As we'll see in subsequent chapters, facter
may be extended with custom facts written in Ruby. By default, custom facts are not loaded when you run facter
.
To pull in the custom facts, you need to specify the -p
option to facter
, as shown here:
t@cookbook:~$ facter puppetversion t@cookbook:~$ facter -p puppetversion 5.5.2
Although still valid, the facter -p
syntax is now deprecated in favor of using the Puppet face, facts. Puppet faces are the various sub-applications supported by the Puppet
command. To see the available faces, run Puppet help
, as shown here:
t@cookbook:~$ puppet help Usage: puppet <subcommand> [options] <action> [options] Available subcommands: agent The puppet agent daemon apply Apply Puppet manifests locally ca Local Puppet Certificate Authority management. (Deprecated) catalog Compile, save, view, and convert catalogs. cert Manage certificates and requests certificate Provide access to the CA for certificate management. certificate_request Manage certificate requests. (Deprecated) certificate_revocation_list Manage the list of revoked certificates. (Deprecated) config Interact with Puppet's settings. describe Display help about resource types device Manage remote network devices doc Generate Puppet references epp Interact directly with the EPP template parser/renderer. facts Retrieve and store facts. filebucket Store and retrieve files in a filebucket generate Generates Puppet code from Ruby definitions. help Display Puppet help. key Create, save, and remove certificate keys. (Deprecated) lookup Interactive Hiera lookup man Display Puppet manual pages. master The puppet master daemon module Creates, installs and searches for modules on the Puppet Forge. node View and manage node definitions. parser Interact directly with the parser. plugin Interact with the Puppet plugin system. report Create, display, and submit reports. resource The resource abstraction layer shell status View puppet server status. (Deprecated)
One difference between facter
and Puppet facts
is that you may request a single fact from facter, whereas Puppet facts will return all the facts for a node at once as a JSON object (you may request other formats with the --render-as
option).