Salt 0.9.5 Release Notes¶

SPEED! Pickle to msgpack¶

For a few months now we have been talking about moving away from Python pickles for network serialization, but a preferred serialization format had not yet been found. After an extensive performance testing period involving everything from JSON to protocol buffers, a clear winner emerged. Message Pack (https://msgpack.org/) proved to not only be the fastest and most compact, but also the most "salt like". Message Pack is simple, and the code involved is very small. The msgpack library for Python has been added directly to Salt.

This move introduces a few changes to Salt. First off, Salt is no longer a "noarch" package, since the msgpack lib is written in C. Salt 0.9.5 will also have compatibility issues with 0.9.4 with the default configuration.

We have gone through great lengths to avoid backwards compatibility issues with Salt, but changing the serialization medium was going to create issues regardless. Salt 0.9.5 is somewhat backwards compatible with earlier minions. A 0.9.5 master can command older minions, but only if the serial config value in the master is set to pickle. This will tell the master to publish messages in pickle format and will allow the master to receive messages in both msgpack and pickle formats.

Therefore the suggested methods for upgrading are either to just upgrade everything at once, or:

1. Upgrade the master to 0.9.5

2. Set serial to pickle in the master config

3. Upgrade the minions

4. Remove the serial option from the master config

Since pickles can be used as a security exploit the ability for a master to accept pickles from minions at all will be removed in a future release.

C Bindings for YAML¶

All of the YAML rendering is now done with the YAML C bindings. This speeds up all of the sls files when running states.

Experimental Windows Support¶

David Boucha has worked tirelessly to bring initial support to Salt for Microsoft Windows operating systems. Right now the Salt Minion can run as a native Windows service and accept commands.

In the weeks and months to come Windows will receive the full treatment and will have support for Salt States and more robust support for managing Windows systems. This is a big step forward for Salt to move entirely outside of the Unix world, and proves Salt is a viable cross platform solution. Big Thanks to Dave for his contribution here!

Dynamic Module Distribution¶

Many Salt users have expressed the desire to have Salt distribute in-house modules, states, renderers, returners, and grains. This support has been added in a number of ways:

Module Reloading¶

Modules can now be reloaded without restarting the minion, this is done by calling the salt.modules.sys.reload_modules function.

But wait, there's more! Now when a salt module of any type is added via states the modules will be automatically reloaded, allowing for modules to be laid down with states and then immediately used.

Finally, all modules are reloaded when modules are dynamically distributed from the salt master.

Enable / Disable Added to Service¶

A great deal of demand has existed for adding the capability to set services to be started at boot in the service module. This feature also comes with an overhaul of the service modules and initial systemd support.

This means that the service state can now accept - enable: True to make sure a service is enabled at boot, and - enable: False to make sure it is disabled.

Compound Target¶

A new target type has been added to the lineup, the compound target. In previous versions the desired minions could only be targeted via a single specific target type, but now many target specifications can be declared.

These targets can also be separated by and/or operators, so certain properties can be used to omit a node:

salt -C 'webserv* and G@os:Debian or E@db.*' test.ping

will match all minions with ids starting with webserv via a glob and minions matching the os:Debian grain. Or minions that match the db.* regular expression.

Node Groups¶

Often the convenience of having a predefined group of minions to execute targets on is desired. This can be accomplished with the new nodegroups feature. Nodegroups allow for predefined compound targets to be declared in the master configuration file:

nodegroups:
  group1: 'L@foo.domain.com,bar.domain.com,baz.domain.com and bl*.domain.com'
  group2: 'G@os:Debian and foo.domain.com'

And then used via the -N option:

salt -N group1 test.ping

Minion Side Data Store¶

The data module introduces the initial approach into storing persistent data on the minions, specific to the minions. This allows for data to be stored on minions that can be accessed from the master or from the minion.

The Minion datastore is young, and will eventually provide an interface similar to a more mature key/value pair server.

Major Grains Improvement¶

The Salt grains have been overhauled to include a massive amount of extra data. this includes hardware data, os data and salt specific data.

Salt -Q is Useful Now¶

In the past the salt query system, which would display the data from recent executions would be displayed in pure Python, and it was unreadable.

0.9.5 has added the outputter system to the -Q option, thus enabling the salt query system to return readable output.

FreeBSD¶

Salt on FreeBSD? There a port for that:

https://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports/head/sysutils/py-salt/

This port was developed and added by Christer Edwards. This also marks the first time Salt has been included in an upstream packaging system!

Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise¶

Salt packages have been prepared for inclusion in the Fedora Project and in EPEL for Red Hat Enterprise 5 and 6. These packages are the result of the efforts made by Clint Savage (herlo).

Debian/Ubuntu¶

A team of many contributors have assisted in developing packages for Debian and Ubuntu. Salt is still actively seeking inclusion in upstream Debian and Ubuntu and the package data that has been prepared is being pushed through the needed channels for inclusion.

These packages have been prepared with the help of:

• Corey

• Aaron Toponce

• and`

More to Come¶

We are actively seeking inclusion in more distributions. Primarily getting Salt into Gentoo, SUSE, OpenBSD, and preparing Solaris support are all turning into higher priorities.

More Testing, More BugFixes¶

0.9.5 comes with more bugfixes due to more testing than any previous release. The growing community and the introduction a dedicated QA environment have unearthed many issues that were hiding under the covers. This has further refined and cleaned the state interface, taking care of things from minor visual issues to repairing misleading data.

Custom Exceptions¶

A custom exception module has been added to throw salt specific exceptions. This allows Salt to give much more granular error information.

New Modules¶

New States¶

New Returners¶