Tag Archives: salt

salt stack file_tree.py

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So in my version of salt, v2017.7.4 (Nitrogen), I was getting this error when I tried to use the file_tree ext_pillar:

Failed to load ext_pillar file_tree: must be str, not bytes

So I monkey patched my version of /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/salt/pillar/file_tree.py, changing the file from binary to text:

            contents = ''
            try:
                # 2020-05-15 jj5 - changed 'rb' to 'r', will only work with text files...
                with salt.utils.fopen(file_path, 'r') as fhr:
                    buf = fhr.read(__opts__['file_buffer_size'])
                    while buf:
                        contents += buf
                        buf = fhr.read(__opts__['file_buffer_size'])
                    if contents.endswith('\n') \
                            and _check_newline(prefix,
                                               file_name,
                                               keep_newline):
                        contents = contents[:-1]

Salt file.recurse source file not found (file encoding issue)

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So I was running this:

/var/www/jj-web-1-www.jj5.net-sixsigma:
  file.recurse:
    - clean: True
    - user: root
    - group: root
    - dir_mode: 755
    - file_mode: 644
    - source: salt://inst/mediawiki-1.29
    - require:
      - pkg: apache2

And getting an error like this:

----------
          ID: /var/www/jj-web-1-www.jj5.net-sixsigma
    Function: file.recurse
      Result: False
     Comment: #### /var/www/jj-web-1-www.jj5.net-sixsigma/vendor/james-heinrich/getid3/getid3/module.audio.ac3.php ####
              Source file 'salt://inst/mediawiki-1.29/vendor/james-heinrich/getid3/getid3/module.audio.ac3.php?saltenv=base' not found

              #### /var/www/jj-web-1-www.jj5.net-sixsigma/vendor/james-heinrich/getid3/getid3/module.audio-video.mpeg.php ####
              Source file 'salt://inst/mediawiki-1.29/vendor/james-heinrich/getid3/getid3/module.audio-video.mpeg.php?saltenv=base' not found
     Started: 14:27:18.352264
    Duration: 134735.945 ms
     Changes:
----------

The issue was that the source files mentioned weren’t in UTF-8 format. To convert the files I ran, e.g.:

$ iconv -f WINDOWS-1252 -t UTF-8//TRANSLIT < module.audio-video.mpeg.php.bak > module.audio-video.mpeg.php

(Actually I couldn’t get the ‘iconv’ command to work so I edited manually in Vim)

Debugging JINJA in Salt Stack

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So I was trying to figure out how to report the template source file within the template itself and I found myself wanting to know what was available in the JINJA globals for a Salt Stack JINJA template.

Turns out you use the show_full_context() function, like this:

Context is: {{ show_full_context() }}

You can parse the output to see what top-level items are available. In my case I found the ‘source’ setting for the JINJA template in use.

Hot tip: if you’re using Vim to inspect the show_full_context() output, try using ‘%’ or ‘]}’ to move between matching braces.

Bonus: while I was learning about reporting the JINJA context I discovered that you can call Salt functions from JINJA templates, like this:

# The following two function calls are equivalent.
{{ salt['cmd.run']('whoami') }}
{{ salt.cmd.run('whoami') }}