Access file in clientbucket of puppet with a file resource

When puppet replaces an already existing file, it stores the old content into the clientbucket and returns the hash value of this version. To restore a file from the clientbucket you normaly use the puppet clientbucket command with this hash on the node. But it’s also possible to define a “special” file resource, to restore the content form the clientbucket to a newly defined file.

Let me explain this “feature” with a small example. On the last puppet run the content of the file /etc/fstab was stored into the clientbucket with the hash value 77461bf606abbbd17f88a806fc21562b.

You can now define a file resource to restore the content of this stored file into a new file /tmp/old-fstab.

file { '/tmp/old-fstab':
  ensure  => file,
  content => "{md5}77461bf606abbbd17f88a806fc21562b",
}

Place this resource in an module or place the definition directly into the node resource.

On the next puppet run the defined file /tmp/old-fstab will be created. The “magic” content ensures, that the newly created file contains the content of the file in the clientbucket with the given hash value.

I don’t know if this is a bug or a feature. I couldn’t find any “offical” documentation of this behaviour. But this method works fine in the puppet versions 2.6, 2.7 and 3.3.