Here is an example of how to set up a salt configuration system. It includes:

• Bootstrapping script (via fabric)

• Customizable configurations for different groups of systems

  (ie - raspberrypis are on a separate network to other systems)

As well as a reference for some moderately difficult tasks:

• How to use pillars
• How to write your own modules
• How to write your own states

This currently only supports Debian / Ubuntu and OSX.

This configuration requires the following dependencies:

• Python
• pip

Then install all the other dependencies by doing:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Now you'll need to configure _sample postfixed files which have custom configurations to equivalent names without the _sample postfix if you use them:

• [required] settings/servers_sample.yml => settings/servers.yml for specifying servers to deploy to. Salt-masters require deployment configurations
• configurations/linux/pillars/linux/http-ping_sample.sls => configurations/linux/pillars/linux/http-ping.sls for configuring cron jobs to hit a url (eg - StatHat).
• configurations/net.jeffhui/pillars/yacs/passwords_sample.sls => configurations/net.jeffhui/pillars/yacs/passwords.sls for configurating YACS' passwords
• configurations/net.jeffhui/pillars/yacs/upstream_sample.sls => configurations/net.jeffhui/pillars/yacs/upstream.sls for configuring YACS' nginx proxy (if you have multiple app servers)

The sample files can be quickly found using find:

find . -name '*_sample*'

The roles argument are roles you wish the minion to have. 'master' or 'minion' is required for seafood to determine what kind of system the host is.

Now you can do various fabric commands to manage basic deployments.

Let's do a basic deploy using fabric. First, we'll set up the salt master:

fab deploy_host upload_key setup_master

Let's break this command down:

• deploy_host refers to the host to deploy to. They're specified in settings/servers.yml with various options.
• upload_key uploads your key specified at ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub. You can optionally specify one by doing: upload_key:~/.ssh/id_my_other_key.pub
• setup_master bootstraps salt master and salt minion (which points to itself) on the target host.

All good? Let's deploy a salt minion on another machine:

fab deploy_client setup_minion:deploy_host,192.168.1.119

setup_minion requires two arguments:

• The fabric argument that refers to the master that our machine can connect to. If you want to use the fabric -H flag, surround it in quotes: setup_minion_for_master:'-H 192.168.1.119',192.168.1.119
• The ip address that the minion will use to connect to the master.

This command actually is several commands:

• fab deploy_client hostname Returns the hostname of the given host
• fab deploy_host generate_minion_key:<hostname> Tells the master to generate a public/private key for <hostname> (which is from the previous command)
• fab deploy_client minion:192.168.1.119 Bootstraps the minion which the salt pointed to the given ip address.

Now that both machines are bootstrapped, you can force the salt highstate with a set of configurations:

fab deploy_host deploy

What does this do?

• Uploads all the pillars and salts to the deploy_host (our master) from the base configuration and yacs configuration using rsync.
• Syncs all custom modules, states, grains using salt '*' saltutil.sync_all
• Runs salt '*' state.highstate on the master - this propagates all the changes directly to all minions (including itself).

And that's it! You can look around and create your own configurations to tinker around with salt. Generally, all the shared states go in 'base', where system group specific configurations are in their own directories.

For OSX, you'll need to download Apple's Command Line Tools DMG in order to bootstrap a system. It needs to reside in ./osx/xcode_cltools.dmg