Or you could override the default file resource attributes in sites.pp: File { owner => root, group => root, mode => 644, } Then you could ove

Or you could override the default file resource attributes in sites.pp: File { owner => root, group => root, mode => 644, } Then you could override that again in individual file resources. If you need several file resources with the same attributes you can override them within the scope of a class: class postgresql { File { owner => "postgres", group => "postgres", mode => 640, } $pgsql_root = "/etc/postgresql/8.4/main" file { "$pgsql_root/postgresql.conf": content => template("postgresql/postgresql.conf.erb"), require => Package["postgresql"], } file { "$pgsql_root/pg_hba.conf": content => template("postgresql/pg_hba.conf.erb"), require => Package["postgresql"], } }