Uninstalling/Upgrading Puppet

Question

The questions below are all related to the topic of uninstalling/upgrading Puppet:

1. How do I uninstall previous versions of puppet?
2. What files do I need to delete and where are they located?
3. Is there a script that automatically does this?
4. Do I need to manually remove previously installed versions of Puppet before I upgrade?

Solution

You probably don't need to remove your old version, but here's how you could go about it. (these instructions would work for just about any software)

First you need to figure out where your current puppet is installed.

As root, run 'updatedb' to rescan you file system.

Let this chug a bit.

Then type 'locate puppet'.

This will show you all locations on your system with the word puppet in them.

Most likely, your puppet install is in

/etc/puppet/* /usr/lib/ruby/1.X/puppet /var/lib/puppet and possibly /var/puppet

The safest way to handle things is to mv these directories to another location. ie 'mkdir /tmp/oldpuppet ; mv /var/puppet /tmp/oldpuppet/varpuppet' etc..

Also be sure to clean up the binaries. (most likely in /usr/sbin) /usr/sbin/puppetca /usr/sbin/puppetd /usr/sbin/puppetmasterd /usr/sbin/puppetqd /usr/sbin/puppetrun

Puppet is a moving target with frequent updates. You may have no choice but to build puppet from source.

HOWEVER, you would be better suited to do RPM Builds of puppet. (thus creating .rpm packages that you can install on your redhat system, and get all the benefits of package management.)

Here's a document describing how to do just that.

http://agilesysadmin.net/building-puppet-rpms

Best of luck...

Comments

[Zypher]

On what Distro, and how was it originally installed?

[Pulkit Sethi]

The Distro is Redhat, and it was installed from source. A related comment I found on the Puppet User google group from James Turnball: "IMHO - yes - don't install via source! It's not scalable and it leads to issues when upgrading. Use your operating system or distribution's packaging system instead. You can then easily use Puppet to manage itself on clients - in fact I recommend it as an approach. " - James Turnball Source: groups.google.com/group/puppet-users/browse_thread/thread/…