Global settings for configuring environments

The settings in the primary server's puppet.conf file configure how Puppet finds and uses environments.

environmentpath

The environmentpath setting is the list of directories where Puppet looks for environments. The default value for environmentpath is $codedir/environments. If you have more than one directory, separate them by colons and put them in order of precedence.

In this example, temp_environments is searched before environments:

$codedir/temp_environments:$codedir/environments

If environments with the same name exist in both paths, Puppet uses the first environment with that name that it encounters.

Put the environmentpath setting in the main section of the puppet.conf file.

basemodulepath

The basemodulepath setting lists directories of global modules that all environments can access by default. Some modules can be made available to all environments. The basemodulepath setting configures the global module directories.

By default, it includes $codedir/modules for user-accessible modules and /opt/puppetlabs/puppet/modules for system modules.

Add additional directories containing global modules by setting your own value for basemodulepath.

Related topics: modulepath.

environment_timeout

The environment_timeout setting sets how often the primary server refreshes information about environments. It can be overridden per-environment.

This setting defaults to 0 (caching disabled), which lowers the performance of your primary server but makes it easy for new users to deploy updated Puppet code. After your code deployment process is mature, change this setting to unlimited.

All code in Ruby and Puppet loaded from the environment is cached. Inputs to compilation (for example, facts and looked up values) and the resulting catalog, are not cached.

disable_per_environment_manifest

The disable_per_environment_manifest setting lets you specify that all environments use a shared main manifest.

When disable_per_environment_manifest is set to true, Puppet uses the same global manifest for every environment. If an environment specifies a different manifest in environment.conf, Puppet does not compile catalogs nodes in that environment, to avoid serving catalogs with potentially wrong contents.

If this setting is set to true, the default_manifest value must be an absolute path.

default_manifest

The default_manifest setting specifies the main manifest for any environment that doesn’t set a manifest value in environment.conf. The default value of default_manifest is ./manifests — the environment’s own manifests directory.

The value of this setting can be:

• An absolute path to one manifest that all environments share.

• A relative path to a file or directory inside each environment’s directory.

Related topics: default_manifest setting.