Salt Minion Windows installer beta

[David Boucha]

Esteemed Salt community,

We are proud to release our first beta version of a Windows installer for the Salt Minion. It can be downloaded here:

http://saltstack.org/static/downloads/Salt-Minion-0.11.1-Setup.exe

This will install version 0.11.1 of the Minion, so your  Salt Master must be of an equal or greater version.

Salt will be installed to C:\salt. The minion config file is located at "c:\salt\conf\minion" We will work on putting it properly in Program Files as this installer matures.

There are two options you can modify during the install.  The Master hostname  and the Minion Name you wish to give the machine you're installing on.  These default to "master"  and "hostname" respectively. If you leave the minion name as "hostname" or blank, the installer will leave that portion of the config file blank and attempt to use the FQDN of the minion.

The installer will automatically install and start the salt-minion service. Once during testing I had to go to the Windows Service Manager and start the minion. You can also do this from the CLI like this   "sc start salt-minion"

A silent install can be accomplished by passing three parameters to the installer. This can be useful if you use pstools for remote installs.

Salt-Minion-0.11.1-Setup.exe /S /master=yoursaltmaster /minion-name=myawesomeminion

A known issue on Windows Server 2008 is that the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable isn't installed in the correct location. You may have to google vcredist and download and install the correct version for your platform. We hope to have this included in the installer soon.

Please test this installer and Salt on Windows and report back your findings. This installer has been tested pretty heavily on Windows 7 64 bit, but should run on other versions. Windows XP hasn't been tested yet. File bug reports here: https://github.com/saltstack/salt/issues/new    and feel free to ask any questions on this mailing list or in #salt on freenode.

Windows is a full first class citizen in Salt and we hope that this installer will help increase Salt's usage on the Windows platform. We have great plans to fully Salt your Windows infrastructure; from your workstation, to your server room, to your datacenter.

Thank you to the many people who have helped get Salt and this installer working on Windows. As usual, developers from around the world have been extremely helpful, sharing their knowledge, expertise and time.

We can't wait to hear back from the community.

Thanks!

The SaltStack Team.

--

Dave Boucha  |  Sr. Engineer

5272 South College Drive, Suite 301 | Murray, UT 84123
office 801-305-3563
da...@saltstack.com | www.saltstack.com

[Thomas S Hatch]

This is fantastic Dave! I am very excited to see this happening. I would say that the default setting for the master option in the minion config should be salt though, not master, as that is the default setting.

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[David Boucha]

Bah! You're right! I'll fix that default first thing in the morning

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[Mike Dickson]

Did and install and specified a master.   The minion ended up paused in windows services and would not resume.  I'll tinker more later today.  This is Win7 x64.

Mike

[David Boucha]

OK, my email was incorrect. The installer already defaults to the master host name of "salt"  I just misspoke. Sorry for the confusion.

Dave

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[David Boucha]

Mike, could you try installing the vcredist on your system and then trying to start the minion?

Thanks.

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[Mike Dickson]

I already have it. Both x86 and x64.

 

Mike

5272 South College Drive, Suite 301 | Murray, UT 84123
office 801-305-3563
da...@saltstack.com | www.saltstack.com

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--

Dave Boucha  |  Sr. Engineer

 

5272 South College Drive, Suite 301 | Murray, UT 84123
office 801-305-3563
da...@saltstack.com | www.saltstack.com

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[Mike Dickson]

Did a reinstall and it shows started but there is no process and no generated keys or anything in the log

 

Is the git repo current?  I did a update and it shows the last update as a few months ago.

 

Mike

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[David Boucha]

Mike, what version is your Salt Master?

[Mike Dickson]

1.11.1-1-el6

 

Running on CentOS6

5272 South College Drive, Suite 301 | Murray, UT 84123
office 801-305-3563
da...@saltstack.com | www.saltstack.com

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--

Dave Boucha  |  Sr. Engineer

 

5272 South College Drive, Suite 301 | Murray, UT 84123
office 801-305-3563
da...@saltstack.com | www.saltstack.com

--
 
 

[Jeffrey Ollie]

On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 10:18 PM, David Boucha <da...@saltstack.com> wrote:

Esteemed Salt community,

We are proud to release our first beta version of a Windows installer for the Salt Minion. It can be downloaded here:

http://saltstack.org/static/downloads/Salt-Minion-0.11.1-Setup.exe

This will install version 0.11.1 of the Minion, so your  Salt Master must be of an equal or greater version.

Salt will be installed to C:\salt. The minion config file is located at "c:\salt\conf\minion" We will work on putting it properly in Program Files as this installer matures.

Thanks for making it so easy to install Salt on a Windows box.  However, I noticed a couple of issues.  First, this seems to actually install version 0.11.0, or at least that's what the minion thinks it's version number is.  Second, the PyZMQ and ZeroMQ installs seem a bit old, version 2.1.0.  Is there a reason for not using version 3 of ZeroMQ?

--
Jeff Ollie

[David Boucha]

Good point I'll look at upgrading those versions.

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[Mike Dickson]

Is the installer code checked in somewhere?  I’d like to try and build one from scratch.  The stuff in git seems to be about 7 months old.

 

Mike

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[David Boucha]

It's in the main salt repo in salt/pkg/windows

I need to upload some complete docs on how to build the installer.

Basically you need to get salt running on your machine using the manual instructions.

Follow the instructions here to get a frozen build: http://docs.saltstack.org/en/latest/topics/tutorials/esky.html

Then extract the resulting file to the buildenv folder.  

Then you should be able to use the NSIS installer compiler to build your installer.

Let me know if you run into any issues and especially if you have any suggestions or fixes.

Thanks!

Dave

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[Les Mikesell]

On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 3:36 PM, David Boucha <da...@saltstack.com> wrote:
>
> Good point I'll look at upgrading those versions.
>

I installed on 64-bit win2003 server. The service appeared to start
and sent a key to the master but would not respond to a test.ping.
If I stop the service and restart manually like:
salt-minion --log-level=debug -c C:\salt\conf
it works, but seems very slow - like 4 seconds to respond to
test.ping. Master is 11.1 on CentOS 6.3.

--
Les Mikesell
lesmi...@gmail.com

[David Boucha]

Yeah, the minion on windows is a little slower than on Linux. We still have some optimizations to make.

Can you try running   "sc start salt-minion"  from a cli with administrator privileges?

--
   Les Mikesell
     lesmi...@gmail.com

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[Les Mikesell]

On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 5:20 PM, David Boucha <da...@saltstack.com> wrote:
>
> Yeah, the minion on windows is a little slower than on Linux. We still have some optimizations to make.
>
> Can you try running "sc start salt-minion" from a cli with administrator privileges?

It goes through the motions but won't respond to the master. And it
seems to be restarting but I can't see an error. I set logging to
debug and got this:

2013-01-04 15:46:08,193 [salt ][WARNING ] Setting up the
Salt Minion "vm1-w2k-64-bld-test"
2013-01-04 15:46:08,193 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] loading grain in
['c:\\salt\\var\\cache\\salt\\minion\\extmods\\grains',
'c:\\salt\\salt-0.11.0.win-amd64\\salt-0.11.0-py2.7.egg\\salt\\grains']
2013-01-04 15:46:08,490 [salt.minion ][DEBUG ] Attempting to
authenticate with the Salt Master at 172.22.181.29
2013-01-04 15:46:08,490 [salt.crypt ][DEBUG ] Loaded minion
key: c:\salt\conf\pki\minion\minion.pem
2013-01-04 15:46:09,147 [salt.crypt ][DEBUG ] Decrypting the
current master AES key
2013-01-04 15:46:09,147 [salt.crypt ][DEBUG ] Loaded minion
key: c:\salt\conf\pki\minion\minion.pem
2013-01-04 15:46:09,209 [salt.minion ][INFO ] Authentication
with master successful!
2013-01-04 15:46:09,225 [salt.crypt ][DEBUG ] Loaded minion
key: c:\salt\conf\pki\minion\minion.pem
2013-01-04 15:46:09,600 [salt.crypt ][DEBUG ] Decrypting the
current master AES key
2013-01-04 15:46:09,600 [salt.crypt ][DEBUG ] Loaded minion
key: c:\salt\conf\pki\minion\minion.pem
2013-01-04 15:46:09,865 [salt.crypt ][DEBUG ] Loaded minion
key: c:\salt\conf\pki\minion\minion.pem
2013-01-04 15:46:09,897 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] loading grain in
['c:\\salt\\var\\cache\\salt\\minion\\extmods\\grains',
'c:\\salt\\salt-0.11.0.win-amd64\\salt-0.11.0-py2.7.egg\\salt\\grains']
2013-01-04 15:46:10,131 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] loading module
in ['c:\\salt\\var\\cache\\salt\\minion\\extmods\\modules',
'c:\\salt\\salt-0.11.0.win-amd64\\salt-0.11.0-py2.7.egg\\salt\\modules']
2013-01-04 15:46:10,131 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] Skipping
c:\salt\var\cache\salt\minion\extmods\modules, it is not a directory
2013-01-04 15:46:10,162 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] Failed to import
module postgres, this is most likely NOT a problem: No module named
pipes
2013-01-04 15:46:10,318 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] Failed to import
module kvm_hyper, this is most likely NOT a problem: No module named
dom
2013-01-04 15:46:10,334 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] Failed to import
module virt, this is most likely NOT a problem: No module named dom
2013-01-04 15:46:10,443 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] Loaded
win_shadow as virtual shadow
2013-01-04 15:46:10,443 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] Loaded win_disk
as virtual disk
2013-01-04 15:46:10,443 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] Loaded
win_status as virtual status
2013-01-04 15:46:10,459 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] Loaded
win_network as virtual network
2013-01-04 15:46:10,459 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] Loaded win_pkg
as virtual pkg
2013-01-04 15:46:10,459 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] Loaded cmdmod as
virtual cmd
2013-01-04 15:46:10,459 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] Loaded win_file
as virtual file
2013-01-04 15:46:10,475 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] Loaded
win_groupadd as virtual group
2013-01-04 15:46:10,475 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] Loaded djangomod
as virtual django
2013-01-04 15:46:10,475 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] Loaded
win_service as virtual service
2013-01-04 15:46:10,475 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] Loaded
win_useradd as virtual user
2013-01-04 15:46:10,475 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] loading returner
in ['c:\\salt\\var\\cache\\salt\\minion\\extmods\\returners',
'c:\\salt\\salt-0.11.0.win-amd64\\salt-0.11.0-py2.7.egg\\salt\\returners']
2013-01-04 15:46:10,475 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] Skipping
c:\salt\var\cache\salt\minion\extmods\returners, it is not a directory
2013-01-04 15:46:10,506 [salt.loader ][DEBUG ] Failed to import
module syslog_return, this is most likely NOT a problem: No module
named syslog
2013-01-04 15:46:10,537 [salt.utils.process][DEBUG ] Created
pidfile: c:\salt\var\run\salt-minion.pid
2013-01-04 15:46:11,303 [salt ][WARNING ] Setting up the
Salt Minion "vm1-w2k-64-bld-test"

and it keeps repeating...

--
Les Mikesell
lesmi...@gmail.com

[David Boucha]

Try uncommenting the multiprocessing option in your minion config and set it to False

multiprocessing: False

I haven't had to do that in a while, but I did just a few minutes ago. Worth a try.

--
    Les Mikesell
       lesmi...@gmail.com

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[Mike Dickson]

I needed to do that as well to get things functional.  I had been playing with the esky build recently but never got it to work. It hung after creating the certs but before talking to the master. So perhaps that’s what others are seeing as well.  I’d love to see this working that way. I could spin updates rather easily that way.

 

Mike

 

From: salt-...@googlegroups.com [mailto:salt-...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of David Boucha
Sent: Friday, January 04, 2013 7:32 PM
To: salt-...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [salt-users] Salt Minion Windows installer beta

 

Try uncommenting the multiprocessing option in your minion config and set it to False

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[Les Mikesell]

On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 6:31 PM, David Boucha <da...@saltstack.com> wrote:
>
> Try uncommenting the multiprocessing option in your minion config and set it to False
>
> multiprocessing: False
>
> I haven't had to do that in a while, but I did just a few minutes ago. Worth a try.
>

Didn't help. Nor did starting over with the 64 bit installer.
Starting with 'sc start salt-minion' will send the key to the master
but not accept any commands. If I stop the service and run
'salt-minion -c C:\salt\conf' from the command line it will respond to
the master.

--
Les Mikesell
lesmi...@gmail.com