The code that makes Kynetx work is a couple of custom Apache modules written in Perl. So, configuring machines via puppet, naturally requires ensuring that a set of Perl modules are loaded.

For a long time, I was using a private bundle, but I found that was unreliable. For the most part it worked fine, but then sometimes I'd get an error that Perl couldn't find the bundle, even though it was clearly in the path.

I didn't want to spend a lot of time debugging it because I figured it was a dead end. Eventually, I've got to be able to control more of what happens. So, I decided to define a custom Puppet type that used CPAN directly to load Perl modules. Here's what I came up with:

define cpan_load() {
  exec{"cpan_load_${name}":
     command => "perl -MCPAN -e 
             '\\$ENV{PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT}=1; 
               CPAN::Shell->install(\\"${name}\\")'",
     onlyif => 
          "test `perl -M${name} -e 'print 1' 2>/dev/null || \\
                 echo 0` == '0'",
     require => [Package["perl-CPAN"],
                    File["/root/.cpan/CPAN/MyConfig.pm"]],
     }
 }

The hardest part to get right was the onlyif clause. The purpose of this clause is to ensure that the command is idempotent--that is that it only runs if it needs to. The truth is that CPAN itself is idempotent, so I could have skipped it, but I saved 80 seconds of processing time for a "do nothing" run of puppet by installing it.

I got something more too. CPAN will report things are installed when they aren't really. I don't know how it gets in this state, but it does. My onlyif clause only reports a module is present if a perl program can load it.

This still isn't perfect since when the load fails and you rerun the puppet file, you see it trying to install them over and over and it's not going to happen. Then manual intervention is required. I'd rather have the system back out and fix the error but that's beyond me right now.

I think the answer may be to move to Tasks, but I'm not sure. If you know better ways of managing Perl module installs with Puppet, please let me know.