How To Install Puppet on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Puppet on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Puppet is an open-source configuration management and server automation framework. It can perform administrative work across a wide array of systems that are primarily defined by a “manifest” file, for the group or type of server(s) being controlled.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of Puppet in Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint or elementary OS.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Puppet on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Installing Puppet on Ubuntu 20.04.

• Install Puppet Server

Now we download the latest version of Puppet with the following command:

wget https://apt.puppetlabs.com/puppet6-release-focal.deb
dpkg -i puppet6-release-focal.deb

Then, install the Puppet server using the following command:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install puppetserver

Start and enable the Puppet Server:

sudo systemctl start puppetserver
sudo systemctl enable puppetserver

• Install Puppet Agent
  

First, download and install the Puppet repository with the following command:

wget https://apt.puppetlabs.com/puppet6-release-focal.deb
dpkg -i puppet6-release-focal.deb

Next, run the following commands to install the Puppet agent:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install puppet-agent

Once has done, you will need to edit the Puppet configuration file and define the Puppet master:

nano /etc/puppetlabs/puppet/puppet.conf

Add the following lines:

[main]
certname = puppetclient
server = puppetmaster

Save and close, Then start the Puppet agent service and enable it to start at boot:

sudo systemctl start puppet
sudo systemctl enable puppet

Step 3. Sign Agent Node Certificate on Master Server.

First, on the Puppet master node, run the following command to list all certificate:

/opt/puppetlabs/bin/puppetserver ca list

Next, sign all the certificates with the following command:

/opt/puppetlabs/bin/puppetserver ca sign --all

Once the Puppet master is signed your client certificate, run the following command on the client machine to test it:

/opt/puppetlabs/bin/puppet agent --test

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Puppet. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the Puppet on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Puppet website.