Checking the values of settings

Puppet settings are highly dynamic, and their values can come from several different places. To see the actual settings values that a Puppet service uses, run the puppet config print command.

General usage

The puppet config print command loads and evaluates settings, and can imitate any of Puppet’s other commands and services when doing so. The --section and --environment options let you control how settings are loaded; for details, see the sections below on imitating different services.

To ensure that you’re seeing the values Puppet use when running as a service, be sure to use sudo or run the command as root or Administrator. If you run puppet config print as some other user, Puppet might not use the system config file.
To see the value of one setting: 
sudo puppet config print <SETTING NAME> [--section <CONFIG SECTION>] [--environment <ENVIRONMENT>]
This displays just the value of <SETTING NAME>.

To see the value of multiple settings: 

sudo puppet config print <SETTING 1> <SETTING 2> [...] [--section <CONFIG SECTION>] [--environment <ENVIRONMENT>]
This displays name = value pairs for all requested settings.

To see the value of all settings: 

sudo puppet config print [--section <CONFIG SECTION>] [--environment <ENVIRONMENT>]
This displays name = value pairs for all settings.

Config sections

The --section option specifies which section of puppet.conf to use when finding settings. It is optional, and defaults to main. Valid sections are:

  • main (default) — used by all commands and services

  • server — used by the primary Puppet server service and the puppetserver ca command

  • agent — used by the Puppet agent service

  • user — used by the Puppet apply command and most other commands

As usual, the other sections override the main section if they contain a setting; if they don’t, the value from main is used, or a default value if the setting isn’t present there.

Environments

The --environment option specifies which environment to use when finding settings. It is optional and defaults to the value of the environment setting in the user section (usually production, because it’s rare to specify an environment in user).

You can only specify environments that exist.

This option is primarily useful when looking up settings used by the primary server service, because it’s rare to use environment config sections for Puppet apply and Puppet agent.

Imitating Puppet server and puppetserver ca

To see the settings the Puppet server service and the puppetserver ca command would use:

  • Specify --section server.

  • Use the --environment option to specify the environment you want settings for, or let it default to production.

  • Remember to use sudo.

  • If your primary Puppet server is managed as a Rack application (for example, with Passenger), check the config.ru file to make sure it’s using the confdir and vardir that you expect. If it’s using non-standard ones, you need to specify them on the command line with the --confdir and --vardir options; otherwise you might not see the correct values for settings.

To see the effective modulepath used in the dev environment: 

sudo puppet config print modulepath --section server --environment dev
This returns something like:
/etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/dev/modules:/etc/puppetlabs/code/modules:/opt/puppetlabs/puppet/modules

To see whether PuppetDB is configured for exported resources: 

sudo puppet config print storeconfigs storeconfigs_backend --section server
This returns something like:
storeconfigs = true
storeconfigs_backend = puppetdb

Imitating Puppet agent

To see the settings the Puppet agent service would use:

  • Specify --section agent.

  • Remember to use sudo.

  • If you are seeing something unexpected, check your Puppet agent init script or cron job to make sure it is using the standard confdir and vardir, is running as root, and isn’t overriding other settings with command line options. If it’s doing anything unusual, you might have to set more options for the config print command.

To see whether the agent is configured to use manifest ordering when applying the catalog:

sudo puppet config print ordering --section agent
This returns something like:
manifest

Imitating puppet apply

To see the settings the Puppet apply command would use:

  • Specify --section user.

  • Remember to use sudo.

  • If you are seeing something unexpected, check the cron job or script that is responsible for configuring the machine with Puppet apply. Make sure it is using the standard confdir and vardir, is running as root, and isn’t overriding other settings with command line options. If it’s doing anything unusual, you might have to set more options for the config print command.

To see whether Puppet apply is configured to use reports:
sudo puppet config print report reports --section user
This returns something like:
report = true
reports = store,http