Adding foss puppet 6 repo for bolt installation on master could result in unwanted agent upgrade

[donoghuc]

In the hello_bolt quest users are instructed to install bolt by adding the foss puppet 6 yum repo. As discovered with BOLT-1142 this can lead to an unwanted puppet-agent update if the user of the learning vm is connected to the internet and wants to yum update.

I think a simple solution might be to simply add exclude=puppet-agent to /etc/yum.conf on the learning.puppetlabs.vm.

This shows desired behavior with addition to /etc/yum.conf

root@learning: # yum update
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, priorities
Repository 'local' is missing name in configuration, using id
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
local                                                    | 2.9 kB     00:00     
puppet6                                                  | 2.5 kB     00:00     
No packages marked for update
[/etc]

Without that addition a newer agent can be installed which would result in problems.

root@learning: # yum update
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, priorities
Repository 'local' is missing name in configuration, using id
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
local                                                    | 2.9 kB     00:00     
puppet6                                                  | 2.5 kB     00:00     
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package puppet-agent.x86_64 0:6.0.4-1.el7 will be updated
---> Package puppet-agent.x86_64 0:6.3.0-1.el7 will be an update
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

================================================================================
 Package              Arch           Version              Repository       Size
================================================================================
Updating:
 puppet-agent         x86_64         6.3.0-1.el7          puppet6          22 M

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Upgrade  1 Package

Total download size: 22 M
Is this ok [y/d/N]: 

Finally here is /etc/yum.conf showing where the setting is toggled off with a comment.

root@learning: # cat /etc/yum.conf
[main]
cachedir=/var/cache/yum/$basearch/$releasever
keepcache=0
debuglevel=2
logfile=/var/log/yum.log
exactarch=1
obsoletes=1
gpgcheck=1
plugins=1
installonly_limit=5
bugtracker_url=http://bugs.centos.org/set_project.php?project_id=23&ref=http://bugs.centos.org/bug_report_page.php?category=yum
distroverpkg=centos-release
# un-comment this to prevent unwanted puppet-agent update
#exclude=puppet-agent

[donoghuc]

If this is something we want to address could it be a step in https://github.com/puppetlabs/education-builds/blob/master/build_files/manifests/post.pp

[greglarkin]

Thanks very much for the detailed description @donoghuc ! Sorry for the delayed response, but I don't think I receive notifications for new issues and just noticed the 2 open issues.

I will open a JIRA ticket and link to this so we can get this fixed in an upcoming sprint.

[donoghuc]

@greglarkin Looks like you filed TRAINTECH-8280, Thanks! Shall we close this issue now? or wait until that is resolved?

[greglarkin]

@donoghuc Just got back from PTO - I'll leave this issue open and close it when the corresponding JIRA ticket is closed.