Cannot create simple file with puppet locally or at client node

[maworsham]

I have Puppet v8.5.1 running on Ubuntu 22.04. I have a puppetmaster and puppet agent node communicating with each other. Now I created a simple "helloworld" under the production modules path (/etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/production/modules/helloworld/) and a manifests directory as well. Inside said manifests directory, I have this simple init.pp file:

class helloworld {
  file { '/tmp/foobar.txt':
    ensure  => file,
    mode    => '0644',
    content => 'Hello World \n';
  }
}

Now when I attempt to run the following "puppet apply" command from the puppetmaster, it shows only the following and there is no file being created in the /tmp folder:

root@sandbox-puppetmaster:~# puppet apply /etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/production/modules/helloworld/manifests/init.pp
Notice: Compiled catalog for sandbox-puppetmaster.ddc.local in environment production in 0.02 seconds
Notice: Applied catalog in 0.01 seconds

Over on the puppet node, I ran the command:

root@sandbox-node1:/tmp# puppet agent --test
Info: Using environment 'production'
Info: Retrieving pluginfacts
Info: Retrieving plugin
Notice: Requesting catalog from sandbox-puppetmaster.ddc.local:8140 (10.20.27.7)
Notice: Catalog compiled by sandbox-puppetmaster.ddc.local
Info: Caching catalog for sandbox-node1
Info: Applying configuration version '1709918930'
Notice: Applied catalog in 0.01 seconds

And no file shows up in /tmp either.

What is it I am doing wrong?

[bastelfreak]

You created a class, but you didn't apply/assign it to your node. puppet apply /etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/production/modules/helloworld/manifests/init.pp -e 'include helloworld' should work. Or remove the class statement:

  file { '/tmp/foobar.txt':
    ensure  => file,
    mode    => '0644',
    content => 'Hello World \n';
  }

[binford2k]

@maworsham when explaining this to programmers, I use a metaphor that makes it pretty clear what happened. Imagine that you were writing Python, or Ruby, or Go, or whatever language you prefer. What you wrote in init.pp was like defining a function. But you never actually invoked it.

When you include it on a node like @bastelfreak showed ☝️, you "invoke" it on that node and make it do something.

General practice for this is to create a parallel file in the examples directory (/etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/production/modules/helloworld/examples/init.pp) that looks like this:

# example usage of the helloworld class
include helloworld

and then puppet apply that example file.