Does each file need to be copied within a separate resource

Question

I'm still getting to grips with puppet (feels like I'm drinking from a hose pipe at times) so I've attempted to keep my configuration and environment simple initially. I've started by having puppet deploy files to my clients. However, I get the feeling that the way I'm deploying the files isn't the most efficient way of doing so. For every file, I'm specifying like this:

file { "/etc/ntp.conf":
                owner => 'root',
                group => 'root',
                mode  => '0444',
                source => 'puppet://basxtststinfl01/files/etc/ntp.conf',
        }
        file { "/etc/snmp/snmpd.conf":
                owner => 'root',
                group => 'root',
                mode  => '0644',
                source => 'puppet://basxtststinfl01/files/etc/snmpd.conf',
        }

I have up 15 files I'd like to deploy. Is this the correct approach?

Thanks.

Answer 1

File in modules is a good keyword.

Generally, to solve the problem of repetitive resource, you can wrap them in a defined type.

define deployed_file($ensure = 'present',
                     $owner = 'root',
                     $group = 'root',
                     $mode  = '644',
                     $recurse = '') {
    if $recurse != '' { File { recurse => $recurse } }
    file {
        $name:
            ensure => $ensure,
            owner  => $owner,
            group  => $group,
            source => "puppet://basxtststinfl01/files${name}",
    }
}

Your resources from above can then be written as:

deployed_file {
    '/etc/ntp.conf':
        mode => '444';
    '/etc/snmp/snmpd.conf':
}

You can add more parameters to make the URL customizable.

Note that I added the recurse parameter for posterity. file has lots of attributes, and if you need for the deployed_file to support them, you should add them in this manner, so that they get passed to the wrapped file if specified, but ignored otherwise.