How To Solve the PowerShell Error “The term ‘script’ is not recognized…”

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Goal:  You want to run a .ps1 file.
Problem:  You get the error “Powershell : script : The term ‘script’ is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, At line:1 char:1 + …”
Solution:  Use the “script” resource section inside of a DSC configuration exclusively.  It will not work or run as a standalone PowerShell script.  Scripts with GetScript, SetScript, and TestScript must be run as part of a DSC configuration. 

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DSC Problem and Solution: One Way To Possibly Solve a “Cannot invoke the SendConfigurationApply” Problem

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Goal:  You want to use DSC to apply a configuration.
Problem scenario:  When you run the “start-dscconfiguration NameOfConfig -wait -verbose” (where NameOfConfig is the name of the configuration) from the folder that houses the subfolder with NameOfConfig, you get an error like this: “DSC error: Cannot invoke the SendConfigurationApply method.  The sendConfigurationApply method is in progress…”
Solution: Back up and delete the subfolder named NameOfConfig. 

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How Do You Create a New User with DSC?

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Problem scenario
You are using Windows Server 2019. You want to create a new local user. You don’t want the user to be a member of the local Administrators group (which allows remote logins). What do you do?

Solution

Prerequisites
i. Install DSC. If you need assistance, see this posting.
ii.a. Make sure the server has been added to its own TrustedHosts configuration settings.

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How Do You Troubleshoot Desired State Configuration Problems where Actions Are Not Working or Software Is Not Installing?

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Problem scenario

You run a Start-DscConfiguration command in PowerShell like this:

Start-DscConfiguration -Path . -Wait -Verbose

You get an error message that the installation failed. The message may say something like this:

Start-DscConfiguration : The computer name was not specified and the configuration directory does not have any configuration files.

CategoryInfo : NotSpecified … ArgumentException
FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.ArgumentException,

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Troubleshooting DSC for Configuration Management (Problem and Solution)

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Background:  DSC is a toolkit of PowerShell cmdlets that enable you to do configuration management.  It can allow you to do CM tasks with Windows and Linux machines (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/dsc/LnxGettingStarted).

Problem/Scenario:  You are trying to use this PowerShell command (e.g., to test your Desired State Configuration tool):

Enter-PSSession -ComputerName goodServer -Credential jdoe

# where goodServer is a Windows server on the network and jdoe is a local user account on the goodServer machine.

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Ansible Can Push Down Files and/or Changes To New Servers With Little Initial Configuration

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Some critics say that Ansible does not do enough to warrant its deployment in an enterprise.  The initial deployment to the managed nodes is less than what Puppet and Chef require.  Even minionless deployments of SaltStack require more configuration work than Ansible.  In this post, we want to demonstrate an advantage of adopting Ansible related to the first deployment.  When using passwordless SSH authentication, the great benefit is the lack of a prompt. 

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How Do You Copy Files into a Docker Container from the Server’s Command Line?

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Docker is itself a dependency resolution tool.  It is a container that allows a DevOps engineer to prepare one-time an OS environment with nuanced dependencies and configurations for other packages to be installed.

Leveraging the efficiency of a configuration management tool (such as Ansible, CFEngine, Chef, Puppet, and SaltStack) can empower DevOps engineering.  It can also necessitate using duplicative deployments in different environments (development, quality assurance, staging, and production).  Having a backup plan for disaster recovery is also important. 

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SaltStack Technology and Terminology

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SaltStack provides for more complex configuration management than Ansible (another Python-based) configuration management tool.  Some people have criticized Salt for having too many new vocabulary words.  Like all complex technologies, they take time getting used to.  To help learn about Salt, I thought I’d provide an overview.

An SLS file is a SaltStack State file.  This file is the basis for determining the desired configuration of the client servers that are called Salt Minions. 

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How do you use the source keyword in Puppet’s DSL (when writing a manifest)?

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When writing a Puppet manifest you can use the “content” reserved word.  You then have quotes around the actual text content of this file right in the manifest itself.  This works for a file that you want to create on a Puppet Agent server as long as the content is roughly one line of text.  But for a binary file, this will not work (as it cannot appear in the manifest).  The “source” reserved word allows you to point to a specific file on the Puppet Master server. 

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Six Puppet Configuration Tips

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Deploying Puppet Master and Puppet Agents for the first time can involve a significant amount of troubleshooting.  In this post, I want to review six miscellaneous points that may arise.  These are somewhat random, but they can serve in the rudimentary stages of quickly getting a proof of concept established.

1.  With a default configuration, Puppet Master on Linux will run manifests with only one name in only one location: /etc/puppet/manifests/site.pp

Many DevOps engineers do use manifests with different names. 

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