Bootstrapping Puppet with bash

Previous versions of this book used Rakefiles to bootstrap Puppet. The problem with using Rake to configure a node is that you are running the commands from your laptop; you assume you already have ssh access to the machine. Most bootstrap processes work by issuing an easy to remember command from a node once it has been provisioned. In this section, we'll show how to use bash to bootstrap Puppet with a web server and a bootstrap script.

Getting ready

Install httpd on a centrally accessible server and create a password protected area to store the bootstrap script. In my example, I'll use the Git server I set up previously, git.example.com. Start by creating a directory in the root of your web server:

# cd /var/www/html
# mkdir bootstrap

Now perform the following steps:

1. Add the following location definition to your apache configuration:

   <Location /bootstrap>
   AuthType basic
   AuthName "Bootstrap"
   AuthBasicProvider file
   AuthUserFile /var/www/puppet.passwd
   Require...