Salt has full support for running the Salt Minion on Windows.
There are no plans for the foreseeable future to develop a Salt Master on Windows. For now you must run your Salt Master on a supported operating system to control your Salt Minions on Windows.
Many of the standard Salt modules have been ported to work on Windows and many of the Salt States currently work on Windows, as well.
Salt Minion Windows installers can be found here. The output of md5sum <salt minion exe> should match the contents of the corresponding md5 file.
Latest stable build from the selected branch:
x86: Salt-Minion-2015.8.12-x86-Setup.exe | md5
AMD64: Salt-Minion-2015.8.12-AMD64-Setup.exe | md5
Earlier builds from supported branches
Archived builds from unsupported branches
Note
The installation executable installs dependencies that the Salt minion requires.
The 64bit installer has been tested on Windows 7 64bit and Windows Server 2008R2 64bit. The 32bit installer has been tested on Windows 2003 Server 32bit. Please file a bug report on our GitHub repo if issues for other platforms are found.
The installer asks for 2 bits of information; the master hostname and the minion name. The installer will update the minion config with these options and then start the minion.
The salt-minion service will appear in the Windows Service Manager and can be started and stopped there or with the command line program sc like any other Windows service.
If the minion won't start, try installing the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 x64 SP1 redistributable. Allow all Windows updates to run salt-minion smoothly.
The installer can be run silently by providing the /S option at the command line. The installer also accepts the following options for configuring the Salt Minion silently:
Here's an example of using the silent installer:
Salt-Minion-2015.5.6-Setup-amd64.exe /S /master=yoursaltmaster /minion-name=yourminionname /start-service=0
Notes: - These instructions were tested with Windows Server 2008 R2 - They are generalizable to any version of Windows that supports a salt-minion
Start
> Control Panel
> User Accounts
.Add or remove user accounts
.Create new account
.salt-user
(or a name of your preference) in the New account name
field.Standard user
radio button.Create Account
button.Create a password
link.New password
and Confirm new password
fields, provide
a password (e.g "SuperSecretMinionPassword4Me!").Type a password hint
field, provide appropriate text (e.g. "My Salt Password").Create password
button.Change an Account
window.C:\Salt
).Salt
folder and select Properties
.Security
tab.Edit
button.Add
button.OK
button.Allow
the Modify
permission.OK
button.OK
button to close the Salt Properties
window.salt-minion
Service¶Start
> Administrative Tools
> Services
.salt-minion
and select Properties
.Log On
tab.This account
radio button.OK
button.OK
button to the prompt confirming that the user has been
granted the Log On As A Service right
.OK
button to the prompt confirming that The new logon name
will not take effect until you stop and restart the service
.salt-minion
and select Stop
.salt-minion
and select Start
.This document will explain how to set up a development environment for salt on Windows. The development environment allows you to work with the source code to customize or fix bugs. It will also allow you to build your own installation.
To do this the easy way you only need to install Git for Windows.
Clone the Salt-Windows-Dev repo from github.
Open a command line and type:
git clone https://github.com/saltstack/salt-windows-dev
Build the Python Environment
Go into the salt-windows-dev directory. Right-click the file named dev_env.ps1 and select Run with PowerShell
If you get an error, you may need to change the execution policy.
Open a powershell window and type the following:
Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
This will download and install Python with all the dependencies needed to develop and build salt.
Build the Salt Environment
Right-click on the file named dev_env_salt.ps1 and select Run with Powershell
This will clone salt into C:\Salt-Dev\salt
and set it to the 2015.5
branch. You could optionally run the command from a powershell window with a
-Version
switch to pull a different version. For example:
dev_env_salt.ps1 -Version '2014.7'
To view a list of available branches and tags, open a command prompt in your C:Salt-Devsalt directory and type:
git branch -a
git tag -n
Install the following software:
Download the Prerequisite zip file for your CPU architecture from the SaltStack download site:
These files contain all software required to build and develop salt. Unzip the
contents of the file to C:\Salt-Dev\temp
.
Build the Python Environment
Install Python:
Browse to the C:\Salt-Dev\temp
directory and find the Python
installation file for your CPU Architecture under the corresponding
subfolder. Double-click the file to install python.
Make sure the following are in your PATH environment variable:
C:\Python27
C:\Python27\Scripts
Install Pip
Open a command prompt and navigate to C:\Salt-Dev\temp
Run the following command:
python get-pip.py
Easy Install compiled binaries.
M2Crypto, PyCrypto, and PyWin32 need to be installed using Easy Install.
Open a command prompt and navigate to C:\Salt-Dev\temp\<cpuarch>
.
Run the following commands:
easy_install -Z <M2Crypto file name>
easy_install -Z <PyCrypto file name>
easy_install -Z <PyWin32 file name>
Note
You can type the first part of the file name and then press the tab key to auto-complete the name of the file.
Pip Install Additional Prerequisites
All remaining prerequisites need to be pip installed. These prerequisites are as follow:
Open a command prompt and navigate to C:\Salt-Dev\temp
. Run the following
commands:
pip install <cpuarch>\<MarkupSafe file name>
pip install <Jinja file name>
pip install <cpuarch>\<MsgPack file name>
pip install <cpuarch>\<psutil file name>
pip install <cpuarch>\<PyYAML file name>
pip install <cpuarch>\<pyzmq file name>
pip install <WMI file name>
pip install <requests file name>
pip install <certifi file name>
Build the Salt Environment
Clone Salt
Open a command prompt and navigate to C:\Salt-Dev
. Run the following command
to clone salt:
git clone https://github.com/saltstack/salt
Checkout Branch
Checkout the branch or tag of salt you want to work on or build. Open a
command prompt and navigate to C:\Salt-Dev\salt
. Get a list of
available tags and branches by running the following commands:
git fetch --all
To view a list of available branches:
git branch -a
To view a list of availabel tags:
git tag -n
Checkout the branch or tag by typing the following command:
git checkout <branch/tag name>
Clean the Environment
When switching between branches residual files can be left behind that will interfere with the functionality of salt. Therefore, after you check out the branch you want to work on, type the following commands to clean the salt environment:
There are two ways to develop with salt. You can run salt's setup.py each time you make a change to source code or you can use the setup tools develop mode.
Both methods require that the minion configuration be in the C:\salt
directory. Copy the conf and var directories from C:\Salt-Dev\salt\pkg\
windows\buildenv
to C:\salt
. Now go into the C:\salt\conf
directory
and edit the file name minion
(no extension). You need to configure the
master and id parameters in this file. Edit the following lines:
master: <ip or name of your master>
id: <name of your minion>
Go into the C:\Salt-Dev\salt
directory from a cmd prompt and type:
python setup.py install --force
This will install python into your python installation at C:\Python27
.
Everytime you make an edit to your source code, you'll have to stop the minion,
run the setup, and start the minion.
To start the salt-minion go into C:\Python27\Scripts
from a cmd prompt and
type:
salt-minion
For debug mode type:
salt-minion -l debug
To stop the minion press Ctrl+C.
To use the Setup Tools Develop Mode go into C:\Salt-Dev\salt
from a cmd
prompt and type:
pip install -e .
This will install pointers to your source code that resides at
C:\Salt-Dev\salt
. When you edit your source code you only have to restart
the minion.
This is the method of building the installer as of version 2014.7.4.
Make sure you don't have any leftover salt files from previous versions of salt in your Python directory.
C:\Python27\Scripts
directoryC:\Python27\Lib\site-packages
directoryInstall salt using salt's setup.py. From the C:\Salt-Dev\salt
directory
type the following command:
python setup.py install --force
From cmd prompt go into the C:\Salt-Dev\salt\pkg\windows
directory. Type
the following command for the branch or tag of salt you're building:
BuildSalt.bat <branch or tag>
This will copy python with salt installed to the buildenv\bin
directory,
make it portable, and then create the windows installer . The .exe for the
windows installer will be placed in the installer
directory.
Create the directory C:\salt (if it doesn't exist already)
Copy the example conf
and var
directories from
pkg/windows/buildenv/
into C:\salt
Edit C:\salt\conf\minion
master: ipaddress or hostname of your salt-master
Start the salt-minion
cd C:\Python27\Scripts
python salt-minion
On the salt-master accept the new minion's key
sudo salt-key -A
This accepts all unaccepted keys. If you're concerned about security just accept the key for this specific minion.
Test that your minion is responding
On the salt-master run:
sudo salt '*' test.ping
You should get the following response: {'your minion hostname': True}
On a 64 bit Windows host the following script makes an unattended install of salt, including all dependencies:
Not up to date.
This script is not up to date. Please use the installer found above
# (All in one line.)
"PowerShell (New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadFile('http://csa-net.dk/salt/bootstrap64.bat','C:\bootstrap.bat');(New-Object -com Shell.Application).ShellExecute('C:\bootstrap.bat');"
You can execute the above command remotely from a Linux host using winexe:
winexe -U "administrator" //fqdn "PowerShell (New-Object ......);"
For more info check http://csa-net.dk/salt
On windows Server 2003, you need to install optional component "wmi windows installer provider" to have full list of installed packages. If you don't have this, salt-minion can't report some installed software.