Puppet Quick Tip: Enabling an Apache module

My solution is as close to a “one liner” as it gets in puppet. You just check to see if the symlink for the loaded module exists and if it doesn’t, run

a2enmod. Of course it’ll double check to make sure Apache gets restarted too.

define apache::loadmodule () {
     exec { "/usr/sbin/a2enmod $name" :
  unless => "/bin/readlink -e /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/${name}.load",
  notify => Service[apache2]
     }
}

Call it with apache::loadmodule{"rewrite": } and you’re good to go. You do need to double check that you use the .load file name from /etc/apache2/mods-available/ . In my example it is ‘rewrite’ for ‘mod_rewrite’. You can also create a recipe to disable the module with a2dismod, should you find yourself needing to disable a lot of modules.