salt/doc/topics/tutorials/standalone_minion.rst

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.. _tutorial-standalone-minion:
=================
Standalone Minion
=================
Since the Salt minion contains such extensive functionality it can be useful
to run it standalone. A standalone minion can be used to do a number of
things:
- Use salt-call commands on a system without connectivity to a master
- Masterless States, run states entirely from files local to the minion
.. note::
When running Salt in masterless mode, do not run the salt-minion daemon.
Otherwise, it will attempt to connect to a master and fail. The salt-call
command stands on its own and does not need the salt-minion daemon.
Minion Configuration
--------------------
Throughout this document there are several references to setting different
options to configure a masterless Minion. Salt Minions are easy to configure
via a configuration file that is located, by default, in ``/etc/salt/minion``.
Note, however, that on FreeBSD systems, the minion configuration file is located
in ``/usr/local/etc/salt/minion``.
You can learn more about minion configuration options in the
:ref:`Configuring the Salt Minion <configuration-salt-minion>` docs.
Telling Salt Call to Run Masterless
===================================
The salt-call command is used to run module functions locally on a minion
instead of executing them from the master. Normally the salt-call command
checks into the master to retrieve file server and pillar data, but when
running standalone salt-call needs to be instructed to not check the master for
this data. To instruct the minion to not look for a master when running
salt-call the :conf_minion:`file_client` configuration option needs to be set.
By default the :conf_minion:`file_client` is set to ``remote`` so that the
minion knows that file server and pillar data are to be gathered from the
master. When setting the :conf_minion:`file_client` option to ``local`` the
minion is configured to not gather this data from the master.
.. code-block:: yaml
file_client: local
Now the salt-call command will not look for a master and will assume that the
local system has all of the file and pillar resources.
Running States Masterless
=========================
The state system can be easily run without a Salt master, with all needed files
local to the minion. To do this the minion configuration file needs to be set
up to know how to return file_roots information like the master. The file_roots
setting defaults to /srv/salt for the base environment just like on the master:
.. code-block:: yaml
file_roots:
base:
- /srv/salt
Now set up the Salt State Tree, top file, and SLS modules in the same way that
they would be set up on a master. Now, with the :conf_minion:`file_client`
option set to ``local`` and an available state tree then calls to functions in
the state module will use the information in the file_roots on the minion
instead of checking in with the master.
Remember that when creating a state tree on a minion there are no syntax or
path changes needed, SLS modules written to be used from a master do not need
to be modified in any way to work with a minion.
This makes it easy to "script" deployments with Salt states without having to
set up a master, and allows for these SLS modules to be easily moved into a
Salt master as the deployment grows.
The declared state can now be executed with:
.. code-block:: bash
salt-call state.apply
Or the salt-call command can be executed with the ``--local`` flag, this makes
it unnecessary to change the configuration file:
.. code-block:: bash
salt-call state.apply --local
External Pillars
================
:ref:`External pillars <external-pillars>` are supported when running in masterless mode.