Puppet Cheat Sheet

Reference for Puppet manifest syntax, resource declarations, classes, modules, and common puppet CLI commands.

2 PagesAdvancedFeb 2, 2026

Basic Manifest

A manifest installing, configuring, and running nginx.

puppet

package { 'nginx':  ensure => installed,}file { '/etc/nginx/nginx.conf':  ensure  => file,  content => template('nginx/nginx.conf.erb'),  owner   => 'root',  mode    => '0644',  require => Package['nginx'],  notify  => Service['nginx'],}service { 'nginx':  ensure => running,  enable => true,}

Class Definition

Defining a reusable class with parameters.

puppet

class nginx (  String $port = '80',  Boolean $enable_ssl = false,) {  package { 'nginx':    ensure => installed,  }  service { 'nginx':    ensure  => running,    enable  => true,    require => Package['nginx'],  }}# Usage in site.ppnode 'web1.example.com' {  class { 'nginx':    port => '8080',  }}

Core Resource Types

Common built-in Puppet resource types.

package- Manages package installation state (installed, absent, latest)
file- Manages file/directory content, ownership, and permissions
service- Manages service running/enabled state
user / group- Manages user accounts and group membership
exec- Runs arbitrary commands, ideally guarded with onlyif/unless/creates
cron- Manages cron job entries

Puppet CLI

Common commands for applying and managing Puppet.

bash

puppet apply site.pp                # Apply manifest locallypuppet apply --noop site.pp         # Dry run, show changes onlypuppet agent -t                     # Trigger a run against Puppet Serverpuppet module install puppetlabs-nginxpuppet parser validate site.pp      # Syntax check

Pro Tip

Always run 'puppet apply --noop' (or agent -t --noop) before rolling out manifest changes fleet-wide — it reports exactly which resources would change without touching the system.

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