Getting files from the fileserver without knowing its name
Puppet stores configuration files for all its clients on a central fileserver, which by default is the same as the puppetmaster. If a manifest needs to refer to a file on the fileserver without knowing the hostname of the puppetmaster explicitly, it can use the variable $servername in the manifest, which is set to the hostname of the puppetmaster. That means that writing
file { "/etc/somefile":
source => "puppet://$servername/config/somefile"
}
will work regardless of the name of the puppetmaster. All it requires is that the fileserver runs on the same host as the puppetmaster, and that it has a module config. This is very helpful in writing portable manifests.
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