salt/doc/topics/releases/2015.8.0.rst

================================================
Salt 2015.8.0 Release Notes - Codename Beryllium
================================================

.. toctree::
    includes/2015.8.0.pull_list

The 2015.8.0 feature release of Salt contains several major new features. As
usual the release notes are not exhaustive and primarily include the most
notable additions and improvements. Hundreds of bugs have been fixed and many
modules have been substantially updated and added.

New SaltStack Installation Repositories
=======================================

SaltStack now provides installation repositories for several platforms, with more to come.
See the following links for instructions:

- :ref:`Red Hat / CentOS 5, 6, 7 <installation-rhel-repo>`
- :ref:`Debian 8 <installation-debian-repo>`
- :ref:`Windows <windows-installer>`
- :ref:`FreeBSD <freebsd-upstream>`

Send Event on State Completion
==============================

A ``fire_event`` global state keyword argument was added that allows any state to
send an event upon completion. Useful for custom progress bars and checking in
on long state runs. See :ref:`fire_event <requisites-fire-event>`.

ZeroMQ socket monitoring
========================

If :conf_master:`zmq_monitor` is enabled, log all ZMQ events for socket monitoring
purposes. Verbose, but useful.

SPM (Salt Package Manager)
==========================

Allows Salt formulas to be packaged for ease of deployment. See :ref:`spm <spm>`.

.. note::
   The spm executable was not included in the Debian or Ubuntu packages for the
   2015.8.0 or the 2015.8.1 releases. This executable will be included in an
   upcoming release. As a workaround, copy the SPM script from the salt library
   installation into ``/usr/local/bin`` or your local equivalent.

Specify a Single Environment for Top Files
==========================================

A new :conf_master:`default_top` option was added to load the state top file
from a single, specific environment, rather than merging top data across all
environments. Additionally, new :conf_master:`top_file_merge_strategy` and
:conf_master:`env_order` options were added for more control over top file
merging. See :ref:`The Top File <states-top>`.

Tornado TCP Transport
=====================

Implemented a pure-TCP transport, in addition to ZeroMQ and RAET. The new
transport uses Tornado, which allows Salt to use a standardized set of libraries
for asynchronous behavior, which should greatly improve reliability and
performance.

.. note::

   Tornado is considered expiremental in this release. The following known
   issues were being investigated at the time of release:
     - TCP tests show
       performance degredation over time (:issue:`26051`)
     - TCP transport stacktrace on windows minion: Future exception was never
       retrieved (:issue:`25718`)
     - [freebsd] TCP transport not working in 2015.8.0rc3 (:issue:`26364`)

Proxy Minion Enhancements
=========================

Proxy Minions have undergone a significant overhaul in 2015.8, see :ref:`Proxy Minion Enhancements <proxy-2015.8.0>`.

Engines
=======

Salt engines are long-running, external processes that leverage Salt. See :ref:`Salt Engines <engines>`.


Core Changes
============

- Add system version info to ``versions_report``, which appears in both ``salt
  --versions-report`` and ``salt '*' test.versions_report``. Also added is an
  alias ``test.versions`` to ``test.versions_report``. (:issue:`21906`)

- Add colorized console logging support.  This is activated by using
  ``%(colorlevel)s``, ``%(colorname)s``, ``%(colorprocess)s``, ``%(colormsg)s``
  in ``log_fmt_console`` in the config file for any of ``salt-master``,
  ``salt-minion``, and ``salt-cloud``.

Git Pillar
==========

The git external pillar has been rewritten to bring it up to feature parity
with :mod:`gitfs <salt.fileserver.gitfs>`. Support for pygit2_ has been added,
bringing with it the ability to access authenticated repositories.

Using the new features will require updates to the git ext_pillar
configuration, further details can be found in the :ref:`pillar.git_pillar
<git-pillar-2015-8-0-and-later>` docs.

Salt Cloud Improvements
=======================

- Pricing data from several cloud providers (GCE, DigitalOcean, SoftLayer_HW, EC2)
- All cloud providers now use standardized bootstrapping code.
- Modified the Linode Salt Cloud driver to use Linode's native API instead of
  depending on apache-libcloud or linode-python.

Salt Cloud Changes
------------------

- Changed the default behavior of ``rename_on_destroy`` to be set to ``True``
  in the EC2 and AWS drivers.
- Changed the default behavior of the EC2 and AWS drivers to always check for
  duplicate names of VMs before trying to create a new VM. Will now throw an
  error similarly to other salt-cloud drivers when trying to create a VM of the
  same name, even if the VM is in the ``terminated`` state.
- When querying for VMs in ``digital_ocean.py``, the number of VMs to include in
  a page was changed from 20 (default) to 200 to reduce the number of API calls
  to Digital Ocean.Ocean.

State and Execution Module Improvements
=======================================

- New and improved Docker state and execution modules (:mod:`state
  <salt.states.dockerng>` and :mod:`execution module <salt.modules.dockerng>`).
.. toctree::
    includes/git-2015.8.0
- OpenStack Glance API V2 execution module
- Amazon VPC state module
- RallyDev execution module
- BambooHR execution module
- Stormpath execution, state modules
- Remove unused argument ``timeout`` in jboss7.status.
- Deprecate ``enabled`` argument in ``pkgrepo.managed`` in favor of ``disabled``.
- Archive module changes: In the ``archive.tar`` and ``archive.cmd_unzip``
  module functions, remove the arbitrary prefixing of the options string with
  ``-``. An options string beginning with a ``--long-option``, would have
  uncharacteristically needed its first ``-`` removed under the former scheme.
  Also, tar will parse its options differently if short options are used with or
  without a preceding ``-``, so it is better to not confuse the user into
  thinking they're using the non- ``-`` format, when really they are using the
  with- ``-`` format.
- Added ``__states__`` to state modules, for cross-calling states. This enables
  using existing states when writing custom states. See :ref:`cross calling states
  <cross-calling-state-modules>`.

Windows Improvements
====================

- Enhanced the windows minion silent installation with command line parameters
  to configure the salt master and minion name. See :ref:`Silent Installer
  Options <windows-installer-options>`.
- Improved user management with additional capabilities in the user module for Windows.
- Improved patch management with a new module for managing windows updates (:mod:`win_wua <modules.win_wua>`).
- Turned on multi-processing by default for windows in minion configuration.

Windows Software Repo Changes
-----------------------------

A next-generation (ng) windows software repo is available for 2015.8.0 and
later minions. When using this new repository, the repo cache is compiled on
the Salt Minion, which enables pillar, grains and other things to be available
during compilation time.

See the :ref:`Windows Software Repository <2015-8-0-winrepo-changes>`
documentation for more information.

Changes to legacy Windows repository
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If you have pre 2015.8 Windows minions connecting to your 2015.8 Salt master, you
can continue to use the legacy Windows repository for these Salt minions.

If you were previously using this repository and have customized settings, be
aware that several config options have been renamed to make their naming more
consistent.

See the :ref:`Windows Software Repository <2015-8-0-winrepo-changes>`
documentation for more information.

Win System Module
-----------------

The unit of the ``timeout`` parameter in the ``system.halt``,
``system.poweroff``, ``system.reboot``,  and ``system.shutdown`` functions has
been changed from seconds to minutes in order to be consistent with the linux
timeout setting. (:issue:`24411`)  Optionally, the unit can be reverted to
seconds by specifying ``in_seconds=True``.

Other Improvements
==================

- Sanitize sensitive fields in http.query
- Allow authorization to be read from Django and eauth
- Add templating to SMTP returner
- New REST module for SDB
- Added rest_timeout config option and timeout argument to jobs api call
- Provide config options for Raet lane and road buffer count. (Useful for BSD kernels)
- Implemented ZeroMQ socket monitor for master and minion
- Add end time to master job cache for jobs (optional, off by default)
- Tornado is now the default backend for http.request
- Support pillarenv selection as it's done for saltenv
- salt was updated to use python-crypto version 2.6.1, which removes the dependency on python-m2crypto.

Deprecations
============

- The ``digital_ocean.py`` Salt Cloud driver was removed in favor of the
  ``digital_ocean_v2.py`` driver as DigitalOcean has removed support for APIv1.
  The ``digital_ocean_v2.py`` was renamed to ``digital_ocean.py`` and supports
  DigitalOcean's APIv2.

- The ``vsphere.py`` Salt Cloud driver has been deprecated in favor of the
  ``vmware.py`` driver.

- The ``openstack.py`` Salt Cloud driver has been deprecated in favor of the
  ``nova.py`` driver.

- The use of ``provider`` in Salt Cloud provider files to define cloud drivers
  has been deprecated in favor of using ``driver``. Both terms will work until
  the Nitrogen release of Salt. Example provider file:

.. code-block:: yaml

    my-ec2-cloud-config:
      id: 'HJGRYCILJLKJYG'
      key: 'kdjgfsgm;woormgl/aserigjksjdhasdfgn'
      private_key: /etc/salt/my_test_key.pem
      keyname: my_test_key
      securitygroup: default
      driver: ec2

- The use of ``lock`` has been deprecated and from ``salt.utils.fopen``.
  ``salt.utils.flopen`` should be used instead.

- The following args have been deprecated from the ``rabbitmq_vhost.present``
  state: ``user``, ``owner``, ``conf``, ``write``, ``read``, and ``runas``.

- The use of ``runas`` has been deprecated from the ``rabbitmq_vhost.absent``
  state.

- Support for ``output`` in ``mine.get`` was removed. ``--out`` should be used
  instead.

- The use of ``delim`` was removed from the following functions in the ``match``
  execution module: ``pillar_pcre``, ``pillar``, ``grain_pcre``,

Security Fixes
==============

CVE-2015-6918 - Git modules leaking HTTPS auth credentials to debug log

Updated the Git state and execution modules to no longer display HTTPS basic authentication credentials in loglevel debug output on the Salt master. These credentials are now replaced with ``REDACTED`` in the debug output. Thanks to Andreas Stieger <asteiger@suse.com> for bringing this to our attention.

Major Bug Fixes
===============

- Fixed minion failover to next master on DNS errors (:issue:`21082`)
- Fixed memory consumption in SaltEvents (:issue:`25557`)
- Don't lookup outside system path in which() util (:issue:`24085`)
- Fixed broken jobs rest api call (:issue:`23408`)
- Fixed stale grains data using in modules (:issue:`24073`)
- Added ssh_identities_only config flag for ssh-agent configured environments
  (:issue:`24096`)
- Fixed "object has no attribute" errors for Raet transport (:issue:`21640`)
- Flush event returners before master exit (:issue:`22814`)
- Fix CommandExecutionError in grains generation with lspci missing (:issue:`23342`)
- Fix salt-ssh against CentOS 7 when python-zmq not installed (:issue:`23503`)
- Fix salt-ssh issues related to out-of-date six module (:issue:`20949`)
- Fix salt-ssh thin generation after previous run was interrupted (:issue:`24376`)
- Use proper line endings on Windows with "file.managed" w/contents (:issue:`25675`)
- Fixed broken comment/uncomment functions in file.py (:issue:`24620`)
- Fixed problem with unicode when changing computer description (:issue:`12255`)
- Fixed problem with chocolatey module not loading (:issue:`25717`)
- Fixed problem adding users to groups with spaces in the name (:issue:`25144`)
- Fixed problem adding full name to user account (:issue:`25206`)
- Fixed gem module stack trace (:issue:`21041`)
- Fixed problem with file.managed when test=True (:issue:`20441`)
- Fixed problem with powershell hanging while waiting for user input (:issue:`13943`)
- Fixed problem where the salt-minion service would not consistently start
  (:issue:`25272`)
- Fixed problem where pkg.refresh_db would return True even when winrepo.p was not
  found (:issue:`18919`)
- Could someone please provide end to end example for Proxy Minion with REST
  (:issue:`25500`)
- Proxy minions stopped working between 2014.7 and 2015.5 (:issue:`25053`)
- Proxy minion documentation includes outdated code sample (:issue:`24018`)
- Proxy Minion documentation missing grains example (:issue:`18273`)
- Improve process management in proxy minion (:issue:`12024`)
- Proxy minion never comes up with message ' I am XXX and I am not supposed to
  start any proxies.' (:issue:`25908`)
- Fixed an issue that caused an exception when using Salt mine from pillar. (:issue:`11509`)