Failhard Global Option¶

Normally, when a state fails Salt continues to execute the remainder of the defined states and will only refuse to execute states that require the failed state.

But the situation may exist, where you would want all state execution to stop if a single state execution fails. The capability to do this is called failing hard.

State Level Failhard¶

A single state can have a failhard set, this means that if this individual state fails that all state execution will immediately stop. This is a great thing to do if there is a state that sets up a critical config file and setting a require for each state that reads the config would be cumbersome. A good example of this would be setting up a package manager early on:

/etc/yum.repos.d/company.repo:
  file.managed:
    - source: salt://company/yumrepo.conf
    - user: root
    - group: root
    - mode: 644
    - order: 1
    - failhard: True

In this situation, the yum repo is going to be configured before other states, and if it fails to lay down the config file, than no other states will be executed. It is possible to override a Global Failhard (see below) by explicitly setting it to False in the state.

Global Failhard¶

It may be desired to have failhard be applied to every state that is executed, if this is the case, then failhard can be set in the master configuration file. Setting failhard in the master configuration file will result in failing hard when any minion gathering states from the master have a state fail.

This is NOT the default behavior, normally Salt will only fail states that require a failed state.

Using the global failhard is generally not recommended, since it can result in states not being executed or even checked. It can also be confusing to see states failhard if an admin is not actively aware that the failhard has been set.

To use the global failhard set failhard to True in the master configuration file.