salt/pkg/suse/README.suse

Salt-master as non-root user
============================

With this version of salt the salt-master will run as salt user.

Why an extra user
=================

While the current setup runs the master as root user, this is considered a security issue
and not in line with the other configuration management tools (eg. puppet) which runs as a
dedicated user. 

How can I undo the change
=========================

If you would like to make the change before you can do the following steps manually:
1. change the user parameter in the master configuration
   user: root
2. update the file permissions:
   as root: chown -R root /etc/salt /var/cache/salt /var/log/salt /var/run/salt
3. restart the salt-master daemon:
   as root: rcsalt-master restart or systemctl restart salt-master

NOTE
====

Running the salt-master daemon as a root user is considers by some a security risk, but
running as root, enables the pam external auth system, as this system needs root access to check authentication.

For more information:
http://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/ref/configuration/nonroot.html