Provides a web based interface to your SaltStack minions to view their state, hardware, software and package information.

Bootstrap, Datatables.net and jQuery are used to create the user interface.

Data about the minions are stored in a MySQL database.

SaltStack events, reactors and a runner are used to keep the data up to date.

Minions only report their state, packages etc. if they have changed. Minions will cache their data's md5sum value to /var/tmp/salt_inventory_audit.cache

• A web server that supports PHP (e.g. Apache)
• A MySQL server
• PHP MySQL support
• A web browser that supports JS and CSS
• a Linux SaltStack master and Linux minions
• MySQL-python module
• pytz python module

Notes:

• if you are using the Python 3 version of SaltStack then you will need to install Python 3 versions of the modules above.
• this software has been developed and tested using Linux hosts. Windows minion support is experimental - pull requests welcome!

If you have are using SaltStack's Onedir installation option, you will need to perform the following steps:

1. Install your operating system's MySQL/MariaDB development libraries, e.g.

sudo dnf install mariadb-devel

2. Install the required Python modules:

sudo salt-pip install configparser
sudo salt-pip install mysqlclient

Create a database, e.g. salt_minion to store the minion information like so:

mysql -u root < database.sql

Create a user for the database:

GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO 'salt_minion'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD 'salt_minion_password';

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `salt\_minion`.* TO 'salt_minion'@'%' WITH GRANT OPTION;

Copy the contents of /srv directory to the /srv directory on your SaltStack master. You may want to exclude the top.sls files from the pillar and salt directories as these are just examples that show how to include the required files.

Create a directory to store the runner on the SaltMaster:

mkdir -p /var/lib/salt/runners

Copy runners/inventory.py and runners/inventory.ini into the directory. Note: change the MySQL variables to match the credentials that you used when creating the database above in inventory.ini.

Edit /etc/salt/master to enable the runner, presence events and reactors for responding to events:

extension_modules: /var/lib/salt

presence_events: True

reactor:
  - 'salt/presence/present':
    - /srv/reactor/inventory/present.sls
  - 'inventory/audit':
    - /srv/reactor/inventory/audit.sls

By default minions will run audit themselves once every six hours. This can be changed by editing /srv/pillar/inventory.sls

Now restart the SaltMaster:

systemctl restart salt-master

Copy the contents of the html directory to a directory on your web server that is being served, e.g. /var/www/html

Create a file in the common folder called dbcreds.php with the following contents (adjusted to match your MySQL database settings):

<?php
define("DB_HOST", "localhost");
define("DB_NAME", "salt_minion");
define("DB_PASS", "salt_minion_password");
define("DB_USER", "salt_minion");
?>

To force a minion to run an audit, run the following command:

salt minion01 inventory.audit force=True

If you experience problems then check the following files:

• /var/log/salt/master
• /var/log/salt/minion

Check the events that are being triggered and the results by watching for events on the Salt master:

salt-run state.event pretty=True

Run the inventory.audit function in debug mode:

salt -l debug '*' inventory.audit force=True

To test which minions have been detected by presence events:

salt-run manage.present

The Last Seen value for a minion is the date/time that a minion was connected to the Salt Master. This is achieved by using Salt Stack's presence events feature.

In comparison the Last Audit value for a minion is the date/time that a minion was last audited by the Salt Minion Inventory. When a new (previously uknown) minion is detected during a presence event a one-off audit will be triggered to add it to the Salt Minion Inventory's database. The frequency of audits is controlled by the /srv/pillar/inventory.sls and is set to six hours by default.

A Docker compose configuration is provided for testing purposes. See tests for further details.

• Neil Munday (@neilmunday)
• David Murray (@dajamu)

The following people have contributed code to the project:

• David Murray (@dajamu)
• @seamus-45

• Salt-Minion-Inventory is licensed under the GPLv3 license
• Bootstrap is licensed under the MIT license
• Datatables.net is licensed under the MIT license
• jQuery is licensed under the MIT license