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As a system administrator I’m always on the lookout for new systems and tools to make my life easier. As the saying goes, “a good admin is a lazy admin.” Any day I can find a new tool to improve the efficiency in which I’m able to manage my machines is a good day. To date, my favorite tool for this is Salt Stack. Remote execution. Configuration management. Easy syntax. Salt Stack is a great tool for managing any number of machines. In this post I wanted to outline how to install Salt Stack on Ubuntu LTS.

Installation

The latest Salt Stack packages are available in a PPA. The steps below demonstrate how to add the PPA and install the Salt Stack packages.

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:saltstack/salt

Once the repository has been configured you’ll need to refresh your package cache.

sudo apt-get update

Now you should be ready to install the Salt Stack packages. Salt Stack is broken up into three different packages: salt-master, salt-minion and salt-syndic.

Salt Master

sudo apt-get install salt-master

Salt Minion

sudo apt-get install salt-minion

Salt Syndic

sudo apt-get install salt-syndic

It’s likely that you’ll want one Salt Master and a number of Salt Minions. Salt Syndics are for slightly more advanced configurations.

For more information on using Salt Stack, you might be interested in following the Into The Salt Mine blog.