Puppet using /var/lib/puppet/.puppet/ as default config dir

Question

I'm running a CentOS 6 box with puppet 3.0.2.
The /etc/puppet/manifests/site.pp on the puppet server does not seem to do anything, so I ran:

puppet master --no-daemonize --logdest console --verbose --debug

And I get the following:

Debug: Using settings: adding file resource 'reportdir': 'File[/var/lib/puppet/.puppet/var/reports]{:ensure=>:directory, :backup=>false, :loglevel=>:debug, :links=>:follow, :mode=>"750", :path=>"/var/lib/puppet/.puppet/var/reports"}'

Debug: Using settings: adding file resource 'manifestdir': 'File[/var/lib/puppet/.puppet/manifests]{:ensure=>:directory, :backup=>false, :loglevel=>:debug, :links=>:follow, :path=>"/var/lib/puppet/.puppet/manifests"}'

etc.

It doesn't seem to be using /etc/puppet at all.
Is this normal?
How do I make it look under /etc/puppet?

Answer 1

This is the expected behaviour now according to Bug #16637. When running on the command line (as a non-root user) you will need to pass the --confdir parameter to override the default location of ~/.puppet/puppet.conf e.g.:

puppet master --confdir /etc/puppet --no-daemonize --logdest console --verbose --debug 

If you have updated to Puppet 3 and had previously configured the Puppet Master to run within Passenger as a non-root user you will also need to update your config.ru file to supply these parameters e.g.:

# Rack applications typically don't start as root. Set --confdir and --vardir # to prevent reading configuration from ~puppet/.puppet/puppet.conf and writing # to ~puppet/.puppet ARGV << "--confdir" << "/etc/puppet" ARGV << "--vardir" << "/var/lib/puppet" 

Answer 2

Try running puppet with the --confdir option. For example:

puppet master --confdir /etc/puppet