2.2.7. RHEL / CentOS / Scientific Linux / Amazon Linux / Oracle Linux

2.2.7.1. Installation Using pip

Since Salt is on PyPI, it can be installed using pip, though most users prefer to install using RPMs (which can be installed from EPEL). Installation from pip is easy:

pip install salt

Warning

If installing from pip (or from source using setup.py install), be advised that the yum-utils package is needed for Salt to manage packages. Also, if the Python dependencies are not already installed, then you will need additional libraries/tools installed to build some of them. More information on this can be found here.

2.2.7.2. Installation from EPEL

Beginning with version 0.9.4, Salt has been available in EPEL. It is installable using yum. Salt should work properly with all mainstream derivatives of RHEL, including CentOS, Scientific Linux, Oracle Linux and Amazon Linux. Report any bugs or issues on the issue tracker.

On RHEL6, the proper Jinja package 'python-jinja2' was moved from EPEL to the "RHEL Server Optional Channel". Verify this repository is enabled before installing salt on RHEL6.

2.2.7.2.1. Enabling EPEL on RHEL

If EPEL is not enabled on your system, you can use the following commands to enable it.

For RHEL 5:

rpm -Uvh http://mirror.pnl.gov/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm

For RHEL 6:

rpm -Uvh http://ftp.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

2.2.7.2.2. Installing Stable Release

Salt is packaged separately for the minion and the master. It is necessary only to install the appropriate package for the role the machine will play. Typically, there will be one master and multiple minions.

On the salt-master, run this:

yum install salt-master

On each salt-minion, run this:

yum install salt-minion

2.2.7.2.3. Installing from epel-testing

When a new Salt release is packaged, it is first admitted into the epel-testing repository, before being moved to the stable repo.

To install from epel-testing, use the enablerepo argument for yum:

yum --enablerepo=epel-testing install salt-minion

2.2.7.3. ZeroMQ 4

We recommend using ZeroMQ 4 where available. SaltStack provides ZeroMQ 4.0.4 and pyzmq 14.3.1 in a COPR repository. Instructions for adding this repository (as well as for upgrading ZeroMQ and pyzmq on existing minions) can be found here.

If this repo is added before Salt is installed, then installing either salt-master or salt-minion will automatically pull in ZeroMQ 4.0.4, and additional states to upgrade ZeroMQ and pyzmq are unnecessary.

2.2.7.4. Package Management

Salt's interface to yum makes heavy use of the repoquery utility, from the yum-utils package. This package will be installed as a dependency if salt is installed via EPEL. However, if salt has been installed using pip, or a host is being managed using salt-ssh, then as of version 2014.7.0 yum-utils will be installed automatically to satisfy this dependency.

2.2.7.5. Post-installation tasks

Master

To have the Master start automatically at boot time:

chkconfig salt-master on

To start the Master:

service salt-master start

Minion

To have the Minion start automatically at boot time:

chkconfig salt-minion on

To start the Minion:

service salt-minion start

Now go to the Configuring Salt page.