Installation of Salt

 • Setup 2 Ubuntu 14.04 VMs – one as SaltMaster and other as minion

• Make sure you have root or sudo access on both

• Install the SaltMaster from the repository with the following apt-get command

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install salt-master

• Install the Salt minion from the repository with the following apt-get command

sudo apt-get install salt-minion

• Install the Salt syndic from the repository with the following apt-get command.

sudo apt-get install salt-syndic

• The configuration files are installed in the ‘/etc/salt’ directory and are named after their respective components, such as − /etc/salt/master and /etc/salt/minion

#interface: 0.0.0.0

interface: <local ip address>

file_roots: base: - /root/srv/salt

• After updating the configuration file, restart the Salt master using the following command

sudo service salt-master restart

• By default a Salt Minion will try to connect to the DNS name “salt”; if the Minion is able to resolve that name correctly, no configuration is required. Redefine the “master” directive in the minion configuration file, which is typically /etc/salt/minion, as shown in the code below −

#master: salt

master: <local ip address>

id: min1

• After updating the configuration file, restart the Salt minion using the command below

sudo service salt-minion restart

• Salt uses AES Encryption for all the communication between the Master and the Minion.

• The communication between Master and Minion is authenticated through trusted, accepted keys.

salt-key –L

• Accept all keys by issuing the command below

sudo salt-key –A

• Now again issue the salt key listing command,

salt-key -L

• The communication between the Master and a Minion must be verified by running the test.ping command.

sudo salt '*' test.ping

• It will produce the following output

<local system name>

True