I manage my own environment with Ansible, which is really great! This yaml format describing what you want to do is easy to read, understand and even easy to maintain. If you can automate an specific action or just simply executing commands one by one, you can do it with Ansible.

So in my own home environment, I have to execute the puppet agent command a few times. My CI for the wdijkerman-zabbix environment consists of a few steps. One of those steps is executing the puppet agent command on a specific host. (Maybe I will describe my CI process in an blog item later.. 🙂 )

When you try to combine them, you’ll notice that every ansible run for executing the puppet agent command fails. (No worries, I was there before .. 🙂 ) When an puppet agent runs, it ends with different exit codes. Normally when an script, program or commands ends successfully, it has an exit code of 0. Ansible uses this to determine if an action is ok, changed or failed. But puppet uses it slightly different.

According to the puppet agent man page (click):

Provide transaction information via exit codes. If this is enabled, an exit code of ‘2’ means there were changes, an exit code of ‘4’ means there were failures during the transaction, and an exit code of ‘6’ means there were both changes and failures.

With this in mind, we now have the following 2 tasks in Ansible:

  - name: "Start puppet agent"
    shell: /usr/bin/puppet agent --test --verbose --detailed-exitcodes
    register: puppet_agent
    changed_when: puppet_agent.rc == 2
    failed_when: puppet_agent.rc != 2 and puppet_agent.rc != 0

  - name: "puppet output"
    debug: var=puppet_agent.stdout_lines
    when: puppet_agent|failed

The first task is the most important one. We register an variable, which will be used in this task for checking exit codes. We let Ansible know that if the exit code of the puppet agent command is an 2, the task will be “changed”. If it is something other than 0 or 2, it is failed. Thats all!

The 2nd task is actually only showing us some information when the first task is failed. I only want to see the output when the puppet agent run fails for some reason. You don’t have to use this task, as this only prints some information.

Output of the Ansible playbook when everything is ok:

[puppet-zabbix-nightly-provision] $ /bin/sh -xe /tmp/hudson5840383976762038524.sh
+ cd /opt/jenkins/environment-ansible
+ ansible-playbook -i hosts -l vserver-142 playbook/puppet-run.yml

PLAY [vserver-142] ************************************************************ 

GATHERING FACTS ***************************************************************
ok: [vserver-142]

TASK: [Start puppet agent] ****************************************************
changed: [vserver-142]

TASK: [puppet output] *********************************************************
skipping: [vserver-142]

PLAY RECAP ********************************************************************
vserver-142                : ok=2    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0   

[puppet-zabbix-nightly-provision] $

Everything looks good, like I suspected. Now an example when something goes wrong:

[puppet-zabbix-nightly-provision] $ /bin/sh -xe /tmp/hudson1324121987798922302.sh
+ cd /opt/jenkins/environment-ansible
+ ansible-playbook -i hosts -l vserver-142 playbook/puppet-run.yml

PLAY [vserver-142] ************************************************************ 

GATHERING FACTS ***************************************************************
ok: [vserver-142]

TASK: [Start puppet agent] ****************************************************
failed: [vserver-142] => {"changed": false, "cmd": "/usr/bin/puppet agent --test --verbose --detailed-exitcodes", "delta": "0:00:04.745918", "end": "2015-01-31 15:08:06.708110", "failed": true, "failed_when_result": true, "rc": 1, "start": "2015-01-31 15:08:01.962192", "stdout_lines": ["\u001b[0;32mInfo: Retrieving pluginfacts\u001b[0m", "\u001b[0;32mInfo: Retrieving plugin\u001b[0m", "\u001b[0;32mInfo: Loading facts\u001b[0m"], "warnings": []}
stderr: [1;31mError: Could not retrieve catalog from remote server: Error 400 on SERVER: unrecognized database type for server. at /etc/puppet/environments/master/modules/zabbix/manifests/web.pp:161 on node vserver-142.dj-wasabi.local[0m
[1;31mWarning: Not using cache on failed catalog[0m
[1;31mError: Could not retrieve catalog; skipping run[0m
stdout: [0;32mInfo: Retrieving pluginfacts[0m
[0;32mInfo: Retrieving plugin[0m
[0;32mInfo: Loading facts[0m

FATAL: all hosts have already failed -- aborting

PLAY RECAP ********************************************************************
           to retry, use: --limit @/var/lib/jenkins/puppet-run.retry

vserver-142                : ok=1    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=1

Ah, I made an error in my manifest.

Nice isn’t it? 🙂