Configuring the Salt Minion

### Navigation

- index
- modules |
- next |
- previous |
- « SaltStack.org |
- Documentation home

# Configuring the Salt Minion

The Salt system is amazingly simple and easy to configure, the two components of the Salt system each have a respective configuration file. The salt-master is configured via the master configuration file, and the salt-minion is configured via the minion configuration file.

See also

example minion configuration file

The Salt Minion configuration is very simple, typically the only value that needs to be set is the master value so the minion can find its master.

## Minion Primary Configuration

## `master`

Default: `salt`

The hostname or ipv4 of the master.

    master: salt

## `master_port`

Default: `4506`

The port of the master ret server, this needs to coincide with the ret_port option on the Salt master.

    master_port: 4506

## `user`

Default: `root`

The user to run the Salt processes

    user: root

## `pki_dir`

Default: `/etc/salt/pki`

The directory used to store the minion's public and private keys.

    pki_dir: /etc/salt/pki

## `id`

Default: hostname (as returned by the Python call: `socket.getfqdn()`)

Explicitly declare the id for this minion to use, if left commented the id will be the hostname as returned by the Python call: `socket.getfqdn()` Since Salt uses detached ids it is possible to run multiple minions on the same machine but with different ids, this can be useful for Salt compute clusters.

    id: foo.bar.com

## `sub_timeout`

The minion connection to the master may be interrupted, the minion will verify the connection every so many seconds, to disable connection verification set this value to 0

    sub_timeout: 60

## `cachedir`

Default: `/var/cache/salt`

The location for minion cache data.

    cachedir: /var/cache/salt

## `backup_mode`

Default: `[]`

Backup files replaced by file.managed and file.recurse under cachedir.

    backup_mode: minion

## `cache_jobs`

Default: `False`

The minion can locally cache the return data from jobs sent to it, this can be a good way to keep track minion side of the jobs the minion has executed. By default this feature is disabled, to enable set cache_jobs to True

    cache_jobs: False

## `acceptance_wait_time`

Default: `10`

The number of seconds to wait until attempting to re-authenticate with the master.

    acceptance_wait_time: 10

## Minion Module Management

## `disable_modules`

Default: `[]` (all modules are enabled by default)

The event may occur in which the administrator desires that a minion should not be able to execute a certain module. The sys module is built into the minion and cannot be disabled.

This setting can also tune the minion, as all modules are loaded into ram disabling modules will lover the minion's ram footprint.

    disable_modules:
      - test
      - solr

## `disable_returners`

Default: `[]` (all returners are enabled by default)

If certain returners should be disabled, this is the place

    disable_returners:
      - mongo_return

## `module_dirs`

Default: `[]`

A list of extra directories to search for Salt modules

    module_dirs:
      - /var/lib/salt/modules

## `returner_dirs`

Default: `[]`

A list of extra directories to search for Salt returners

    returners_dirs:
      - /var/lib/salt/returners

## `states_dirs`

Default: `[]`

A list of extra directories to search for Salt states

    states_dirs:
      - /var/lib/salt/states

## `render_dirs`

Default: `[]`

A list of extra directories to search for Salt renderers

    render_dirs:
      - /var/lib/salt/renderers

## `cython_enable`

Default: `False`

Set this value to true to enable auto-loading and compiling of `.pyx` modules, This setting requires that `gcc` and `cython` are installed on the minion

    cython_enable: False

## `providers`

Default: (empty)

A module provider can be statically overwritten or extended for the minion via the providers option. This can be done on an individual basis in an SLS file or globally here in the minion config.

## State Management Settings

## `renderer`

Default: `yaml_jinja`

The default renderer used for local state executions

    renderer: yaml_jinja

## `state_verbose`

Default: `False`

state_verbose allows for the data returned from the minion to be more verbose. Normally only states that fail or states that have changes are returned, but setting state_verbose to `True` will return all states that were checked

    state_verbose: True

## `autoload_dynamic_modules`

Default: `True`

autoload_dynamic_modules Turns on automatic loading of modules found in the environments on the master. This is turned on by default, to turn of autoloading modules when states run set this value to `False`

    autoload_dynamic_modules: True

Default: `True`

clean_dynamic_modules keeps the dynamic modules on the minion in sync with the dynamic modules on the master, this means that if a dynamic module is not on the master it will be deleted from the minion. By default this is enabled and can be disabled by changing this value to `False`

    clean_dynamic_modules: True

## `environment`

Default: `None`

Normally the minion is not isolated to any single environment on the master when running states, but the environment can be isolated on the minion side by statically setting it. Remember that the recommended way to manage environments is to isolate via the top file.

    environment: None

## Security Settings

## `open_mode`

Default: `False`

Open mode can be used to clean out the PKI key received from the Salt master, turn on open mode, restart the minion, then turn off open mode and restart the minion to clean the keys.

    open_mode: False

## Thread Settings

Default: `True`

Disable multiprocessing support by default when a minion receives a publication a new process is spawned and the command is executed therein.

    multiprocessing: True

## Minion Logging Settings

## `log_file`

Default: `/var/log/salt/minion`

The location of the minion log file

    log_file: /var/log/salt/minion

## `log_level`

Default: `warning`

The level of messages to send to the log file. One of 'info', 'quiet', 'critical', 'error', 'debug', 'warning'.

    log_level: warning

## `log_granular_levels`

Default: `{}`

Logger levels can be used to tweak specific loggers logging levels. Imagine you want to have the Salt library at the 'warning' level, but, you still wish to have 'salt.modules' at the 'debug' level:

    log_granular_levels:
      'salt': 'warning',
      'salt.modules': 'debug'

## `default_include`

Default: `minion.d/*.conf`

The minion can include configuration from other files. Per default the minion will automatically include all config files from minion.d/*.conf where minion.d is relative to the directory of the minion configuration file.

## `include`

Default: `not defined`

The minion can include configuration from other files. To enable this, pass a list of paths to this option. The paths can be either relative or absolute; if relative, they are considered to be relative to the directory the main minion configuration file lives in. Paths can make use of shell-style globbing. If no files are matched by a path passed to this option then the minion will log a warning message.

    # Include files from a minion.d directory in the same
    # directory as the minion config file
    include: minion.d/*

    # Include a single extra file into the configuration
    include: /etc/roles/webserver

    # Include several files and the minion.d directory
    include:
      - extra_config
      - minion.d/*
      - /etc/roles/webserver

## Frozen Build Update Settings

These options control how `salt.modules.saltutil.update()` works with esky frozen apps. For more information look at https://github.com/cloudmatrix/esky/.

## `update_url`

Default: `False` (Update feature is disabled)

The url to use when looking for application updates. Esky depends on directory listings to search for new versions. A webserver running on your Master is a good starting point for most setups.

    update_url: 'http://salt.example.com/minion-updates'

## `update_restart_services`

Default: `[]` (service restarting on update is disabled)

A list of services to restart when the minion software is updated. This would typically just be a list containing the minion's service name, but you may have other services that need to go with it.

    update_restart_services: ['salt-minion']

## Comments

comments powered by Disqus

### Navigation

- index
- modules |
- next |
- previous |
- « SaltStack.org |
- Documentation home