salt/doc/ref/states/testing.rst

State Testing

Executing a Salt state run can potentially change many aspects of a system and it may be desirable to first see what a state run is going to change before applying the run.

Salt has a test interface to report on exactly what will be changed, this interface can be invoked on any of the major state run functions:

salt '*' state.apply test=True
salt '*' state.apply mysls test=True
salt '*' state.single test=True

The test run is mandated by adding the test=True option to the states. The return information will show states that will be applied in yellow and the result is reported as None.

Default Test

If the value test is set to True in the minion configuration file then states will default to being executed in test mode. If this value is set then states can still be run by calling test=False:

salt '*' state.apply test=False
salt '*' state.apply mysls test=False
salt '*' state.single test=False