Install in air-gapped environments#

The Salt Project provides a public repository for packages at the Salt Project Package Repo.

The preferred method for installing Salt is using distribution packages. This method ensures that:

  • All dependencies are met.
  • Salt is installed in a tested and distribution-aligned way.

Note

Salt is often distributed in split packages, but only the salt-master and salt-minion packages are required for Salt to function.

About air-gapped installations#

To install Salt in an air-gapped environment, you can create a local mirror of the Salt Project repository using an s3 API compatible sync tool such as the aws-cli or rclone.

Be aware that the Salt Project uses a custom endpoint to make it easier to switch buckets easily.

Also note that rclone may warn about the time being out of sync. You can safely ignore these warning messages. The warning message is caused because Salt Project uses CloudFront as a cache instead of using s3 directly. Please sync no more than once per day.

Create a local mirror with rclone#

To set up a local mirror with rclone:

  1. In the rclone command line, adapt this example:

    RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_TYPE=s3 RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_PROVIDER=Other RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_ENV_AUTH=false RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_ENDPOINT=https://s3.repo.saltproject.io rclone sync --fast-list --use-server-modtime -v s3:s3/ ./fullrepo/

    Note

    On behalf of the Salt Project, include the –use-server-modtime flags to help us drastically reduce our costs.

  2. (Optional): If you can’t use the –use-server-modtime flag because your version of rclone` is too old, you can use the -c flag instead:

    RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_TYPE=s3 RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_PROVIDER=Other RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_ENV_AUTH=false RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_ENDPOINT=https://s3.repo.saltproject.io rclone sync --fast-list -c -v s3:s3/ ./fullrepo/

    Tip

    Only sync once per day.

Create a local mirror with aws-cli#

To set up a local mirror with aws-cli:

  1. In the aws-cli command line, adapt this example:

    aws --no-sign-request --endpoint-url https://s3.repo.saltproject.io s3 sync --delete --exact-timestamps s3://s3/ ./fullrepo/

  2. To sync the local mirror, use https://s3.archive.repo.saltproject.io as the endpoint URL.

    Tip

    Only sync once per day.