rsjorslev / salt-examples

for sharing basic salt setup

salt course

This repo is a basic set up of the most used features

The following is instructor notes and may not make sense to everyone

Basic

• Installing salt
  • repo.saltstack.com
• Master configuration (see configs folder)
• Accepting keys
  • auto_accept: True is also an option
• Issuing commands
  • targeting minions with grains or perl compliant regular expressions
  • modules, functions, arguments, and how to read documentation
• States and top files
  • targeting in top files
  • environments
  • state.highstate vs state.apply
• Grains
  • salt'grains.get'
  • grains['something']
• Pillars
• jinja2
  • accessing pillar and grain data to populate states
• debug mode and debug commands
  • salt-master -l debug
  • salt-call -l debug
  • state.show_sls <statename>
  • minion and master log files
  • sometimes a minion appears twice in the salt-key output?

Intermediate

• Custom modules and runners
  • overriding built-in features
  • extending salt with new features
  • saltutil.sync_all (is also run by highstate)
• Eventbus
  • going from automating to automatic
  • sending events via commands and states: salt-run event.send my/custom/event '{"foo": "bar"}'
• Beacons (diskusage in pillars)
  • see the events in the eventbus
• Reactors (diskwarning in runners)
  • react to beacons
  • presence events (accepting new keys, removing old ones)
  • makes various integrations to slack and other systems a possibility
• Rest web API
  • needs its own user account, see the saltapi state
  • needs its own permissions, see the saltapi config file
  • finally restart the salt-api service
  • code example: api_example_rest.py

Advanced

• Returners (rethinkdb example)
  • what is a returner, architecture behind it
• Pyobjects (nginx example)
  • all of python available, notice capitalisation of modules
• Gitfs (golang example)
  • dodgy feature, hopefully it works
  • formulas uses "maps" to give sane defaults, typically based on OS
  • github.com/saltstack-formulas/golang-formula
• AD Authentication
  • ldap protocol, will not be demoed but a config template is available
• Salt client API
  • code example: api_example_client.py
• Source code
  • github.com/saltstack/salt
  • find the test.ping function

Not covered but can be found in salts documentation

• Exhaustive look at minion and master configuration files
• External pillars (consul, json api, many more)
• Orchestration
• Proxy minions
• Renderers (partly covered with Pyobjects)
• Salt cloud
• Salt mine (like grains, but more up-to-date)
• Salt ssh (agentless minions)
• Spm (salt package manager)
• Syndics
• Thorium
• Transport (tcp, raet, zeromq)
• Windows specificities (powershell, DSC)

Prerequisites

• vagrant 1.9.7 (or greater)
• virtualbox 5 (or greater)

Bootstrap

These scripts install salt and copies configuration files into their respective folders

  /bootstrap.sh
  /master.sh
  /minion.sh

Usage

vagrant up
vagrant ssh master
sudo salt '*' test.ping # confirm minions respond

# Optional
sudo salt '*' state.highstate    # install rethinkdb and set up salt-api
sudo service salt-master restart # enable salt returner
sudo service salt-api restart    # enable salt-api configs