OK, folks, I may have some interesting things (including an [ugly] workaround).
1. The original puppet-7.23.0 code does not mention '/usr/share/puppet' *at all*. 2. The 0001-Adjust-default-paths.patch Debian patch includes: - '$codedir/modules:/opt/puppetlabs/puppet/modules' + '$codedir/modules:/usr/share/puppet/modules' - '/opt/puppetlabs/puppet/vendor_modules' + '/usr/share/puppet/vendor_modules' (looks good) 3. The puppet cron module (and others...) ends up visible in /usr/share/puppet/modules 4. My run under 'strace' *NEVER* looks at '/usr/share/puppet/modules' (!) but it *does* look at '/usr/share/puppet/vendor_modules' 5. Doing a comparable 'strace'd run, but using only puppetlabs client and server (the current 7.x bullseye code), it *NEVER* looks at '/opt/puppetlabs/puppet/modules' (!) but it *does* look at '/opt/puppetlabs/puppet/vendor_modules'. 6. The puppetlabs code puts these core modules in 'vendor_modules', witness: $ ls /opt/puppetlabs/puppet/vendor_modules augeas_core host_core scheduled_task sshkeys_core zfs_core cron_core mount_core selinux_core yumrepo_core zone_core (In '/opt/puppetlabs/puppet/modules/'? - nothing) 7. (Workaround) If I copy the debian-12-bookworm 'modules' to 'vendor_modules', e.g. cd /usr/share/puppet/modules rsync -a --itemize-changes . ../vendor_modules/. then... things work as expected(!). If you want to most-closely mirror the puppetlabs version, the cron (mount, host, ...) modules should go in vendor_modules. If they're going to stay in modules, something needs to get puppet-agent to *look* there -- something the puppetlabs code does not seem to do. Can anyone point to *any* debian-12-bookworm Puppet installation that can do 'cron' (mount, host, etc.) resources? I might, of course, be missing something... Regards to all, Will