Book Image

Extending SaltStack

Book Image

Extending SaltStack

Overview of this book

Salt already ships with a very powerful set of tools, but that doesn't mean that they all suit your needs perfectly. By adding your own modules and enhancing existing ones, you can bring the functionality that you need to increase your productivity. Extending SaltStack follows a tutorial-based approach to explain different types of modules, from fundamentals to complete and full-functioning modules. Starting with the Loader system that drives Salt, this book will guide you through the most common types of modules. First you will learn how to write execution modules. Then you will extend the configuration using the grain, pillar, and SDB modules. Next up will be state modules and then the renderers that can be used with them. This will be followed with returner and output modules, which increase your options to manage return data. After that, there will be modules for external file servers, clouds, beacons, and finally external authentication and wheel modules to manage the master. With this guide in hand, you will be prepared to create, troubleshoot, and manage the most common types of Salt modules and take your infrastructure to new heights!
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Extending SaltStack
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Troubleshooting wheel modules


Once again, wheel modules are a little special when it comes to troubleshooting, because there is no specific command-line program in Salt that executes them directly. Unlike auth modules, they can't even be tested using the salt command.

However, as you have just seen, they can be tested using Salt API and curl:

# curl localhost:8080/run \
    -H 'Accept: application/json' \
    -d username=larry \
    -d password=123pass \
    -d eauth=pam \
    -d client=wheel \
    -d fun='runners.list'

You can also test wheel modules using the event system in Salt. It is good to get used to testing this way, since wheel modules are so useful inside reactor modules.

Let's go ahead and set up a reactor that deletes a Minion's key from the Master:

# This reactor should be saved as /srv/reactor/test_delete.sls
test_delete_minion:
  wheel.key.delete:
    - match: data['bad_minion']

Then add that reactor to the master configuration file:

reactor:
  - 'user/minon/delete/*':
    - ...