salt/doc/topics/installation/windows.rst

Windows

Salt has full support for running the Salt Minion on Windows.

There are no plans for the foreseeable future to develop a Salt Master on Windows. For now you must run your Salt Master on a supported operating system to control your Salt Minions on Windows.

Many of the standard Salt modules have been ported to work on Windows and many of the Salt States currently work on Windows, as well.

Windows Installer

Salt Minion Windows installers can be found here. The output of md5sum <salt minion exe> should match the contents of the corresponding md5 file.

Latest stable build from the selected branch: |windownload|

Earlier builds from supported branches

Archived builds from unsupported branches

Note

The installation executable installs dependencies that the Salt minion requires.

The 64bit installer has been tested on Windows 7 64bit and Windows Server 2008R2 64bit. The 32bit installer has been tested on Windows 2003 Server 32bit. Please file a bug report on our GitHub repo if issues for other platforms are found.

The installer asks for 2 bits of information; the master hostname and the minion name. The installer will update the minion config with these options and then start the minion.

The salt-minion service will appear in the Windows Service Manager and can be started and stopped there or with the command line program sc like any other Windows service.

If the minion won't start, try installing the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 x64 SP1 redistributable. Allow all Windows updates to run salt-minion smoothly.

Silent Installer option

The installer can be run silently by providing the /S option at the command line. The options /master and /minion-name allow for configuring the master hostname and minion name, respectively. Here's an example of using the silent installer:

Salt-Minion-0.17.0-Setup-amd64.exe /S /master=yoursaltmaster /minion-name=yourminionname

Setting up a Windows build environment

This document will explain how to set up a development environment for salt on Windows. The development environment allows you to work with the source code to customize or fix bugs. It will also allow you to build your own installation.

The Easy Way

Prerequisite Software

To do this the easy way you only need to install Git for Windows.

Create the Build Environment

1. Clone the Salt-Windows-Dev repo from github.

   Open a command line and type:

   git clone https://github.com/saltstack/salt-windows-dev

2. Build the Python Environment

   Go into the salt-windows-dev directory. Right-click the file named dev_env.ps1 and select Run with PowerShell

   If you get an error, you may need to change the execution policy.

   Open a powershell window and type the following:

   Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

   This will download and install Python with all the dependencies needed to develop and build salt.

3. Build the Salt Environment

   Right-click on the file named dev_env_salt.ps1 and select Run with Powershell

   This will clone salt into C:\Salt-Dev\salt and set it to the 2015.5 branch. You could optionally run the command from a powershell window with a -Version switch to pull a different version. For example:

   dev_env_salt.ps1 -Version '2014.7'

   To view a list of available branches and tags, open a command prompt in your C:Salt-Devsalt directory and type:

   git branch -a
   git tag -n

The Hard Way

Prerequisite Software

Install the following software:

1. Git for Windows
2. Nullsoft Installer

Download the Prerequisite zip file for your CPU architecture from the SaltStack download site:

• Salt32.zip
• Salt64.zip

These files contain all sofware required to build and develop salt. Unzip the contents of the file to C:\Salt-Dev\temp.

Create the Build Environment

1. Build the Python Environment

   • Install Python:

     Browse to the C:\Salt-Dev\temp directory and find the Python installation file for your CPU Architecture under the corresponding subfolder. Double-click the file to install python.

     Make sure the following are in your PATH environment variable:

     C:\Python27
     C:\Python27\Scripts

   • Install Pip

     Open a command prompt and navigate to C:\Salt-Dev\temp Run the following command:

     python get-pip.py

   • Easy Install compiled binaries.

     M2Crypto, PyCrypto, and PyWin32 need to be installed using Easy Install. Open a command prompt and navigate to C:\Salt-Dev\temp\<cpuarch>. Run the following commands:

     easy_install -Z <M2Crypto file name>
     easy_install -Z <PyCrypto file name>
     easy_install -Z <PyWin32 file name>

     Note

     You can type the first part of the file name and then press the tab key to auto-complete the name of the file.

   • Pip Install Additional Prerequisites

     All remaining prerequisites need to be pip installed. These prerequisites are as follow:

     • MarkupSafe
     • Jinja
     • MsgPack
     • PSUtil
     • PyYAML
     • PyZMQ
     • WMI
     • Requests
     • Certifi

     Open a command prompt and navigate to C:\Salt-Dev\temp. Run the following commands:

     pip install <cpuarch>\<MarkupSafe file name>
     pip install <Jinja file name>
     pip install <cpuarch>\<MsgPack file name>
     pip install <cpuarch>\<psutil file name>
     pip install <cpuarch>\<PyYAML file name>
     pip install <cpuarch>\<pyzmq file name>
     pip install <WMI file name>
     pip install <requests file name>
     pip install <certifi file name>

2. Build the Salt Environment

   • Clone Salt

     Open a command prompt and navigate to C:\Salt-Dev. Run the following command to clone salt:

     git clone https://github.com/saltstack/salt

   • Checkout Branch

     Checkout the branch or tag of salt you want to work on or build. Open a command prompt and navigate to C:\Salt-Dev\salt. Get a list of available tags and branches by running the following commands:

     git fetch --all
     
     To view a list of available branches:
     git branch -a
     
     To view a list of availabel tags:
     git tag -n

     Checkout the branch or tag by typing the following command:

     git checkout <branch/tag name>

   • Clean the Environment

     When switching between branches residual files can be left behind that will interfere with the functionality of salt. Therefore, after you check out the branch you want to work on, type the following commands to clean the salt environment:

     git clean -fxd git reset --hard HEAD

Developing with Salt

There are two ways to develop with salt. You can run salt's setup.py each time you make a change to source code or you can use the setup tools develop mode.

Configure the Minion

Both methods require that the minion configuration be in the C:\salt directory. Copy the conf and var directories from C:\Salt-Dev\salt\pkg\ windows\buildenv to C:\salt. Now go into the C:\salt\conf directory and edit the file name minion (no extension). You need to configure the master and id parameters in this file. Edit the following lines:

master: <ip or name of your master>
id: <name of your minion>

Setup.py Method

Go into the C:\Salt-Dev\salt directory from a cmd prompt and type:

python setup.py install --force

This will install python into your python installation at C:\Python27. Everytime you make an edit to your source code, you'll have to stop the minion, run the setup, and start the minion.

To start the salt-minion go into C:\Python27\Scripts from a cmd prompt and type:

salt-minion

For debug mode type:

salt-minion -l debug

To stop the minion press Ctrl+C.

Setup Tools Develop Mode (Preferred Method)

To use the Setup Tools Develop Mode go into C:\Salt-Dev\salt from a cmd prompt and type:

pip install -e .

This will install pointers to your source code that resides at C:\Salt-Dev\salt. When you edit your source code you only have to restart the minion.

Build the windows installer

This is the method of building the installer as of version 2014.7.4.

Clean the Environment

Make sure you don't have any leftover salt files from previous versions of salt in your Python directory.

1. Remove all files that start with salt in the C:\Python27\Scripts directory
2. Remove all files and directorys that start with salt in the C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages directory

Install Salt

Install salt using salt's setup.py. From the C:\Salt-Dev\salt directory type the following command:

python setup.py install --force

Build the Installer

From cmd prompt go into the C:\Salt-Dev\salt\pkg\windows directory. Type the following command for the branch or tag of salt you're building:

BuildSalt.bat <branch or tag>

This will copy python with salt installed to the buildenv\bin directory, make it portable, and then create the windows installer . The .exe for the windows installer will be placed in the installer directory.

Testing the Salt minion

1. Create the directory C:\salt (if it doesn't exist already)

2. Copy the example conf and var directories from pkg/windows/buildenv/ into C:\salt

3. Edit C:\salt\conf\minion

   master: ipaddress or hostname of your salt-master

4. Start the salt-minion

   cd C:\Python27\Scripts
   python salt-minion

5. On the salt-master accept the new minion's key

   sudo salt-key -A

   This accepts all unaccepted keys. If you're concerned about security just accept the key for this specific minion.

6. Test that your minion is responding

   On the salt-master run:

   sudo salt '*' test.ping

You should get the following response: {'your minion hostname': True}

Single command bootstrap script

On a 64 bit Windows host the following script makes an unattended install of salt, including all dependencies:

Not up to date.

This script is not up to date. Please use the installer found above

# (All in one line.)

"PowerShell (New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadFile('http://csa-net.dk/salt/bootstrap64.bat','C:\bootstrap.bat');(New-Object -com Shell.Application).ShellExecute('C:\bootstrap.bat');"

You can execute the above command remotely from a Linux host using winexe:

winexe -U "administrator" //fqdn "PowerShell (New-Object ......);"

For more info check http://csa-net.dk/salt

Packages management under Windows 2003

On windows Server 2003, you need to install optional component "wmi windows installer provider" to have full list of installed packages. If you don't have this, salt-minion can't report some installed softwares.