Viewing and Modifying Puppet Resources by Using the Command Line

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You can view and modify the state of a system's resource by using the puppet resource command. This command converts the current system state into Puppet's declarative language, which you can then use to enforce configuration on other systems.

Viewing the State of a Puppet Resource

The following example shows how you would view the state of the zone resource type:

# puppet resource zone
zone { 'global':
  ensure   => 'running',
  brand    => 'solaris',
  iptype   => 'shared',
  zonepath => '/',
}
zone { 'myzone':
  ensure   => 'running',
  brand    => 'solaris-kz',
  iptype   => 'excl',
  zonepath => '/system/volatile/zones/myzone/zonepath',
}

In the previous example, there are two zone resources declared: a global zone and an installed kernel zone. Each of these resources has four attributes: ensure, brand, iptype, and zonepath. Each attribute has a value associated with it. This value is a central component of Puppet's declarative language.

The following example shows how you would view the state of the service resource type:

# puppet resource service svc:/network
/dns/client:default
service {'svc:/network/dns/client:default':
  ensure => 'running',
  enable =>'true',
}

Modifying the State of a Puppet Resource

You can also use the puppet resource command to modify the state of a resource. You would use this method in lieu of directly modifying the configuration within a Puppet manifest.

For example, you would modify the state of the service resource type as follows:

# puppet resource service svc:/network/dns/client:default enable=false
Notice: /Service[svc:/network/dns/client:default]/enable: enable changed 'true' to 'false'
service { 'svc:/network/dns/client:default':
  ensure => 'stopped',
  enable => 'false',
}