration tasks, but it does not replace a system administrator -- rather it empowers one. You will not administer Puppet well if you are not a capable system administrator apart from Puppet. To really be effective, it helps to understand how to adminster your systems without relying on GUI admin tools. From your question, I guess you recognize that. The real sysadmin's toolset includes at least these programs (in no particular order): Basic filesystem commands: mkdir, rmdir, ln (-s), rm Advanced filesystem commands: mount, umount, chown, chmod Package management: yum / apt / etc. as appropriate Service management: (varies, but for example:) chkconfig, service Scheduling: cron Scripting: sh / bash User and Group management: (varies, but for example:) useradd, usermod, userdel, groupadd, groupmod, groupdel, chsh Basic security management: passwd There others, too, some fundamental, but all less relevant to Puppet. But even being expert with all of those doesn't make you much of a sysadmin. Other than system privilege, what makes a sysadmin is not so much his tools, but rather his understanding of how the system works. What do various services do? Which files configure system operations and policy, and how? If the network is down, how do you bring it up? Where are the user home directories? Where are the system logs? Where are the various shell startup scripts? And so on. I'm not sure where you're coming from skill-wise, but don't be discouraged if all that sounds like a lot. Nobody is born knowing that stuff, and few sysadmins are across-the-board experts in all of the above. Everyone improves with experience. If you're not confident in your general sysadmin abilities, however, then do be wary of taking a position where you don't have a superior or peers who can help you in that area. For help with Puppet, though, you have us :-) . John -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Puppet Users" group. To post to this group, send email to puppet-users@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to puppet-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/puppet-users?hl=en.
