To follow the examples in this chapter, you'll need a computer, preferably running Linux, connected to the Internet. You'll also need to be able to run commands in a terminal and do simple editing of the text files. You'll also need to be able to acquire root-level access via sudo
.
Although Puppet runs on a number of different platforms, I'm not going to provide detailed instructions for all of them. Throughout this book I'll be using the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise" distribution of Linux for my examples. I'll point out where specific commands or file locations are likely to be different for other operating systems.
I'm using an Amazon EC2 cloud instance to demonstrate setting up Puppet, though you may prefer to use a physical server, a Linux workstation, or a Vagrant virtual machine (with Internet access). I'll log in as the Ubuntu user and use sudo
to run commands that need root privileges (the default setup on Ubuntu).