In this post we will learn how to install Puppet Enterprise 2019 on Ubuntu 18.04 Server as a single monolithic server.

Puppet is one of the leading solutions for configuration management.  It’s flagship product is Puppet Enterprise which offers not only configuration management but also continuous delivery and more.   We will go though how to install Puppet Enterprise 2019 on Ubuntu 18.04 Server.  Puppet supports many different deployment models for Puppet Enterprise.  We will be installing Puppet on a single server to keep things simple.  If you have a lot of nodes to manage or need high-availability then you can also install Puppet Enterprise on several servers. In past Puppet Enterprise versions you would run a console installer script then finish the installation in a web console.  This version of puppet only makes use of the console installer.  Once it is complete your Puppet Enterprise server is ready to start using!

Video Walk through

Requirements

For this tutorial I created a virtual machine with 8 gigabytes of memory and 8 vCPUs assigned with 40 GBs of disk allocated. Another requirement is that the puppet server should be registered with your local DNS server as puppet.yourdomain.home.  If you don’t have local DNS for your environment then you will need to configure a /etc/hosts file on each system you want to manage with puppet and on the puppet server itself. We will also need to enable the universe repositories for Ubuntu.  To do this, use your favorite editor and edit /etc/apt/sources.list and add ‘universe’ to the end of each line:

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic main universe
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security main universe
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates main universe

Save and exit. Next update apt.

apt update

Getting Started

First make sure that you have a fresh install of Ubuntu Server 18.04. Next make sure that you install all the latest updates and reboot to have any updated kernels take effect.

apt update && apt upgrade -y
reboot

After it is finished rebooting we are ready to download and install Puppet.

Downloading Puppet Enterprise 2019

Getting the binary package onto your server is the tricky part of this tutorial. You will need to open a browser and go to the Puppet Enterprise Download page. You will need to enter your email address and register with puppet to download the binary package. Select the package for your OS. Now you will need to use SCP or FTP to transfer the package to your puppet server. The file should end up on your puppet server in the /home/username directory.

We are now ready to install Puppet Enterprise 2019.

Install Puppet Enterprise 2019 on Ubuntu 18.04

Back on your puppet server login and run the following command to import the Puppet public key since all the packages from Puppet are signed.

wget -O - https://downloads.puppetlabs.com/puppet-gpg-signing-key.pub | gpg --import

Now we need to create a directory in tmp called puppet.  Move the downloaded installation file to the new directory and untar it.

mkdir /tmp/puppet
mv /home/user/puppet-enterprise-2019.0.0-ubuntu-18.04-amd64.tar.gz /tmp/puppet/
cd /tmp/puppet
tar -xzvf puppet-enterprise-2019.0.0-ubuntu-18.04-amd64.tar.gz

Next run the installer script.

cd puppet-enterprise-2019.0.0-ubuntu-18.04-amd64/
./puppet-enterprise-installer

It will ask you if you want to do a text install or graphical install.  Hit ‘1’ to do a text install. Next it will open the puppet configuration file pe.conf in the default editor. This allows you to make changes to the configuration before it installs Puppet Enterprise. There is only one setting that is required and that is the console_admin_password.

"console_admin_password": "supersecret"

Set this to your desired password and save the file.  Most likely the default editor is VIM so run the following command to save and exit.

[ESC]:wq[ENTER]

This will begin the installation of puppet and start a puppet run that will do the actual installation. Yes Puppet uses puppet to install Puppet.  It’s a wonderful thing trust me. After it is complete your server is almost ready for use.

The last thing we need to do is run puppet agent on this system to finish the configuration.

puppet agent -t

Now the installation is complete.

Admin Console

You can now log into the admin console by browsing to the following URL:

https://{your_server}

You will see the login screen. Enter Admin as the username and the password you configured earlier. You will now see the admin console Congratulations you now have Puppet Enterprise 2019 installed on Ubuntu 18.04 Server.

Conclusion

This article just walked you through installing Puppet Enterprise 2019.  There is more you still need to do like install the Puppet Agent on all the nodes you want to be managed by puppet and configure some Puppet Modules.  In addition, there are some new features like continuous delivery and insights that we can install to improve our experience. I will be covering these topics in future articles very soon so be sure to subscribe to my newsletter and be notified as soon as I get them published. I hope you have enjoyed this post. If you did then please share it and comment below.

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