page_title: “Salt - Provisioning”

sidebar_current: “provisioning-salt”

Salt Provisioner

Provisioner name: salt

The salt Provisioner allows you to provision the guest using Salt states.

Salt states are YAML documents that describes the current state a machine should be in, e.g. what packages should be installed, which services are running, and the contents of arbitrary files.

Masterless Quickstart

What follows is a basic Vagrantfile that will get salt working on a single minion, without a master:

  1.   Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  2.     ## Choose your base box
  3.     config.vm.box = "precise64"
  5.     ## For masterless, mount your salt file root
  6.     config.vm.synced_folder "salt/roots/", "/srv/salt/"
  8.     ## Use all the defaults:
  9.     config.vm.provision :salt do |salt|
  11.       salt.minion_config = "salt/minion"
  12.       salt.run_highstate = true
  14.     end
  15.   end

This sets up a shared folder for the salt root, and copies the minion file over, then runs state.highstate on the machine. Your minion file must contain the line file_client: local in order to work in a masterless setup.

Install Options

  • install_master (boolean) - Should vagrant install the salt-master on this machine. Not supported on Windows guest machines.

  • no_minion (boolean) - Don’t install the minion, default false. Not supported on Windows guest machines.

  • install_syndic (boolean) - Install the salt-syndic, default false. Not supported on Windows guest machines.

  • install_type (stable | git | daily | testing) - Whether to install from a distribution’s stable package manager, git tree-ish, daily ppa, or testing repository. Not supported on Windows guest machines.

  • install_args (develop) - When performing a git install, you can specify a branch, tag, or any treeish. If using the custom install type, you can also specify a different repository to install from. Not supported on Windows guest machines.

  • install_command (string) - Allow specifying an arbitrary string of arguments to the bootstrap script. This will completely ignore install_type and install_args to allow more flexibility with the bootstrap process.

  • always_install (boolean) - Installs salt binaries even if they are already detected, default false

  • bootstrap_script (string) - Path to your customized salt-bootstrap.sh script. Not supported on Windows guest machines.

  • bootstrap_options (string) - Additional command-line options to pass to the bootstrap script.

  • version (string, default: “2015.5.2”) - Version of minion to be installed. Only supported on Windows guest machines.

Minion Options

These only make sense when no_minion is false.

  • minion_config (string, default: “salt/minion”) - Path to a custom salt minion config file.

  • minion_key (string) - Path to your minion key

  • minion_id (string) - Unique identifier for minion. Used for masterless and preseeding keys.

  • minion_pub (salt/key/minion.pub) - Path to your minion public key

  • grains_config (string) - Path to a custom salt grains file.

  • masterless (boolean) - Calls state.highstate in local mode. Uses minion_id and pillar_data when provided.

Master Options

These only make sense when install_master is true. Not supported on Windows guest machines.

  • master_config (string, default: “salt/master”) Path to a custom salt master config file.

  • master_key (salt/key/master.pem) - Path to your master key.

  • master_pub (salt/key/master.pub) - Path to your master public key.

  • seed_master (dictionary) - Upload keys to master, thereby pre-seeding it before use. Example: {minion_name:/path/to/key.pub}

Execute States

Either of the following may be used to actually execute states during provisioning.

  • run_highstate - (boolean) Executes state.highstate on vagrant up. Can be applied to any machine.

Execute Runners

Either of the following may be used to actually execute runners during provisioning.

  • run_overstate - (boolean) Executes state.over on vagrant up. Can be applied to the master only. This is superceded by orchestrate. Not supported on Windows guest machines.
  • orchestrations - (boolean) Executes state.orchestrate on vagrant up. Can be applied to the master only. This is supercedes by run_overstate. Not supported on Windows guest machines.

Output Control

These may be used to control the output of state execution:

  • colorize (boolean) - If true, output is colorized. Defaults to false.

  • log_level (string) - The verbosity of the outputs. Defaults to “debug”. Can be one of “all”, “garbage”, “trace”, “debug”, “info”, or “warning”. Requires verbose to be set to “true”.

Pillar Data

You can export pillar data for use during provisioning by using the pillar command. Each call will merge the data so you can safely call it multiple times. The data passed in should only be hashes and lists. Here is an example::

  1.       config.vm.provision :salt do |salt|
  3.         # Export hostnames for webserver config
  4.         salt.pillar({
  5.           "hostnames" => {
  6.             "www" => "www.example.com",
  7.             "intranet" => "intranet.example.com"
  8.           }
  9.         })
  11.         # Export database credentials
  12.         salt.pillar({
  13.           "database" => {
  14.             "user" => "jdoe",
  15.             "password" => "topsecret"
  16.           }
  17.         })
  19.         salt.run_highstate = true
  21.       end

Preseeding Keys

Preseeding keys is the recommended way to handle provisioning using a master. On a machine with salt installed, run salt-key --gen-keys=[minion_id] to generate the necessary .pub and .pem files

For a an example of a more advanced setup, look at the original plugin.