Docs: PE 2.6 » Installing » Windows Agents


Installing Windows Agents

windows logo This chapter refers to Windows functionality. To install PE on *nix nodes, see Installing Puppet Enterprise.

PE 2.6 includes support for Windows agent nodes. Windows nodes:

  • Can fetch configurations from a puppet master and apply manifests locally
  • Cannot serve as a puppet master
  • Cannot respond to live management or orchestration

See the main Puppet on Windows documentation for details on running Puppet on Windows and writing manifests for Windows.

Installing Puppet

To install Puppet Enterprise on a Windows node, simply download and run the installer, which is a standard Windows .msi package and will run as a graphical wizard.

The installer must be run with elevated privileges. Installing Puppet does not require a system reboot.

The only information you need to specify during installation is the hostname of your puppet master server:

Puppet master hostname selection

After Installation

Once the installer finishes:

  • Puppet agent will be running as a Windows service, and will fetch and apply configurations every 30 minutes; you can now assign classes to the node on your puppet master or console server. Puppet agent can be started and stopped with the Service Control Manager or the sc.exe utility; see Running Puppet on Windows for more details.

  • The Start Menu will contain a Puppet folder, with shortcuts for running puppet agent manually, running Facter, and opening a command prompt for use with the Puppet tools. See Running Puppet on Windows for more details.

    Start Menu icons

Automated Installation

For automated deployments, Puppet can be installed unattended on the command line as follows:

msiexec /qn /i puppet.msi

You can also specify /l*v install.txt to log the progress of the installation to a file.

The following public MSI properties can also be specified:

MSI Property Puppet Setting Default Value
INSTALLDIR n/a Version-dependent, see below
PUPPET_MASTER_SERVER server puppet
PUPPET_CA_SERVER ca_server Value of PUPPET_MASTER_SERVER
PUPPET_AGENT_CERTNAME certname Value of facter fdqn (must be lowercase)

For example:

msiexec /qn /i puppet.msi PUPPET_MASTER_SERVER=puppet.acme.com

Upgrading

Puppet can be upgraded by installing a new version of the MSI package. No extra steps are required, and the installer will handle stopping and re-starting the puppet agent service.

When upgrading, the installer will not replace any settings in the main puppet.conf configuration file, but it can add previously unspecified settings if they are provided on the command line.

Uninstalling

Puppet can be uninstalled through Windows’ standard “Add or Remove Programs” interface, or from the command line.

To uninstall from the command line, you must have the original MSI file or know the ProductCode of the installed MSI:

msiexec /qn /x [puppet.msi|product-code]

Uninstalling will remove Puppet’s program directory, the puppet agent service, and all related registry keys. It will leave the data directory intact, including any SSL keys. To completely remove Puppet from the system, the data directory can be manually deleted.

Installation Details

What Gets Installed

In order to provide a self-contained installation, the Puppet installer includes all of Puppet’s dependencies, including Ruby, Gems, and Facter. (Puppet redistributes the 32-bit Ruby application from rubyinstaller.org.

These prerequisites are used only for Puppet and do not interfere with other local copies of Ruby.

Program Directory

Unless overridden during installation, Puppet and its dependencies are installed into the standard Program Files directory for 32-bit applications.

Puppet Enterprise’s the default installation path is:

OS type Default Install Path
32-bit C:\Program Files\Puppet Labs\Puppet Enterprise
64-bit C:\Program Files (x86)\Puppet Labs\Puppet Enterprise

The program files directory can be located using the PROGRAMFILES environment variable on 32-bit versions of Windows, or the PROGRAMFILES(X86) variable on 64-bit versions.

Puppet’s program directory contains the following subdirectories:

Directory Description
bin scripts for running Puppet and Facter
facter Facter source
misc resources
puppet Puppet source
service code to run puppet agent as a service
sys Ruby and other tools

Data Directory

Puppet stores its settings (puppet.conf), manifests, and generated data (like logs and catalogs) in its data directory.

When run with elevated privileges — Puppet’s intended state — the data directory is located in the COMMON_APPDATA folder. This folder’s location varies by Windows version:

OS Version Path Default
2003 %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\PuppetLabs\puppet C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\PuppetLabs\puppet
7, 2008 %PROGRAMDATA%\PuppetLabs\puppet C:\ProgramData\PuppetLabs\puppet

Since CommonAppData directory is a system folder, it is hidden by default. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/812003 for steps to show system and hidden files and folders.

If Puppet is run without elevated privileges, it will use a .puppet directory in the current user’s home folder as its data directory. This may result in Puppet having unexpected settings.

Puppet’s data directory contains two subdirectories:

  • etc contains configuration files, manifests, certificates, and other important files
  • var contains generated data and logs

More

For more details about using Puppet on Windows, see:

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