Puppet Enterprise 2016.5

This page describes an alternate workflow which will allow you to maintain baseline states and audit changes in your Puppet-controlled infrastructure.

Workflow in brief

  • Instead of writing audit manifests: Write manifests that describe the desired baseline state(s). This is identical to writing Puppet manifests to manage systems: you use the resource declaration syntax to describe the desired state of each significant resource.
  • Instead of running Puppet agent in its default mode: Make it sync the significant resources in no-op mode, which can be done for the entire Puppet run, or per-resource. (See below.) This causes Puppet to detect changes and simulate changes, without automatically enforcing the desired state.
  • In the console: Look for “pending” events and node status. “Pending” is how the console represents detected differences and simulated changes.

Controlling your manifests

As part of a solid change control process, you should be maintaining your Puppet manifests in a version control system like Git. A well-designed branch structure in version control will allow changes to your manifests to be tracked, controlled, and audited.

No-op features

Puppet resources or catalogs can be marked as “no-op” before they are applied by the agent nodes. This means that the user describes a desired state for the resource, and Puppet will detect and report any divergence from this desired state. Puppet will report what should change to bring the resource into the desired state, but it will not make those changes automatically.

  • To set an individual resource as no-op, set the noop metaparameter to true.

      file {'/etc/sudoers':
        owner => root,
        group => root,
        mode  => 0600,
        noop  => true,

    This allows you to mix enforced resources and no-op resources in the same Puppet run.

  • To do an entire Puppet run in no-op, set the noop setting to true. This can be done in the [agent] block of puppet.conf, or as a --noop command-line flag. If you are running Puppet agent in the default daemon mode, you would set no-op in puppet.conf.

In the console

In the console, you can locate the changes Puppet has detected by looking for “pending” nodes, reports, and events. A “pending” status means Puppet has detected a change and simulated a fix, but has not automatically managed the resource.

You can find a pending status in the following places:

  • The node summary, which lists the number of nodes on which changes were detected.

  • The list of recent reports, which uses an orange asterisk to show reports in which changes were detected.

  • The log and events tabs of any report containing pending events. These tabs will show you what changes were detected, and how they differ from the desired system state described in your manifests.

After detection

When a Puppet node reports no-op events, this means someone has made changes to a no-op resource that has a desired state desribed. Generally, this either means an unauthorized change has been made, or an authorized change was made but the manifests have not yet been updated to contain the change. You will need to either:

  • Revert the system to the desired state (possibly by running Puppet agent with --no-noop).
  • Edit your manifests to contain the new desired state, and check the changed manifests into version control.

Before detection

However, your admins should generally be changing the manifests before making authorized changes. This serves as documentation of the change’s approval.


In this alternate workflow, you are essentially still maintaining baselines of your systems’ desired states. However, instead of maintaining an abstract baseline by approving changes in the console, you are maintaining concrete baselines in readable Puppet code, which can be audited via version control records.

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