Salt Stack is a configuration management system. It allows you to control a big number of computers easily.
To get the latest features, you can install the latest stable Salt Stack on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.
The version packaged in the official 14.04 LTS repositories is very old. Let’s add the repository, so that we can use the latest one.
Let’s get the GPG key
$ wget https://repo.saltstack.com/apt/ubuntu/ubuntu12/latest/SALTSTACK-GPG-KEY.pub
You can check the fingerprint with ‘gpg –with-fingerprint SALTSTACK-GPG-KEY.pub’. The key should have the same fingerprint as when I downloaded it, “754A 1A7A E731 F165 D5E6 D4BD 0E08 A149 DE57 BFBE”.
Add the key to the ring of trusted installers. This creates a new trust relationship. You give the owner of the key the root access to your computer, just like you give root access to software authors when you install any software.
$ sudo apt-key add SALTSTACK-GPG-KEY.pub # new trust relationship
Add the repository.
$ echo "deb http://repo.saltstack.com/apt/ubuntu/ubuntu14/latest trusty main"|sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/saltstack.list $ sudo apt-get update
Now you can install salt stack
$ sudo apt-get -y install salt-master salt-ssh salt-minion
You have now installed salt. You can verify the versions with ‘dpkg –list salt-\*’ and ‘sudo salt-call –version’. The version should be at least 2015.8.1 beryllium.
When you roll out your production network, you might want to stick to a specific version of salt. You can do this by installing a deb file or with apt-get version pinning.