Puppet hiera not inheriting properly (Puppet version 4.3.2)

Question

My /etc/puppetlabs/code folder structure:

[vagrant@client code]$ pwd
/etc/puppetlabs/code
[vagrant@client code]$ tree
.
├── environments
│   ├── production
│   │   ├── environment.conf
│   │   ├── hieradata
│   │   ├── manifests
│   │   └── modules
│   └── test
│       ├── hieradata
│       ├── manifests
│       │   └── site.pp
│       └── modules
├── hieradata
│   ├── common.yaml
│   └── hostname
│       └── client.yaml
├── hiera.yaml
└── modules

Then, for my YAML files:

[vagrant@client code]$ cat hiera.yaml 
---
:backends:
  - yaml
:hierarchy:
  - "hostname/%{facts.hostname}"
  - "os/%{facts.osfamily}"
  - common
:yaml:
  :datadir: /etc/puppetlabs/code/hieradata
merge_behavior: deeper

[vagrant@client code]$ cat hieradata/common.yaml 
---
users:
  jill:
    uid: 1000
    home: '/home/jill'
  jack:
    uid: 1001
    home: '/home/jack'

[vagrant@client code]$ cat hieradata/hostname/client.yaml 
---
users:
  jill:
    home: '/homes/jill'
  jack:
    home: '/homes/jack'
  jane:
    uid : 999
    home: '/homes/jane'

Yet, when I run hiera, I get the following:

[vagrant@client code]$ hiera --hash users
{"jill"=>{"uid"=>1000, "home"=>"/home/jill"},
 "jack"=>{"uid"=>1001, "home"=>"/home/jack"}}
[vagrant@client code]$ hiera --hash users ::hostname=client
{"jill"=>{"uid"=>1000, "home"=>"/home/jill"},
 "jack"=>{"uid"=>1001, "home"=>"/home/jack"}}

My hieradata/hostname/client.yaml should be overriding the common.yaml, causing the hiera command to return something different when ::hostname=client is handed in.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

The $facts hash is set by the puppet agent / apply and I don't expect it to be available when you try validating your settings by hiera command line.

You can either use - "hostname/%{::hostname}" in your hierarchy to get the expected results from your hiera cmd or consider using the puppet command line to verify your settings instead.