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MinionFS Backend Walkthrough¶

New in version 2014.1.0.

Note

This walkthrough assumes basic knowledge of Salt and cp.push. To get up to speed, check out the Salt Walkthrough.

Sometimes it is desirable to deploy a file located on one minion to one or more other minions. This is supported in Salt, and can be accomplished in two parts:

Minion support for pushing files to the master (using cp.push)
The minionfs fileserver backend

This walkthrough will show how to use both of these features.

Enabling File Push¶

To set the master to accept files pushed from minions, the file_recv option in the master config file must be set to True (the default is False).

file_recv: True

Note

This change requires a restart of the salt-master service.

Pushing Files¶

Once this has been done, files can be pushed to the master using the cp.push function:

salt 'minion-id' cp.push /path/to/the/file

This command will store the file in a subdirectory named minions under the master's cachedir. On most masters, this path will be /var/cache/salt/master/minions. Within this directory will be one directory for each minion which has pushed a file to the master, and underneath that the full path to the file on the minion. So, for example, if a minion with an ID of dev1 pushed a file /var/log/myapp.log to the master, it would be saved to /var/cache/salt/master/minions/dev1/var/log/myapp.log.

Serving Pushed Files Using MinionFS¶

While it is certainly possible to add /var/cache/salt/master/minions to the master's file_roots and serve these files, it may only be desirable to expose files pushed from certain minions. Adding /var/cache/salt/master/minions/<minion-id> for each minion that needs to be exposed can be cumbersome and prone to errors.

Enter minionfs. This fileserver backend will make files pushed using cp.push available to the Salt fileserver, and provides an easy mechanism to restrict which minions' pushed files are made available.

Simple Configuration¶

To use the minionfs backend, add minionfs to the list of backends in the fileserver_backend configuration option on the master:

file_recv: True

fileserver_backend:
  - roots
  - minionfs

Note

minion also works here. Prior to the 2018.3.0 release, only minion would work.

Also, as described earlier, file_recv: True is needed to enable the master to receive files pushed from minions. As always, changes to the master configuration require a restart of the salt-master service.

Files made available via minionfs are by default located at salt://<minion-id>/path/to/file. Think back to the earlier example, in which dev1 pushed a file /var/log/myapp.log to the master. With minionfs enabled, this file would be addressable in Salt at salt://dev1/var/log/myapp.log.

If many minions have pushed to the master, this will result in many directories in the root of the Salt fileserver. For this reason, it is recommended to use the minionfs_mountpoint config option to organize these files underneath a subdirectory:

minionfs_mountpoint: salt://minionfs

Using the above mountpoint, the file in the example would be located at salt://minionfs/dev1/var/log/myapp.log.

Restricting Certain Minions' Files from Being Available Via MinionFS¶

A whitelist and blacklist can be used to restrict the minions whose pushed files are available via minionfs. These lists can be managed using the minionfs_whitelist and minionfs_blacklist config options. Click the links for both of them for a detailed explanation of how to use them.

A more complex configuration example, which uses both a whitelist and blacklist, can be found below:

file_recv: True

fileserver_backend:
  - roots
  - minionfs

minionfs_mountpoint: salt://minionfs

minionfs_whitelist:
  - host04
  - web*
  - 'mail\d+\.domain\.tld'

minionfs_blacklist:
  - web21

Potential Concerns¶

There is no access control in place to restrict which minions have access to files served up by minionfs. All minions will have access to these files.
Unless the minionfs_whitelist and/or minionfs_blacklist config options are used, all minions which push files to the master will have their files made available via minionfs.