PQL query to return all nodes where a fact does not exist in Puppet Enterprise

Sometimes you might want a list of all nodes where a fact does not exist. For example, you might need to identify and update older servers that don’t have a particular custom fact set.

Version and installation information

PE version: All supported

Solution

To run this query, you need to have an authentication token. If you don’t have one, generate a token using the steps in our documentation.

This query returns infrastructure nodes that don’t have a specified fact (test_fact).

puppet query 'nodes[certname]{ ! certname in fact_contents[certname]{name ~ "test_fact"}}'

It returns nodes in the infrastructure and uses a second query to filter the results. The second query uses the fact_contents endpoint to return all nodes that have a fact called test_fact. ! (not equal to) returns all of the nodes that do not have test_fact.

You can return a list of the nodes where the fact doesn’t exist by running:

• The query on the command line of your primary server

You can use this query (or any PQL query) to target nodes by running:

• A job in the console or on the command line

• A task in the console or on the command line

• A plan in the console or on the command line