salt/doc/topics/releases/2015.8.0.rst

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

.. toctree::
    includes/2015.8.0rc2
    includes/2015.8.0rc3

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.

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.

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>`.

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.

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 early-access 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`)

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 :ref:`here
<git-pillar-2015-8-0-and-later>`.

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.
- 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

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.
- Modified the Linode Salt Cloud driver to use Linode's native API instead of
  depending on apache-libcloud or linode-python.
- When querying for VMs in ``ditigal_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.

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

- Templatize Windows Software package definitions
- Added additional capabilities to the user module for windows
- Added new module for managing windows updates (win_wua)
- Turned on multi-processing by default for windows in minion conf

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

Several config options have been renamed to make their naming more consistent.
For a list of the winrepo config options, see :ref:`here
<winrepo-master-config-opts>` for master config options, and :ref:`here
<winrepo-minion-config-opts>` for configuration options for masterless Windows
minions.

On the master, the :mod:`winrepo.update_git_repos
<salt.runners.winrepo.update_git_repos>` runner has been updated to use either
pygit2_ or GitPython_ to checkout the git repositories containing repo data. If
pygit2_ or GitPython_ is installed, existing winrepo git checkouts should be
removed after upgrading to 2015.8.0, to allow them to be checked out again by
running :py:func:`winrepo.update_git_repos
<salt.runners.winrepo.update_git_repos>`.

This enhancement also brings new functionality, see the :ref:`Windows Software
Repository <2015-8-0-winrepo-changes>` documentation for more information.

If neither GitPython_ nor pygit2_ are installed, then Salt will fall back to
the pre-existing behavior for :mod:`winrepo.update_git_repos
<salt.runners.winrepo.update_git_repos>`, and a warning will be logged in the
master log.

.. note::
    Standalone Windows minions do not support the new GitPython_/pygit2_
    functionality, and will instead use the :py:func:`git.latest
    <salt.states.git.latest>` state to keep repositories up-to-date. More
    information on how to use the Windows Software Repo on a standalone minion
    can be found :ref:`here <standalone-winrepo>`.

.. _pygit2: https://github.com/libgit2/pygit2
.. _GitPython: https://github.com/gitpython-developers/GitPython

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
==================

- Python 3
- 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

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``,

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`)