Salt-cloud Ubuntu Installation (especially for DigitalOcean)

August 15, 2014 · by Kirill · in

Article is a brief step-by-step manual to init salt-cloud.
Ubuntu 14.04, Salt-cloud 2014.1.10 (Hydrogen).

Salt-cloud

Create folder for salt-cloud keys:
sudo mkdir -p /srv/salt/keys

Generate key with empty passphrase, set key file as /srv/salt/keys/digitalocean-salt-cloud:
sudo ssh-keygen -t rsa

Copy and paste key to your DigitalOcean SSH Keys with name digitalocean-salt-cloud.pub:
cat /srv/salt/keys/digitalocean-salt-cloud.pub

Install salt-cloud with dependencies:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:saltstack/salt
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y python-m2crypto python-msgpack python-libcloud python-zmq salt-cloud

Check: salt-cloud --version
Mine, no errors: salt-cloud 2014.1.10 (Hydrogen)

Warning

I’ve noticed salt-cloud creates minion with master: salt in it’s config instead of master: yoursaltcloudhostservername. You have to change it or point salt host to the proper IP.

DigitalOcean

Copy your Client ID and API Key from DigitalOcean Aps & API page.

Edit provider’s config:
sudo vi /etc/salt/cloud.providers.d/digitalocean.conf

Example:

do:
    client_key: <Client ID>
    api_key: <Api Key>
    provider: digital_ocean
    ssh_key_name: digitalocean-salt-cloud.pub
    ssh_key_file: /srv/salt/keys/digitalocean-salt-cloud

Edit profile’s config:
sudo vi /etc/salt/cloud.profiles.d/digitalocean.conf

Example:

ubuntu-14-04-x64-512-ams2:
    provider: do
    image: Ubuntu 14.04 x64
    size: 512MB
    location: Amsterdam 2
    private_networking: True

From now you can create DigitalOcean droplets:
sudo salt-cloud -p ubuntu-14-04-x64-512-ams2 hostnameyouwant

Salt-cloud Sources

Useful but doesn’t work for me as is. Try it for deeper digging:

Salt Master

You will need salt-minion if you are going to manage your salt-cloud host server by salt-master located on the same machine:
sudo apt-get install -y salt-master salt-minion

Point salt-minion to the localhost: add master: localhost to the config sudo vi /etc/salt/minion.d/local.conf, restart salt-minion sudo service salt-minion restart and accept minion key sudo salt-key -a minionkeyname. Minion key name you can get from sudo salt-key -L.

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