Salt SSH

Note

On many systems, salt-ssh will be in its own package, usually named salt-ssh.

In version 0.17.0 of Salt a new transport system was introduced, the ability to use SSH for Salt communication. This addition allows for Salt routines to be executed on remote systems entirely through ssh, bypassing the need for a Salt Minion to be running on the remote systems and the need for a Salt Master.

Note

The Salt SSH system does not supercede the standard Salt communication systems, it simply offers an SSH based alternative that does not require ZeroMQ and a remote agent. Be aware that since all communication with Salt SSH is executed via SSH it is substantially slower than standard Salt with ZeroMQ.

Salt SSH is very easy to use, simply set up a basic roster file of the systems to connect to and run salt-ssh commands in a similar way as standard salt commands.

Salt SSH Roster

The roster system in Salt allows for remote minions to be easily defined.

Note

See the Roster documentation for more details.

Simply create the roster file, the default location is /etc/salt/roster:

web1: 192.168.42.1

This is a very basic roster file where a Salt ID is being assigned to an IP address. A more elaborate roster can be created:

web1:
  host: 192.168.42.1 # The IP addr or DNS hostname
  user: fred         # Remote executions will be executed as user fred
  passwd: foobarbaz  # The password to use for login, if omitted, keys are used
  sudo: True         # Whether to sudo to root, not enabled by default
web2:
  host: 192.168.42.2

Calling Salt SSH

The salt-ssh command can be easily executed in the same was as a salt command:

salt-ssh '*' test.ping

Commands with salt-ssh follow the same syntax as the salt command.

The standard salt functions are available! The output is the same as salt and many of the same flags are available. Please see http://docs.saltstack.com/ref/cli/salt-ssh.html for all of the available options.

Raw Shell Calls

By default salt-ssh runs Salt execution modules on the remote system, but salt-ssh can also execute raw shell commands:

salt-ssh '*' -r 'ifconfig'

States Via Salt SSH

The Salt State system can also be used with salt-ssh. The state system abstracts the same interface to the user in salt-ssh as it does when using standard salt. The intent is that Salt Formulas defined for standard salt will work seamlessly with salt-ssh and vice-versa.

The standard Salt States walkthroughs function by simply replacing salt commands with salt-ssh.

Targeting with Salt SSH

Due to the fact that the targeting approach differs in salt-ssh, only glob and regex targets are supported as of this writing, the remaining target systems still need to be implemented.