User:Synthead/Puppet Dashboard

Note: This wiki entry is a work-in-progress.

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• Puppet

From the Puppet Dashboard website:

The Puppet Dashboard is a web interface and reporting tool for your Puppet installation. Dashboard facilitates management and configuration tasks, provides a quick visual snapshot of important system information, and delivers valuable reports.

Setting up a database for Puppet Dashboard

Setting up a database for Puppet Dashboard is the same as most other Ruby on Rails projects:

1. Create a MySQL database.
2. Create a MySQL user and grant privileges.
3. Create a database.yml file that matches your database.
4. Run db:migrate from within the Rails root.

You will need to decide on a database name and a Puppet Dashboard MySQL user and password. The user (and password) will never be used for authentication to the end-user. This guide assumes the database name puppet_dashboard with a username of puppet_dashboard and a random password, as described below.

Create a MySQL database

First, make sure that a MySQL server is installed and running. Log into MySQL as the root user, like so:

$ mysql -u root

Or, if you have set a root password:

$ mysql -u root -p

When logged in, create a database for Puppet Dashboard:

mysql> create database `puppet_dashboard` default charset utf8;

Create a MySQL user and grant privileges

As mentioned, the MySQL user for Puppet Dashboard will never be available to the end-user, so it is a good idea to make a robust password. This is easily done by using pwgen (available in the mirrors as a part of the pwgen package). To get a randomly-generated, 50-character password, run it like this:

$ pwgen -N 1 -s 50
s5ODn3iaX97mv5Ky6VmW2Z4rBitX1JxWgFNAFQbdtTrcytM8vL

This will be the password used for the MySQL user. While at a MySQL prompt, run the following:

mysql> grant all on `puppet_dashboard`.* to 'puppet_dashboard'@'localhost' identified by 's5ODn3iaX97mv5Ky6VmW2Z4rBitX1JxWgFNAFQbdtTrcytM8vL';

Your database is now configured.