heist-salt 5.3.0

What is POP?

This project is built with pop, a Python-based implementation of Plugin Oriented Programming (POP). POP seeks to bring together concepts and wisdom from the history of computing in new ways to solve modern computing problems.

For more information:

• Intro to Plugin Oriented Programming (POP)

• pop-awesome

• pop-create

What is Heist?

This project is built with Heist, a POP plugin that creates network tunnels for distributing and managing agents. While it has been originally built to deploy and manage Salt minions (heist-salt), it can be used to distribute and manage other agents or plugins if extended to do so.

Prerequisites

• Python 3.6+

• git (if installing from source, or contributing to the project)

Installation

If wanting to use heist-salt, you can do so by either installing from PyPI or from source.

# Requires Python 3.6+
pip install heist-salt

# Requires git and Python 3.6+
git clone git@gitlab.com:saltstack/pop/heist-salt.git
cd heist-salt
pip install -e .

Setting up a Salt master

Don’t worry, this is a snap! Once Heist is installed you will need a Salt master to connect to. If you have an existing Salt master running you can skip this section, just run heist on your Salt master.

Download the all-in-one Salt binary for Linux (Windows coming soon!):

For Linux:

wget https://repo.saltproject.io/salt/singlebin/3003.3-1/salt-3003.3-1-linux-amd64.tar.gz

This is to install the 3003.3 version of Salt. You can view the directory listing here: https://repo.saltproject.io/salt/singlebin/ to see all of the Salt versions available for download.

Extract the tarball:

tar -xvf salt-3003.3-1-linux-amd64.tar.gz

This will extract a single file named salt. You can now use this single binary to run the Salt master.

chmod +x salt
sudo ./salt master

Now you have a running Salt master to control your minions!

Making your roster

A Roster is a file used by Heist to map login information to the systems in your environment. This file can be very simple and just needs to tell Heist where your systems are and how to log into them via ssh. Open a file called roster.cfg and add the data needed to connect to a remote system via ssh:

192.168.4.4:
  username: fred
  password: freds_password

The roster files typically all live inside of a roster directory. But to get started will execute a single roster file with heist:

heist salt.minion -R roster.cfg

Assuming your roster is correct, heist will now connect to the remote system, deploy a Salt minion, and connect it to your running master! Now you can use the same binary that you started the master with to accept your new minion’s keys:

./salt key -A

Then give your minion a few seconds to authenticate and then run your first salt command on the newly set up minion:

./salt \* test.version

That’s it! Now that the minion is up you can run salt commands on it at breakneck speed, the full power of Salt is at your fingertips!!