Salt Essentials

Chapter 9. Topology and Configuration Options

The majority of this book has focused on the various ways to use and extend Salt using a single master controlling multiple minions. But there are other configurations that give you a great deal of flexibility. Before getting into different topologies, let’s look at some of the options in the master configuration.

Master Configuration

The configuration for the master has many options. However, this book is not meant to cover every one in detail. There are a few options in particular that you need to understand when learning to use Salt.

Directories and Files

Over the previous chapters, we have mentioned various directories used on the master. These directories were necessary to understand in order to extend Salt itself. There are a few other directories that, most likely, you will not need to modify, but it is important to know of them and roughly what they do (see Table 9-1).

Table 9-1. Additional directories used on the master

Option key	Summary
root_dir	The base directory that is prepended to most other directories.
pki_dir	The directory that contains all of the minion and master keys. Since it contains both private and public keys, be careful of the permissions.
cachedir	The directory where the job data is stored.
sock_dir	The location of the sockets that Salt uses in its communication channels.
log_file	The location of the master’s log.

There are a few scenarios where you may want to detour from the defaults—for ...