Digital Ocean Setup

Instructions to create a simple Salt master and Salt minion on CentOS

1. Create Digital Ocean account
2. Spin up two CentOS 7 basic machines ($5/month/each package)

• Pick Toronto DC (if you want)
• In additional options select Private networking

3. SSH into the CentOS machines
4. Install CentOS 7 PY3 salt-master on one, minion on the other (https://repo.saltstack.com/#rhel)
5. Add the salt-master (private) ip and hostname to /etc/hosts on the minion
6. Edit the /etc/minion file on the minion

• Set the master hostname
• Set the id of the minion (eg. salt-minion-01)

7. Start the minion systemctl start salt-minion
8. Accept the minion on the salt master salt-key -A

Syslog server setup

1. Spin up a new CentOS 7 basic machine

• Pick Toronto DC (if you want)
• In additional options select Private networking

2. SSH into the new CentOS syslog machine
3. Edit the syslog config vim /etc/rsyslog.conf
4. Uncomment the listener UDP setting: $ModLoad imtcp $InputTCPServerRun 514

#TODO fix #5, skip for now

5. Right below add:

$template FromIp,"/var/log/%FROMHOST-IP%.log" 
. ?FromIp & ~ 

6. Restart rsyslog systemctl restart rsyslog.service
7. Test the config

• from the salt master (using the server IP): logger --server 10.137.80.209 helloword
• on the syslog server check for 'helloworld' message: tail /var/log/messages

8. Add the salt-master (private) ip and hostname to /etc/hosts
9. Install + configure minion (same as salt-minion-01, with different name)

Setup Salt Master for remote syslog logging

1. On the Salt master edit /srv/salt/master

• Uncomment log_file: udp://loghost:10514 and put your syslog server info eg. log_file: udp://10.137.80.209:514
• Uncomment log_level: warning and change 'warning' to 'info'

2. Restart Salt master process

• pkill salt-master
• salt-master -d

3. Wait a minute for the master to come back up

Setting up states

https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/tutorials/states_pt1.html

1. Edit /etc/salt/master to enable state tree

file_roots:
  base:
    - /srv/salt