Restart a service using the console
The console is the graphical interface for Puppet Enterprise (PE).
Use the console to:
- Manage node requests to join the Puppet deployment.
- Assign Puppet classes to nodes and groups.
-
Run Puppet on specific groups of nodes.
- View reports and activity graphs.
- Run tasks and plans.
- Browse and compare resources on your nodes.
- View package and inventory data.
- Manage console users and their access privileges.
You will learn how to accept the console certificate, log in, and run a task to restart a service.
There will be many more console functionalities covered later, which include things like managing permissions and creating node groups. These are taught in tandem with some system configuration tasks you might need to complete to get up and running.
Once you configure the basics and have added more nodes, roles, and users, we encourage you to revisit the console to get a deeper understanding of some of its core features.
Reaching the console
The console is served as a website over SSL, on whichever port you chose when installing the console component.
Let's say your console server is console.domain.com
. If you chose to use the default port (443), you can
omit the port from the URL and reach the console by navigating to https://console.domain.com
.
If you chose to use port 8443, you reach the console at https://console.domain.com:8443
.
https
protocol
handler. You cannot reach the console over plain http
.Accepting the console's certificate
The console uses an SSL certificate created by your own local Puppet certificate authority. Because this authority is specific to your site, web browsers won't know it or trust it, and you must add a security exception in order to access the console.
Adding a security exception for the console is safe to do. Your web browser warns you that the console's identity hasn't been verified by one of the external authorities it knows of, but that doesn't mean it's untrustworthy. Because you or another administrator at your site is in full control of which certificates the Puppet certificate authority signs, the authority verifying the site is you.
When your browser warns you that the certificate authority is invalid or unknown:
-
In Chrome, click Advanced, then Proceed to <CONSOLE ADDRESS>.
-
In Firefox, click Advanced, then Add exception.
-
In Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge, click Continue to this website (not recommended).
-
In Safari, click Continue.
Logging in
Accessing the console requires a username and password.
If you are an administrator setting up the console or accessing it for the first time, use the username and password you chose when you installed the console. Otherwise, get credentials from your site's administrator.
Because the console is the main point of control for your infrastructure, it is a good idea to prohibit your browser from storing the login credentials.
Use a task to restart a service on one node
Puppet Enterprise allows you to run ad-hoc Bolt tasks using the console.
package
, service
, and puppet_conf
, but you can download more tasks from the Forge, which will be covered later.In this section, you will learn how to access the tasks page in the console and run
a job to execute the service
task,
which will instruct PE
to restart
the nginx service. It is important to be able to restart services when systems get
hung up or when new applications are installed.
Next, install and manage the Apache server.