Docs: Resource Types

Resource Types

Resources Types are the building blocks of your Puppet configuration.

Introduction

Terms

The namevar is the parameter used to uniquely identify a type instance. This is the parameter that gets assigned when a string is provided before the colon in a type declaration. In general, only developers will need to worry about which parameter is the namevar.

In the following code:

file { "/etc/passwd":
    owner => root,
    group => root,
    mode => 644
}

/etc/passwd is considered the title of the file object (used for things like dependency handling), and because path is the namevar for file, that string is assigned to the path parameter.

Parameters
Determine the specific configuration of the instance. They either directly modify the system (internally, these are called properties) or they affect how the instance behaves (e.g., adding a search path for exec instances or determining recursion on file instances).
Providers
Provide low-level functionality for a given resource type. This is usually in the form of calling out to external commands.

When required binaries are specified for providers, fully qualifed paths indicate that the binary must exist at that specific path and unqualified binaries indicate that Puppet will search for the binary using the shell path.

Features
The abilities that some providers might not support. You can use the list of supported features to determine how a given provider can be used.

Resource types define features they can use, and providers can be tested to see which features they provide.

Standard Types