Installing Salt.Box Client

caution

The Salt.Box v0.0.1 distribution uses SaltStack 3006.9 LTS components.
This SaltStack release is a long-term support release.
This means that the release will be supported for a longer period than regular versions.
It is understood that during this period, updates will be released that include security fixes and critical bug fixes, but not new features that may break compatibility.

To ensure full compatibility of the Salt Minion client, use the client of the same version on managed devices - 3006.9 LTS.

Installing on Linux

Install RPM

1. Run the following command to install the Salt Project repository:

   curl -fsSL https://github.com/saltstack/salt-install-guide/releases/latest/download/salt.repo | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/salt.repo
   note

   Because of the presence of classic packages of Salt in EPEL, it’s possible that when you download the package from EPEL, it instead downloads classic packages of older versions of Salt instead of the onedir packages.

   During depsolving, when choosing the best provider among several, dnf respects the priority of each provider’s repository. The value is an integer from 1 to 99, with 1 being the most preferred repository and 99 the least preferred. By default all repositories have the priority of 80.

   EPEL was treating the Salt repository as 99. To resolve this issue, Salt has changed its priority level to 10 for RHEL 8 and 9.

2. Run to clear the repository metadata:

   sudo dnf clean expire-cache

3. Install the salt-minion package:

   caution

   STS releases are not recommended for Production.
   Salt Project recommends deploying LTS releases for Production environments.

   3006 LTS

   Install the package:

   sudo dnf install salt-minion

   If wanting to install by a target point release, append the specific Salt full release version.
   For example:

   sudo dnf install salt-minion-3006.9

   dnf versionlock can be used to pin to minor versions, if wanting to be excluded during dnf upgrade runs on a system.

   sudo dnf install 'dnf-command(versionlock)'

   sudo dnf versionlock add salt-minion

   3007 STS

   If users would like to restrict their installs to the Salt 3007 STS point releases, these install steps include enabling Salt 3007 STS release downloads.

   # Enable the Salt 3007 STS repo
   sudo dnf config-manager --set-disable salt-repo-*
   sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled salt-repo-3007-sts

   Install the package:

   sudo dnf install salt-minion

   If wanting to install by a target point release, append the specific Salt full release version.
   For example:

   sudo dnf install salt-minion-3007.5

   dnf versionlock can be used to pin to minor versions, if wanting to be excluded during dnf upgrade runs on a system.

   sudo dnf install 'dnf-command(versionlock)'

   sudo dnf versionlock add salt-minion

   LATEST Available

   If users would like to leave installs to come from either LTS or STS, whichever major version is latest.

   # Enable the Salt LATEST repo
   sudo dnf config-manager --set-disable salt-repo-*
   sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled salt-repo-latest

   Install the package:

   sudo dnf install salt-minion

   If wanting to install by a target point release, append the specific Salt full release version. For example:

   sudo dnf install salt-minion-3007.5

   dnf versionlock can be used to pin to minor versions, if wanting to be excluded during dnf upgrade runs on a system.

   sudo dnf install 'dnf-command(versionlock)'

   sudo dnf versionlock add salt-minion

4. Enable and start the salt-minion service:

   sudo systemctl enable salt-minion && sudo systemctl start salt-minion
   note

   When you install a onedir version of Salt (3006 and later), Salt installs its own local version of Python and the dependencies needed for the core functionality of Salt.

   After installing a onedir verison of Salt, your system has both a global version of Python at the system level and a local version of Python used by Salt.
   This architecture change means that the Salt onedir paths for Python are different and you need to change how you install third-party Python dependencies that you use with Salt, including your state files.
   See Install dependencies for more information.

Install DEB

1. Run the following command to install the Salt Project repository:

   # Ensure keyrings dir exists
   mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings
   # Download public key
   curl -fsSL https://packages.broadcom.com/artifactory/api/security/keypair/SaltProjectKey/public | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/salt-archive-keyring.pgp
   # Create apt repo target configuration
   curl -fsSL https://github.com/saltstack/salt-install-guide/releases/latest/download/salt.sources | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/salt.sources

2. Run to update metadata:

   sudo apt update

3. Install the salt-minion package:

   caution

   STS releases are not recommended for Production. Salt Project recommends deploying LTS releases for Production environments.

   3006 LTS

   Populate /etc/apt/preferences.d/salt-pin-1001 in order to restrict upgrades to Salt 3006 LTS:

   echo 'Package: salt-*
   Pin: version 3006.*
   Pin-Priority: 1001' | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/salt-pin-1001

   Install the package:

   sudo apt-get install salt-minion

   If wanting to install by a target point release, append the specific Salt full release version.
   For example:

   sudo apt-get install salt-minion=3006.9

   caution

   Salt dependency conflicts

   If going with a non-latest point release of a target major version, you may be required to install other salt packages in a pinned fashion.
   For example, to install salt-minion, a user will be required to install salt-common at the same version:

   sudo apt-get install salt-minion=3006.9 salt-common=3006.9

   3007 STS

   Populate /etc/apt/preferences.d/salt-pin-1001 in order to restrict upgrades to Salt 3007 STS:

   echo 'Package: salt-*
   Pin: version 3007.*
   Pin-Priority: 1001' | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/salt-pin-1001

   Install the package:

   sudo apt-get install salt-minion

   If wanting to install by a target point release, append the specific Salt full release version.
   For example:

   sudo apt-get install salt-minion=3007.5

   # Example commands for pinning a current package minor so that
   # it is skipped during system-wide apt-get upgrade events
   sudo apt-mark hold salt-minion

   caution

   Salt dependency conflicts

   If going with a non-latest point release of a target major version, you may be required to install other salt packages in a pinned fashion.
   For example, to install salt-minion, a user will be required to install salt-common at the same version:

   sudo apt-get install salt-minion=3007.5 salt-common=3007.5

   LATEST Available

   If users would like to leave installs to come from either LTS or STS, whichever major version is latest.

   Install the package:

   sudo apt-get install salt-minion

   If wanting to install by a target point release, append the specific Salt full release version.
   For example:

   sudo apt-get install salt-minion=3007.5

   # Example commands for pinning a current package minor so that
   # it is skipped during system-wide apt-get upgrade events
   sudo apt-mark hold salt-minion

   caution

   If going with a non-latest point release of a target major version, you may be required to install other salt packages in a pinned fashion.
   For example, to install salt-minion, a user will be required to install salt-common at the same version:

   sudo apt-get install salt-minion=3007.5 salt-common=3007.5

4. Enable and start the salt-minion service:

   sudo systemctl enable salt-minion && sudo systemctl start salt-minion
   note

   When you install a onedir version of Salt (3006 and later), Salt installs its own local version of Python and the dependencies needed for the core functionality of Salt.

   After installing a onedir verison of Salt, your system has both a global version of Python at the system level and a local version of Python used by Salt.
   This architecture change means that the Salt onedir paths for Python are different and you need to change how you install third-party Python dependencies that you use with Salt, including your state files.
   See Install dependencies for more information.

Installation on Alt Linux 10.4, 11.0:

In Alt Linux 10.4 and Alt Linux 11.0, to ensure compatibility with SaltStack Master components, you should install the salt-minion package version 3007.1.
The current repositories of the p10 and p11 platforms contain packages of version 3007.5; the salt-minion 3007.1 packages and its dependencies are available in the archives.

1. Download and install the salt-minion 3007.1 package and its dependencies.

   For Alt Linux 10.4:

   wget https://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/archive/p10/date/2025/07/06/files/noarch/RPMS/salt-minion-3007.1-alt1.p10.1.noarch.rpm \
   https://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/archive/p10/date/2025/07/06/files/noarch/RPMS/python3-module-salt-3007.1-alt1.p10.1.noarch.rpm
   sudo rpm -Uvh --oldpackage ./salt-minion-3007.1-alt1.p10.1.noarch.rpm ./python3-module-salt-3007.1-alt1.p10.1.noarch.rpm

   or, for Alt Linux 11.0:

   wget https://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/archive/p11/date/2025/06/18/files/noarch/RPMS/salt-minion-3007.1-alt2.noarch.rpm \
   https://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/distributions/archive/p11/date/2025/06/18/files/noarch/RPMS/python3-module-salt-3007.1-alt2.noarch.rpm
   sudo rpm -Uvh --oldpackage ./salt-minion-3007.1-alt2.noarch.rpm ./python3-module-salt-3007.1-alt2.noarch.rpm

2. Enable and start the salt-minion service:

   sudo systemctl enable salt-minion && sudo systemctl start salt-minion

Installation on Astra Linux 1.7.7, 1.8.2:

On these operating systems, the salt-minion v3006.9 package from the official repository will be installed.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install salt-minion

Configuration

After installing salt-minion, you need to configure it to communicate with the Master server.
To do this, specify the address or hostname of the Salt Master in the /etc/salt/minion file:

master: <IP_ADDRESS> | <HOST>

After changing the configuration file, restart the salt-minion service:

sudo systemctl restart salt-minion

Installing on Windows

Install interactively

1. Download the Salt Minion installation file that matches your OS bitness from the Salt Project website.

2. Run the installation file without specifying any launch parameters to install the Salt.Box client interactively.

3. Click Next > in the installer's start window Fig. 2.

   Figure 2. Start window of the salt-minion service installer

4. Click I Agree in the license agreement window Fig. 3.

   Figure 3. License agreement window

5. Specify the path to the client installation folder Fig. 4.

   Figure 4. Destination folder selection window

6. In the salt-minion service settings window, specify the dedicated server IP address in the first field.

   Do not change Minion Name: hostname and Default config Fig. 5.

   Click Install and wait for the client installation to complete.

   Figure 5. Salt-minion service settings window

7. Click Finish in the installation completion window Fig. 6.

   Figure 6. Installation completion window

Install using Microsoft Active Directory Group Policies

1. Either select Administrative Tools -> Group Policy Management from the Start menu, or select Run Fig. 7.

   Figure 7. Launch the Group Policy Management snap-in

2. Right-click Group Policy Objects node in the domain object tree, and then select New Fig. 8.

   Figure 8. Create a Group Policy Object

3. In the dialog box, enter the name of the new GPO and click ОК.

   In this example, the GPO is called Client Installation Fig. 9.

   Figure 9. Specifying a name for the new GPO

4. Right-click on the desired Organizational Unit in the domain object tree (in this example, Test OU), and then select Link an existing GPO Fig. 10.

   Figure 10. Create an association between an Organizational Unit and a GPO

5. Select Client Installation in the Select Group Policy Object window.

   Figure 11. Selecting a Group Policy Object

6. Right-click on the Client Installation object in the list of domain Group Policy objects, then select Edit Fig. 12.

   Figure 12. Editing a Group Policy Object

7. Select the Scripts item under the Computer Configuration -> Windows Settings node Fig. 13.

8. Right-click on the Startup script in the script list window, then select Properties Fig. 13.

   Figure 13. Editing startup script properties

9. Click Show Files on the Scripts tab of the startup script properties window Fig. 14.

   Figure 14. Startup script properties window

10. Copy the install.bat file and the .exe files of the installers for Windows 32-bit and 64-bit architectures to the startup script folder opened in Windows Explorer Fig. 15.

    Figure 15. Copying files to the startup script folder

11. Close Explorer and click Add on the Scripts tab of the startup script properties window Fig. 14.

12. Specify the name install.bat and the dedicated IP address of the server, then click ОК Fig. 16.

    Figure 16. Specifying startup script parameters