saltstack/salt

.. _release-2015-5-0:

==============================================
Salt 2015.5.0 Release Notes - Codename Lithium
==============================================

The 2015.5.0 feature release of Salt is focused on hardening Salt and mostly
on improving existing systems. A few major additions are present, primarily
the new Beacon system. Most enhancements have been focused around improving
existing features and interfaces.

As usual the release notes are not exhaustive and primarily include the most
notable additions and improvements. Hundreds of bugs have been fixed and many
modules have been substantially updated and added.

.. warning::

    In order to fix potential shell injection vulnerabilities in salt modules,
    a change has been made to the various ``cmd`` module functions. These
    functions now default to ``python_shell=False``, which means that the
    commands will not be sent to an actual shell.

    The largest side effect of this change is that "shellisms", such as pipes,
    will not work by default. The modules shipped with salt have been audited
    to fix any issues that might have arisen from this change.  Additionally,
    the ``cmd`` state module has been unaffected, and use of ``cmd.run`` in
    jinja is also unaffected. ``cmd.run`` calls on the CLI will also allow
    shellisms.

    However, custom execution modules which use shellisms in ``cmd`` calls
    will break, unless you pass ``python_shell=True`` to these calls.

    As a temporary workaround, you can set ``cmd_safe: False`` in your minion
    and master configs. This will revert the default, but is also less secure,
    as it will allow shell injection vulnerabilities to be written in custom
    code. We recommend you only set this setting for as long as it takes to
    resolve these issues in your custom code, then remove the override.


.. note::

    Starting in this version of salt, ``pillar_opts`` defaults to False instead
    of True. This means that master opts will not be present in minion pillar,
    and as a result, ``config.get`` calls will not include master opts.

    We recommend pillar is used for configuration options which need to make it
    to the minion.


Beacons
=======

The beacon system allows the minion to hook into system processes and
continually translate external events into the salt event bus. The primary
example of this is the :py:mod:`~salt.beacons.inotify` beacon. This beacon uses
inotify to watch configured files or directories on the minion for changes,
creation, deletion etc.

This allows for the changes to be sent up to the master where the reactor can
respond to changes.

Sudo Minion Settings
====================

It is now possible to run the minion as a non-root user and for the minion to
execute commands via sudo. Simply add `sudo_user: root` to the minion config,
run the minion as a non-root user and grant that user sudo rights to execute
salt-call.

Lazy Loader
===========

The Lazy Loader is a significant overhaul of Salt's module loader system. The
Lazy Loader will lazily load modules on access instead of all on start. In
addition to a major performance improvement, this "sandboxes" modules so a
bad/broken import of a single module will only affect jobs that require
accessing the broken module. (:issue: `20274`)

Enhanced Active Directory Support
=================================

The eauth system for LDAP has been extended to support Microsoft Active
Directory out of the box. This includes Active Directory and LDAP group support
for eauth.

Salt LXC Enhancements
=====================

The LXC systems have been overhauled to be more consistent and to fix many
bugs.

This overhaul makes using LXC with Salt much easier and substantially improves
the underlying capabilities of Salt's LXC integration.

Salt SSH
========

- Additional configuration options and command line flags have been added to
  configure the scan roster on the fly

- Added support for ``state.single`` in ``salt-ssh``

- Added support for ``publish.publish``, ``publish.full_data``, and
  ``publish.runner`` in ``salt-ssh``

- Added support for ``mine.get`` in ``salt-ssh``

New Windows Installer
=====================

The new Windows installer changes how Salt is installed on Windows.
The old installer used bbfreeze to create an isolated python environment to
execute in. This made adding modules and python libraries difficult. The new
installer sets up a more flexible python environment making it easy to manage
the python install and add python modules.

Instead of frozen packages, a full python implementation resides in the bin
directory (``C:\salt\bin``). By executing pip or easy_install from within the
Scripts directory (``C:\salt\bin\Scripts``) you can install any additional
python modules you may need for your custom environment.

The .exe's that once resided at the root of the salt directory (``C:\salt``)
have been replaced by .bat files and should function the same way as the .exe's
in previous versions.

The new Windows Installer will not replace the minion config file and key if
they already exist on the target system. Only the salt program files will be
replaced. ``C:\salt\conf`` and ``C:\salt\var`` will remain unchanged.

Removed Requests Dependency
===========================

The hard dependency on the requests library has been removed. Requests is still
required by a number of cloud modules but is no longer required for normal Salt
operations.

This removal fixes issues that were introduced with requests and salt-ssh, as
well as issues users experienced from the many different packaging methods used
by requests package maintainers.

Python 3 Updates
================

While Salt does not YET run on Python 3 it has been updated to INSTALL on
Python 3, taking us one step closer. What remains is getting the test suite to
the point where it can run on Python 3 so that we can verify compatibility.

RAET Additions
==============

The RAET support continues to improve. RAET now supports multi-master and many
bugs and performance issues have been fixed. RAET is much closer to being a
first class citizen.

Modified File Detection
=======================

A number of functions have been added to the RPM-based package managers to
detect and diff files that are modified from the original package installs.
This can be found in the new pkg.modified functions.

Reactor Update
==============

Fix an infinite recursion problem for runner/wheel reactor jobs by passing a
"user" (Reactor) to all jobs that the reactor starts. The reactor skips all
events created by that username -- thereby only reacting to events not caused
by itself. Because of this, runner and wheel executions from the runner will
have user "Reactor" in the job cache.

Misc Fixes/Additions
====================

- SDB driver for etcd. (:issue: `22043`)

- Add ``only_upgrade`` argument to apt-based ``pkg.install`` to only install a
  package version if the package is already installed. (Great for security
  updates!)

- Joyent now requires a ``keyname`` to be specified in the provider
  configuration. This change was necessitated upstream by the 7.0+ API.

- Add ``args`` argument to ``cmd.script_retcode`` to match ``cmd.script`` in
  the :py:mod:`cmd module <salt.cmd.cmdmod>`. (:issue: `21122`)

- Fixed bug where TCP keepalive was not being sent on the defined interval on
  the return port (4506) from minion to master. (:issue: `21465`)

- LocalClient may now optionally raise SaltClientError exceptions. If using
  this class directly, checking for and handling this exception is recommended.
  (:issue: `21501`)

- The SAuth object is now a singleton, meaning authentication state is global
  (per master) on each minion. This reduces sign-ins of minions from 3->1 per
  startup.

- Nested outputter has been optimized, it is now much faster.

- Extensive fileserver backend updates.

Deprecations
============

- Removed ``parameter`` keyword argument from ``eselect.exec_action`` execution
  module.

- Removed ``runas`` parameter from the following ``pip``` execution module
  functions: ``install``, ``uninstall``, ``freeze``, ``list_``,
  ``list_upgrades``, ``upgrade_available``, ``upgrade``. Please migrate to
  ``user``.

- Removed ``runas`` parameter from the following ``pip`` state module
  functions: ``installed``, ``removed``, ``uptodate`` . Please migrate to
  ``user``.

- Removed ``quiet`` option from all functions in ``cmdmod`` execution module.
  Please use ``output_loglevel=quiet`` instead.

- Removed ``parameter`` argument from ``eselect.set_`` state. Please migrate to
  ``module_parameter`` or ``action_parameter``.

- The ``salt_events`` table schema has changed to include an additional field
  called ``master_id`` to distinguish between events flowing into a database
  from multiple masters. If ``event_return`` is enabled in the master config,
  the database schema must first be updated to add the ``master_id`` field.
  This alteration can be accomplished as follows:

    ``ALTER TABLE salt_events ADD master_id VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL;``

Known Issues
============

- In multi-master mode, a minion may become temporarily unresponsive if modules
  or pillars are refreshed at the same time that one or more masters are down.
  This can be worked around by setting 'auth_timeout' and 'auth_tries' down to
  shorter periods.