Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."

A block of code is set as follows:

include puppet

Puppet::Reports::register_report(:myfirstreport) do
  desc "My very first report!"

  def process
    if self.status == 'failed'
      msg = "failed puppet run for #{self.host} #{self.status}
      File.open('./tmp/puppetpanic.txt', 'w') { | f | f.write(msg)}
    end
  end
end

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

metric_vals = {}

      self.metrics.each { |metric, data|
        data.values.each { |val|
          name = "#{val[1]} #{metric}"
          value = val[2]
          metric_vals[name] = value
        }
      }

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

puppet module generate <username>-<modulename>

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "The Facts view is particularly useful as it not only lists each node with the associated fact value, but also presents it neatly in the form of a graph."