Puppet 4.10 Beginner's Guide Second Edition

Exec resources

While the other resource types we've seen so far (file, package, service, user, ssh_authorized_key, and cron) have modeled some concrete piece of state on the node, such as a file, the exec resource is a little different. An exec allows you to run any arbitrary command on the node. This might create or modify the state, or it might not; anything you can run from the command line, you can run via an exec resource.

Automating manual interaction

The most common use for an exec resource is to simulate manual interaction on the command line. For example, some older software is not packaged for modern operating systems, and need to be compiled and installed from source, which requires you to run certain commands. The authors of some software ...