Salt states are also known as state modules. They make up an important part of the state system used within Salt. A Salt state is used to describe what packages should be installed on the Minion and other options such as user accounts, running services, and folder permissions. We'll look at the Salt state syntax now.
A Salt state file can often be found in the roots directory. It employs the .sls file extension and uses the Yet Another Markup Language (YAML) format for its contents. There is a certain hierarchy within a salt state file and that can go quite deep, depending on your requirements and configuration.
Let's break down an example Salt state file:
lampstack:
pkg.installed:
- pkgs:
- mysql-server
- php5
- php-pear
- php5-mysqlWe first set a name for this section, in this example it's called lampstack. We then call pkg.installed, which verifies that certain packages have been installed. We use the - pkgs...