Puppet Interview Questions and Answer Part – 1

Where does the Puppet agent look for the Puppet Master hostname?

• In /etc/puppet/puppet.conf under the [agent] section (Ans)
• In /etc/puppet.conf under the [agent] section
• In /etc/puppet/puppet.conf under the [master] section
• In /etc/puppet.conf under the [master] section

What is one way to run the Puppet agent manually?

• Execute c:\programdata\puppetlabs\puppet\bin\puppet_run.exe
• Execute c:\program files\puppet labs\bin\puppet.bat –run-now
• Execute c:\programdata\puppetlabs\puppet\bin\puppet_run.bat
• Execute c:\program files\puppet labs\bin\puppet_interactive.bat (Ans)

How is Puppet different than Chef and CFEngine?

• Chef and CFengine are not open source
• Puppet’s language is procedural while Chef and CFEngine use declarative languages
• Puppet’s language is simpler and easier to learn (Ans)

Where must directory environments be located?

• There is no particular location where they must be located (Ans)
• /etc/puppet/environments
• /etc/puppet
• /etc/puppet/manifests/environments

What is one of the purposes of modules?

• Provide a way to backup Puppet configurations
• Eliminate the need to ever do anything manually
• Extend Puppet’s native functionality (Ans)

What directory should module-specific templates go in?

• Under the module’s root path
• /etc/puppet/templates
• The templates subdirectory under the module’s root path (Ans)

Hiera data can be stored in YAML files. What are these files called?

• Data fields
• Data accessor models
• Data sources (Ans)
• Hierarchial manifests

What does the beginning of a class definition for the “linux” class look like?

• class linux: {
• class linux { (Ans)
• { class ‘linux’:

What is a resource type?

• The type of Puppet server
• The type of node to be managed, such as Windows or Linux
• The type of resource to be managed, such as package, service, or file (Ans)

The frequency of configuration runs is controlled by the…

• crontab
• Run interval (Ans)
• Execution interval
• Enforcement interval
• The Windows service subsystem

What web server ships with the Puppet Master?

• nginx
• NetScaler
• WEBrick (Ans)
• Apache HTTP server

What happens if the title in a package resource declaration does not match the Windows DisplayName?

• Puppet will uninstall and reinstall the package
• Puppet will think the package isn’t installed & will try to install it on every configuration run (Ans)
• Windows will blue-screen
• Puppet will never install the package

Which of the following is the beginning of a valid file resource declaration?

• file { ‘/info.txt’: (Ans)
• file { ‘/info.txt’ (
• file “/info.txt”: {
• file ‘/info.txt’ {

What command run on a CentOS Puppet Master reloads the Hiera configuration?

• sudo service puppetmaster restart
• sudo service apache restart
• sudo service httpd restart (Ans)
• sudo service httpd restart

Why aren’t group policies always sufficient for Windows configuration management?

• Group policies require the use of PowerShell scripts
• Group policies do not allow managing files, packages, or services
• Group policies require an Active Directory infrastructure to be scalable (Ans)

What is the command for setting SELinux to permissive mode?

• sudo getenforce –mode=permissive
• sudo setenforce permissive (Ans)
• sudo setenforce disabled

What does a selector do?

• Takes a set of possible values and assigns one of those values to a variable based on a condition (Ans)
• Selects which package, file, or service declaration should be executed first
• Installs a package based on the version of operating system the Puppet agent is running on

What is a Git repository?

• A copy of files and directories that cannot be stored locally
• Where you download Git from
• Where Git maintains and tracks changes to files and directories (Ans)

How is a role implemented?

• By creating a subclass inside the profiles module named profiles::profilename
• By creating a subclass inside the roles module named roles::rolename (Ans)
• By creating a subclass inside the roles module named profiles::profilename

What does it mean for the Puppet Master to classify a node?

• Locate the node definition in the manifest and determine what configuration should be applied (Ans)
• To generate a catalog based on the node’s manifest
• To instantiate a class based on the node’s operating system

Rajesh Kumar

I’m Rajesh Kumar, a DevOps, SRE, DevSecOps, Cloud, and Platform Engineering expert passionate about sharing practical knowledge, real-world experiences, and industry best practices. I have worked at Cotocus and regularly write about technology, travel, investing, health, product reviews, and digital marketing through my various platforms.

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