These release notes are for an old release of Salt. This release might contain known security and other issues that are fixed in the latest release.

Salt 0.8.9 Release Notes¶

Salt 0.8.9 has finally arrived! Unfortunately this is much later than I had hoped to release 0.8.9, life has been very crazy over the last month. But despite challenges, Salt has moved forward!

This release, as expected, adds few new features and many refinements. One of the most exciting aspect of this release is that the development community for salt has grown a great deal and much of the code is from contributors.

Also, I have filled out the documentation a great deal. So information on States is properly documented, and much of the documentation that was out of date has been filled in.

Download!¶

The Salt source can be downloaded from PyPI:

https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/s/salt/salt-0.8.9.tar.gz

Here s the md5sum:

7d5aca4633bc22f59045f59e82f43b56

For instructions on how to set up Salt please see the Installation instructions.

New Features¶

Salt Run¶

A big feature is the addition of Salt run, the salt-run command allows for master side execution modules to be made that gather specific information or execute custom routines from the master.

Documentation for salt-run can be found here

Refined Outputters¶

One problem often complained about in salt was the fact that the output was so messy. Thanks to help from Jeff Schroeder a cleaner interface for the command output for the Salt CLI has been made. This new interface makes adding new printout formats easy and additions to the capabilities of minion modules makes it possible to set the printout mode or outputter for functions in minion modules.

Cross Calling Salt Modules¶

Salt modules can now call each other, the __salt__ dict has been added to the predefined references in minion modules. This new feature is documented in the modules documentation.

Watch Option Added to Salt State System¶

Now in Salt states you can set the watch option, this will allow watch enabled states to change based on a change in the other defined states. This is similar to subscribe and notify statements in puppet.

Root Dir Option¶

Travis Cline has added the ability to define the option root_dir which allows the salt minion to operate in a subdir. This is a strong move in supporting the minion running as an unprivileged user

Config Files Defined in Variables¶

Thanks again to Travis Cline, the master and minion configuration file locations can be defined in environment variables now.

New Modules¶

Quite a few new modules, states, returners, and runners have been made.

New Minion Modules¶

apt¶

Support for apt-get has been added, this adds greatly improved Debian and Ubuntu support to Salt!

useradd and groupadd¶

Support for manipulating users and groups on Unix-like systems.

moosefs¶

Initial support for reporting on aspects of the distributed file system, MooseFS. For more information on MooseFS please see: http://www.moosefs.org

Thanks to Joseph Hall for his work on MooseFS support.

mount¶

Manage mounts and the fstab.

puppet¶

Execute puppet on remote systems.

shadow¶

Manipulate and manage the user password file.

ssh¶

Interact with ssh keys.

New States¶

user and group¶

Support for managing users and groups in Salt States.

mount¶

Enforce mounts and the fstab.

New Returners¶

mongo_return¶

Send the return information to a MongoDB server.

New Runners¶

manage¶

Display minions that are up or down.