Agentless Salt for Windows

NOTE: This is an archived repository! Agentless Salt for Windows was originally created for SaltStack Enterprise customers and has not been updated since 2017. This repository is being open sourced, but the project is not supported at this time. Feel free to fork and make use of the code in accordance with the LICENSE file.

About

The Agentless Windows Module can run any Salt SSH command on a target Windows server or desktop, such as the following:

salt-ssh testwin disk.usage

Requirements

Target Windows systems

• English version of Windows
• Windows versions:
  • Windows 7
  • Windows 8.1
  • Windows 10
  • Windows Server 2008 R2
  • Windows Server 2012 R2
  • Windows Server 2016
• Powershell 3.0 or later
• WinRM must be configured and running

Winrm must be set up and configured on the Windows machine to run https on port 5986. The Windows firewall also must be set up to allow inbound port 5986.

A convenience script is available in enable_winrm.ps1.

Salt master

• The /etc/salt/roster file must have a configuration section for every Windows machine you want to connect to. The configuration must have a local admin user and password for each machine, as in the following example.

win2012dev: # Minion ID
  host: <IP address or hostname>
  user: <local Windows admin username>
  passwd: <password for the admin user>
  winrm: True

NOTE: Domain credentials are not supported.

• Python 2 must be installed on the Salt master. The salt-ssh module for Windows is supported only on Python 2, not later versions.
• pip for Python 2 must be installed.

CentOS

To install pip for Python 2 on CentOS:

yum install epel-release -y
yum install python-pip
pip install -U setuptools

Ubuntu

To install pip for Python 2 on Ubuntu:

apt-get install python-pip

Installation instructions

Download the latest release onto your Salt Master:

https://github.com/saltstack/saltwinshell/releases/download/v2017.7/saltwinshell-2017.7-cp27-cp27mu-linux_x86_64.whl

Install on your working Salt Master:

pip install -U ./saltwinshell-2017.7-cp27-cp27mu-linux_x86_64.whl

Once winrm is configured and running on your Windows system(s), you should be able to start using salt-ssh against them.

salt-ssh <minion id> test.ping

The first time you run salt-ssh against a Windows minion it will take a bit longer than usual since it has to deploy a working Salt python environment. Subsequent runs should be much faster.

The shell libraries for agentless Windows to work via salt-ssh, installing this library activates the ability to hit windows targets.

Release process

• Create a new branch:

git checkout -b <new branch name>

• Make updates.
• Create a tag:

git tag -a v2018.3 -m "Version v2018.3 release" -s
git push origin 2018.3
git push --tags

• Copy in your python environment zip files to the root. Make sure they match what the setup.py is expecting.

• Run the following:

  python setup.py bdist_wheel
  

  The file you want will be found in the dist directory and will look something like:

  saltwinshell-2017.7-cp27-cp27mu-linux_x86_64.whl
  

• Upload .whl file as a new release on GitHub