Docs: Hiera 1: The hiera.yaml Config File


Hiera 1: The hiera.yaml Config File

Hiera’s config file is usually referred to as hiera.yaml. Use this file to configure the hierarchy, which backend(s) to use, and settings for each backend.

Hiera will fail with an error if the config file can’t be found, although an empty config file is allowed.

Location

Hiera uses different config file locations depending on how it was invoked.

From Puppet

By default, the config file is $confdir/hiera.yaml, which is usually one of the following:

  • /etc/puppet/hiera.yaml in *nix open source Puppet
  • /etc/puppetlabs/puppet/hiera.yaml in *nix Puppet Enterprise
  • COMMON_APPDATA\PuppetLabs\puppet\etc\hiera.yaml on Windows

In Puppet 3 or later, you can specify a different config file with the hiera_config setting in puppet.conf. In Puppet 2.x, you cannot specify a different config file, although you can make $confdir/hiera.yaml a symlink to a different file.

From the Command Line

  • /etc/hiera.yaml on *nix
  • COMMON_APPDATA\PuppetLabs\hiera\etc\hiera.yaml on Windows

You can specify a different config file with the -c (--config) option.

From Ruby Code

  • /etc/hiera.yaml on *nix
  • COMMON_APPDATA\PuppetLabs\hiera\etc\hiera.yaml on Windows

You can specify a different config file or a hash of settings when calling Hiera.new.

Format

Hiera’s config file must be a YAML hash. The file must be valid YAML, but may contain no data.

Each top-level key in the hash must be a Ruby symbol with a colon (:) prefix. The available settings are listed below, under “Global Settings” and “Backend-Specific Settings”.

Example Config File

---
:backends:
  - yaml
  - json
:yaml:
  :datadir: /etc/puppet/hieradata
:json:
  :datadir: /etc/puppet/hieradata
:hierarchy:
  - %{::clientcert}
  - %{::custom_location}
  - common

Default Config Values

If the config file exists but has no data, the default settings will be equivalent to the following:

---
:backends: yaml
:yaml:
  :datadir: /var/lib/hiera
:hierarchy: common
:logger: console

Global Settings

The Hiera config file may contain any the following settings. If absent, they will have default values. Note that each setting must be a Ruby symbol with a colon (:) prefix.

:hierarchy

Must be a string or an array of strings, where each string is the name of a static or dynamic data source. (A dynamic source is simply one that contains a %{variable} interpolation token. See “Creating Hierarchies” for more details.)

The data sources in the hierarchy are checked in order, top to bottom.

Default value: "common" (i.e. a single-element hierarchy whose only level is named “common.”)

:backends

Must be a string or an array of strings, where each string is the name of an available Hiera backend. The built-in backends are yaml and json; an additional puppet backend is available when using Hiera with Puppet. Additional backends are available as add-ons.

Custom backends: See “Writing Custom Backends” for details on writing new backend. Custom backends can interface with nearly any existing data store.

The list of backends is processed in order: in the example above, Hiera would check the entire hierarchy in the yaml backend before starting again with the json backend.

Default value: "yaml"

:logger

Must be the name of an available logger, as a string.

Loggers only control where warnings and debug messages are routed. You can use one of the built-in loggers, or write your own. The built-in loggers are:

  • console (messages go directly to STDERR)
  • puppet (messages go to Puppet’s logging system)
  • noop (messages are silenced)

Custom loggers: You can make your own logger by providing a class called, e.g., Hiera::Foo_logger (in which case Hiera’s internal name for the logger would be foo), and giving it class methods called warn and debug, each of which should accept a single string.

Default value: "console"; note that Puppet overrides this and sets it to "puppet", regardless of what’s in the config file.

:merge_behavior

Must be one of the following:

  • native (default) — merge top-level keys only.
  • deep — merge recursively; in the event of conflicting keys, allow lower priority values to win. You almost never want this.
  • deeper — merge recursively; in the event of a conflict, allow higher priority values to win.

Anything but native requires the deep_merge Ruby gem to be installed.

Which merge strategy to use when doing a hash merge lookup. See “Deep Merging in Hiera ≥ 1.2.0” for more details.

Backend-Specific Settings

Any backend can define its own settings and read them from Hiera’s config file. If present, the value of a given backend’s key must be a hash, whose keys are the settings it uses.

The following settings are available for the built-in backends:

:yaml and :json

:datadir

The directory in which to find data source files.

You can interpolate variables into the datadir using %{variable} interpolation tokens. This allows you to, for example, point it at /etc/puppet/hieradata/%{::environment} to keep your production and development data entirely separate.

Default value: /var/lib/hiera on *nix, and COMMON_APPDATA\PuppetLabs\Hiera\var on Windows.

:puppet

:datasource

The Puppet class in which to look for data.

Default value: data

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