salt.states.augeas

Configuration management using Augeas

New in version 0.17.0.

This state requires the augeas Python module.

Augeas can be used to manage configuration files.

Warning

Minimal installations of Debian and Ubuntu have been seen to have packaging bugs with python-augeas, causing the augeas module to fail to import. If the minion has the augeas module installed, and the state fails with a comment saying that the state is unavailable, first restart the salt-minion service. If the problem persists past that, the following command can be run from the master to determine what is causing the import to fail:

salt minion-id cmd.run 'python -c "from augeas import Augeas"'

For affected Debian/Ubuntu hosts, installing libpython2.7 has been known to resolve the issue.

salt.states.augeas.change(name, context=None, changes=None, lens=None, **kwargs)

New in version 2014.7.0.

This state replaces setvalue().

Issue changes to Augeas, optionally for a specific context, with a specific lens.

name
State name
context

The context to use. Set this to a file path, prefixed by /files, to avoid redundancy, e.g.:

redis-conf:
  augeas.change:
    - context: /files/etc/redis/redis.conf
    - changes:
      - set bind 0.0.0.0
      - set maxmemory 1G
changes
List of changes that are issued to Augeas. Available commands are set, mv/move, ins/insert, and rm/remove.
lens
The lens to use, needs to be suffixed with .lns, e.g.: Nginx.lns. See the list of stock lenses shipped with Augeas.

Usage examples:

Set the bind parameter in /etc/redis/redis.conf:

redis-conf:
  augeas.change:
    - changes:
      - set /files/etc/redis/redis.conf/bind 0.0.0.0

Note

Use the context parameter to specify the file you want to manipulate. This way you don't have to include this in the changes every time:

redis-conf:
  augeas.change:
    - context: /files/etc/redis/redis.conf
    - changes:
      - set bind 0.0.0.0
      - set databases 4
      - set maxmemory 1G

Augeas is aware of a lot of common configuration files and their syntax. It knows the difference between for example ini and yaml files, but also files with very specific syntax, like the hosts file. This is done with lenses, which provide mappings between the Augeas tree and the file.

There are many preconfigured lenses that come with Augeas by default, and they specify the common locations for configuration files. So most of the time Augeas will know how to manipulate a file. In the event that you need to manipulate a file that Augeas doesn't know about, you can specify the lens to use like this:

redis-conf:
  augeas.change:
    - lens: redis
    - context: /files/etc/redis/redis.conf
    - changes:
      - set bind 0.0.0.0

Note

Even though Augeas knows that /etc/redis/redis.conf is a Redis configuration file and knows how to parse it, it is recommended to specify the lens anyway. This is because by default, Augeas loads all known lenses and their associated file paths. All these files are parsed when Augeas is loaded, which can take some time. When specifying a lens, Augeas is loaded with only that lens, which speeds things up quite a bit.

A more complex example, this adds an entry to the services file for Zabbix, and removes an obsolete service:

zabbix-service:
  augeas.change:
    - lens: services
    - context: /files/etc/services
    - changes:
      - ins service-name after service-name[last()]
      - set service-name[last()] zabbix-agent
      - set service-name[. = 'zabbix-agent']/#comment "Zabbix Agent service"
      - set service-name[. = 'zabbix-agent']/port 10050
      - set service-name[. = 'zabbix-agent']/protocol tcp
      - rm service-name[. = 'im-obsolete']
    - unless: grep "zabbix-agent" /etc/services

Warning

Don't forget the unless here, otherwise a new entry will be added every time this state is run.