yumrepos Puppet Module

Earlier this year we undertook a project to upgrade a client's infrastructure to all new servers including a migration from old Puppet scripts which were starting to show their age after many years of server and service changes. During this process, we created a new set of Puppet scripts using Hiera to separate configuration data from modules. The servers in question were all deployed with CentOS, and it soon became obvious that we needed a modular way in Puppet to install and configure yum package repositories from within our various Puppet modules.

Searching through the Puppet Forge uncovered a handful of modules created to deal with yum repos, however most were designed to implement a single repository, or were not easily configurable via Hiera, which was one of our main goals for the new Puppet scripts. So, we decided to create our own module, and the yumrepos Puppet module was born.

The idea behind the module is to provide a clean and easy way to pull in common CentOS/RHEL yum repos from within Puppet. By wrapping each repo with its own class (e.g. yumrepos::epel and yumrepos::ius), we gain the ability to override default class parameters with Hiera configuration, making the module easy to use in most any environment. For example, if you have your own local mirror of a repo, you can override the default URL parameter either in Hiera, or from the class declaration without having to directly edit any files within the yumrepos module. This is as easy as:

1. In your calling class, declare the yumrepo class you need. In this example, we'll use EPEL: class { 'yumrepos::epel': }
2. In your Hiera configuration, you can configure the repo URL with: yumrepos::epel::epel_url: http://your.local.mirror/path/to/epel/

Currently the yumrepos module provides classes for the following yum repos:

• Drupal Drush 5
• Drupal Drush 6
• EPEL
• IUS Community (Optionally: IUS Community Archive)
• Jenkins
• Jpackage
• Percona
• PuppetLabs
• RepoForge
• Varnish 3
• Zabbix 2.4

Each repo contains the GPG key for the repo (where available) and defaults to enabling GPG checks. Have another repo you'd like to see enabled? Feel free to file an issue or pull request at https://github.com/tag1consulting/puppet-yumrepos

Additionally, yumrepos classes accept parameters for package includes or excludes so that you can limit packages on a per-repo basis. These translate to the includepkgs and exclude options within a yum repo configuration. Similar to overriding the default repo URL, these options can be overridden by passing parameters within the class declaration or by setting the appropriate variables within Hiera.

Once we had the yumrepos module in place, we had an easy way to configure yum repos from within our other modules. Stay tuned to the blog; we'll have more information about the overall Puppet scripts coming soon.