Masterless SaltStack Minion with Salty Vagrant

Warning

This was originally written for an older version of Ubuntu Desktop Linux. The contents in this repo initially did work. Will need some work to get things fixed.

Before You Begin

All of this was tried on Ubuntu Desktop 12.10. There's an expectation that the package names may change between different distributions. Our goal is to install the bare minimum through packages, and have the newest versions of both vagrant & salty vagrant from their respective online repos.

Repeat After Me

Now repeat after me: SaltStack is amazing! It's simply Python & YAML & Jinja2 (oh my!). All magic within SaltStack may be unlocked by reading the documentation.

The Easy Way

This repo was designed as a shortcut to getting your feet wet with SaltStack & masterless-minions.

1. Clone the git repo:

user@host ~$ git clone [email protected]:bmess/fuzzy-octo-hipster
user@host ~$ git clone [email protected]:/bmess/fuzzy-octo-hipster
Cloning into 'fuzzy-octo-hipster'...
remote: Counting objects: 84, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (66/66), done.
remote: Total 84 (delta 27), reused 49 (delta 4)
Receiving objects: 100% (84/84), 16.35 KiB, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (27/27), done.

2. Now let's install things. If you don't trust the scripts asking for sudo, take a moment to review them and see it's just a few installation statements.

user@host ~$ cd install_scripts
user@host~/fuzzy-octo-hipster/install_scripts$ ls
install_ruby_gem_vagrant.sh  install_salty_vagrant.sh
user@host~/fuzzy-octo-hipster/install_scripts$ ./install_ruby_gem_vagrant.sh
user@host~/fuzzy-octo-hipster/install_scripts$ ./install_salty_vagrant.sh

3. Now it's time to startup the vagrant box!

user@host~/fuzzy-octo-hipster/$ vagrant up
Bringing machine 'default' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
[default] Importing base box 'precise64'...
...
salt-call was not found.
Bootstrapping Salt... (this may take a while)
Salt successfully configured and installed!
Calling state.highstate... (this may take a while)

4. Now enter the box:

user@host~/fuzzy-octo-hipster/$ vagrant ssh
Welcome to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.2.0-23-generic x86_64)

* Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com/
Welcome to your Vagrant-built virtual machine.
last login: Fri Sep 14 06:23:18 2012 from 10.0.2.2
vagrant@precise64:~$

5. Welcome to Salt!

The Hard Way

Do this from scratch. Follow the installation instructions from the readme on the salty-vagrant github repo

We'll need the following to continue:

• Virtualbox (I'm using 4.2.10)
• Ruby gem
• SaltStack

• salty vagrant

  • salty vagrant installation instructions (We'll install it from vagrant)

• A text editor of your choice. Like this one

Recap: this is all done on Ubuntu Desktop 12.10. I have every bit of faith that this will function on any other setup so long as you have Virtualbox and Ruby with a little bit of Python magic.

SaltStack is OS agnostic (with some caveats on Windows), and will run on Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows.

Let's add Salt to our Ubuntu repo list. If you have a non-Debian based system it's time to look here instead. Otherwise:

$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:saltstack/salt
You are about to add the following PPA to your system:
 Salt, the remote execution and configuration management tool.
 More info: https://launchpad.net/~saltstack/+archive/salt
Press [ENTER] to continue or ctrl-c to cancel adding it

gpg: keyring `/tmp/tmp5o3wtd/secring.gpg' created
gpg: keyring `/tmp/tmp5o3wtd/pubring.gpg' created
gpg: requesting key 0E27C0A6 from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com
gpg: /tmp/tmp5o3wtd/trustdb.gpg: trustdb created
gpg: key 0E27C0A6: public key "Launchpad PPA for SaltStack" imported
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:               imported: 1  (RSA: 1)
OK

# Dirty Ruby business

# Our OS's pkg manager will handle Gem
$ sudo apt-get install gem

# gem will handle getting the latest vagrant & salty-vagrant
$ sudo gem install vagrant

salty-vagrant Install

Now you should know I could tell you how to install salty-vagrant, but following the easy to read instructions would be beneficial to everyone involved.

Here's the Copy/pasted from the link above:

1. Install Vagrant
2. Install Salty Vagrant (vagrant plugin install vagrant-salt)
3. Get the Ubuntu 12.04 base box: vagrant box add precise64 http://files.vagrantup.com/precise64.box
4. Create/Update your Vagrantfile Detailed in Configuration
5. Place your minion config in salt/minion
6. Run vagrant up and you should be good to go.

You can try starting now, but you'll run into errors about the missing SaltStack states. Proceed to the next section to make this all real.

Fun and Excitement at 100 MPH

By now you should have the pieces in place to be able to begin a Vagrant-powered virtual machine. Now we're going to move into the fun part: automating the environment for our purposes.

We begin with the following:

.
├── Readme.rst
└── Vagrantfile

Sounds like we need to build our Salt part.

Create the Salt state directory, and let's create the top file:

$ mkdir -p salt/roots/salt
$ touch salt/roots/salt/top.sls

We should now have the following tree:

.
├── install_scripts
│   ├── install_ruby_gem_vagrant.sh
│   └── install_salty_vagrant.sh
├── Readme.rst
├── salt
│   ├── minion
│   └── roots
│       └── salt
│           ├── top.sls
│           └── vim.sls
├── TODO.rst
└── Vagrantfile

Now we can create a basic Salt state:

top.sls:

# 'base' is an environment, don't worry about it for now.
base:

  # We're saying "everyone" ('*') should run the 'vim' salt state we're
  # about to create.
  '*':
    - vim

  # Now we're stating all minions with the 'dev' role, run the following
  # salt state.  This state is called apache and it'll install the apache2
  # HTTP server
  'role : dev':
    - match: grain
    - apache