My talk was not accepted for PuppetConf 2014, but I’ll be delivering a workshop about the basics of organizing your Puppet code with git. You can find the schedule item here.
Sign up as soon as possible for PuppetConf 2014 because the price keeps going up on tickets. Use this link to get an earlybird discount.
I just played around with installing a Puppet agent using PE 3.2, using the new simplified installer. It’s nifty once you figure out how it works. Here’s what I did.
First of all, I’m using two nodes, a master and agent, using CentOS 6.5, running virtualized on VMWare Fusion. First, I installed the PE master using the usual bundled install script.
Then, I used PE console to add the proper package class to the available classes. I then classified the Master to use the class. In this case, I used pe_repo::platform::el_6_x86_64. I then ran puppet agent -t on the master to get the packages and scripts in the proper place. Just for shits n’ giggles, I did a service pe-httpd restart to be sure everything would work.
On the node, I then ran:
curl -k https://master.puppetlabs.vm:8140/packages/current/install.bash | bash
That was it. Everything installed and Puppet is running. Of course, we’re just curling a bash file, and we’re still using a bash script to install Puppet once more…BUT this beats the heck out of an answers file when you think about massive deployments that need fast provisioning.
I have three weeks working out of my house, which is a luxury nowadays. So I’m going to finally do something entirely local, technical, and fun: Rails Girls LA. They’re doing a weekend workshop for beginning Ruby on Rails. While I’ll probably be way overstacked on skills for their first day, I’m doing the first day anyway. They might go over something I’m unfamiliar with, and I really have been wanting to network with other technical women in the Los Angeles area. Plus, the event is in Pasadena, which means networking with women close to home.
At DreamHost, I was usually the go-to person for reading Ruby on Rails error messages. Nobody else could read those damn things. So here’s the funny part – I knew how to debug Ruby on Rails code, but not how to actually write it. I know some Ruby basics, but not enough, really, considering Puppet is written in Ruby, and someday I’d love to teach the “Extending Puppet Using Ruby” class.
I’ve done some self-guided Ruby learning, but I’m nowhere near strong. The kicker came when I taught Advanced Puppet and a duo of our Sales Engineers knew more about how to write Ruby on the fly than I did.
I think a free workshop will knock out two goals – networking and learning Ruby. I’m rather excited about this.
Professional Blather 