Files are transferred between the master and the node via Puppet's internal fileserver. When working with files, it is important to remember that all the files that are served via Puppet are read into memory by the Puppet Server. Transferring large files via Puppet is inefficient. You should avoid transferring large and/or binary files. Most of the problems with files are related to path and URL syntax errors. The source parameter contains a URL with the following syntax:

source => "puppet:///path/to/file"

In the preceding syntax, the three slashes specify the beginning of the URL location and the Puppet Server that should be contacted. The following is also valid:

source => "puppet://myserver/path/to/file"

The path from which we can to download a file depends on the context of the manifest. If the manifest is found within the manifest directory or the manifest is the site.pp manifest, then the path to the file is relative to this location starting at the files subdirectory. If the...