scp

Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. Module Description - What the module does and why it is useful
3. Setup - The basics of getting started with scp
   • What scp affects
   • Setup requirements
   • Beginning with scp
4. Usage - Configuration options and additional functionality
5. Reference - An under-the-hood peek at what the module is doing and how
6. Limitations - OS compatibility, etc.
7. Development - Guide for contributing to the module

Overview

A Puppet Type and Provide to download files onto an agent via scp

Module Description

This module gives you a nice way of invoking the scp (secure copy) command to download files from other servers via scp. By default, this provider will login to the server hosting the files via ssh and perform md5 validation to determine whether the local copy needs to be updated or not.

Of course, you don't normally want to be using scp to download random files onto computers in a non-random way (e.g., via Puppet), there are much better ways of doing this, such as network shared storage and dedicated servers such as artifactory.

That said, sometimes you need a stop-gap solution so this module could be something that will buy you enough time to get rid of scp and do things properly.

Setup

What scp affects

• provides a new type: scp

Setup Requirements

• scp command in path
• ssh command in path
• ssh public/private keypair generated for local user who will be running the scp command (root)
• ssh configured to accept the key of the local user on the remote server
• At least one successful ssh login from the local user to the remote server (to verify the ssh keys in known_hosts)

Beginning with scp

Ensure the above requirements are met

Downloading a file to a node

scp { "/tmp/myfile.war":
  ensure => present
  source => "fred@build.mycompany.com/var/jenkins/data/myapp_current.war",
}

This would use the fred account on build.mycompany.com to download the file at /var/jenkins/data/myapp_current.war to the node where it will be saved at /tmp/myfile.war.

Usage

By default the scp type will perform remote verfication of md5 sums to check whether the local copy of the file needs to be updated. This can be disabled in case this is generating excessive load or ssh access is locked down:

scp { "/tmp/myfile.war":
  ensure => present,
  source => "fred@build.mycompany.com/var/jenkins/data/myapp_current.war",
  verify => false,
}

Reference

This module includes a single Type and Provider: scp

Limitations

• Linux only
• Passwordless SSH only
• Runs as root
• You must manually SSH into the target machine as the local root user to accept it's key before attempting to use this module