Docs: Running Puppet From Source on Windows


Running Puppet From Source on Windows

This documentation applies to Puppet versions ≥ 2.7.6 and Puppet Enterprise ≥ 2.5. Earlier versions may behave differently.

Note: Nearly all users should install Puppet from Puppet Labs’ installer packages, which are provided free of charge. See here for download links and more information. The following procedures are only for advanced users involved in Puppet’s development.

Prerequisites

Platforms

Puppet Enterprise supports Windows 7, Server 2008, 2008 R2, Server 2003, and 2003 R2.

Ruby

Only Ruby version 1.8.7 is currently supported. It is available from rubyinstaller.org

Puppet does not require Cygwin, Powershell, or any other non-standard shells; it can be run from Windows’ default cmd.exe terminal.

Required Gems

Puppet on Windows requires the following gems be installed:

  • sys-admin
  • win32-process
  • win32-dir
  • win32-service (>=0.7.1)
  • win32-taskscheduler (>= 0.2.1)

To install them all in two commands:

C:\>gem install sys-admin win32-process win32-dir win32-taskscheduler --no-rdoc --no-ri
C:\>gem install win32-service --platform=mswin32 --no-rdoc --no-ri

(Since win32-service includes native code, you should install it with the --platform=mswin32 option. Otherwise, gem will need to compile the extensions at install time, which has additional dependencies and can be time-consuming.)

Installation

Obtain zip files of the latest Puppet and Facter source code by clicking the “Downloads” button on their GitHub pages or by checking out a copy of their repositories.

Then, unzip each archive into a temporary directory and run their install.rb scripts. You do not need to modify your RUBYLIB or PATH environment variables prior to running the install scripts.

C:\>ruby install.rb

Note: When installed from source, Puppet does not install itself as an NT service. Use the standard installer packages if you want to run Puppet as a service.

Note: The location of Puppet’s data directory varies depending on the Windows version. See this explanation from the installer documentation to find the data directory on your version.

Note: When installed from source, Puppet does not change the system’s PATH or RUBYLIB variables, nor does it provide Start menu shortcuts for opening a terminal with these variables set. You will need to set them yourself before running Puppet.

User Account Control

In general, puppet must be running in an account that is a member of the local Administrators group in order to make changes to the system, (e.g., change file ownership, modify /etc/hosts, etc.). On systems where User Account Control (UAC) is enabled, such as Windows 7 and 2008, Puppet must be running with explicitly elevated privileges. It will not ask for elevation automatically; you must specifically start your cmd.exe terminal window with elevated privileges on these platforms. See this blog post (unaffiliated with Puppet Labs) for more information about UAC.

Development Tools and Tasks

Gems

If you’re developing Puppet, you’ll need to install the rspec, rake, and mocha gems in order to run the tests. 

gem install rspec rake mocha --no-rdoc --no-ri

Git

In addtion, you will likely need the current version of MSYS GIT. You will also want to set the following in your git config so that you don’t create unnecessary mode bit changes when editing files on Windows:

git config core.filemode false

Source

The source code for Puppet and Facter is available in Puppet Labs’ repositories on GitHub:

Testing

Nearly all of the rspec tests are known to work on Windows, with a few exceptions (e.g. due to the lack of a mount provider on Windows). To run the rspec tests on Windows, execute the following command:

C:\>rspec --tag ~fails_on_windows spec

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