Mr.SaltSlack

A slack bot for receiving status notifications from SaltStack.

Mr.SaltSlack offers the following features in its current state:

• Notification on minion start

• Notification on job return (Success/Fail and return code)

• Notification on minion-key authentication check status (Success/Pending/Fail)

Installation

Mr.SaltSlack is a link between Salt and Slack. Because of this you will have to install Salt, create a slack webhook and run the Mr.SaltSlack installation script, before Mr.SaltSlack is able to run.

Install Salt

Click here to go to the Salt installation guide.

In the time of writing, the Salt installation goes as follows, on Ubuntu systems:

1. Run in terminal: wget -O - https://repo.saltstack.com/apt/ubuntu/18.04/amd64/latest/SALTSTACK-GPG-KEY.pub | sudo apt-key add - (Choose the appropriate SaltStack gpg key - in our case we used the key intended for Ubuntu 18.04)
2. Save the following file to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/saltstack.list: deb http://repo.saltstack.com/apt/ubuntu/18.04/amd64/latest bionic main
3. Run in terminal: sudo apt update
4. Run in terminal: sudo apt install salt-master salt-minion salt-ssh salt-syndic salt-cloud salt-api

Don't forget add the salt minions' keys to the salt master:

1. Make sure the minions' configuration resolve to the salt-master (for example by creating an entry that resolves salt to the IP of the salt-master in /etc/hosts).
2. Display keys: salt-key -L.
3. Accept all minions' keys: salt-key -A (not recommended from a security perspective).

For further information about initial configuration of Salt: See Salt's own page.

Set up Slack webhook

Salt gives a good guide on how to set up a webhook for your Slack App, which you can find here.

In the time of writing, setting up the Slack webhook goes as follows:

1. Create a Slack App (see here).
2. Enable incoming webhooks, via your Apps management dashboard, by selecting incoming webhooks feature and switch on activate incoming webhooks toggle.
3. After step 2, a few more options should be available. One of these is the add new webhook to workspace button, click on it to generate an incoming webhook URL.
4. You will then be re-directed and be asked for other information. Here, you choose the channel that the app will post to and click authorize once done.
5. Now, you will be sent back to the app settings and under the section Webhooks URL for Your Workspace you will find a new webhook URL entry which should look something like this:

https://hooks.slack.com/services/T00000000/B00000000/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

6. The webhook token that you need for Mr.SaltSlack is https://hooks.slack.com/services/< your-webhook-token >. Note that the webhook token is what you provide as the webhook identifier when prompted by the script.

Install Mr.SaltSlack

Assuming that you either have not declared a salt reactor, or have declared the reactor in /etc/salt/master.d/reactor.sls, you only need to run the installation script:
sudo ./install.sh
and supply your Slack webhook identifier when prompted.

How to use Mr.SaltSlack

Assuming you have installed Mr.SaltSlack correctly and that you want all the default features that Mr.SaltSlack provides, you don't have to do anything. When a monitored event in Salt happens, Mr.SaltSlack will automatically message you in your Slack channel.

But you can always disable features or contribute by adding more!

Disable features

To disable a feature, all you need to do is remove/comment the feature's respective code block in /etc/salt/master.d/reactor.conf.

To disable notification on minion start, comment the following lines:

- 'salt/minion/*/start':
    - /srv/reactor/mrSaltSlack_start.sls

To disable notification on job return, comment the following lines:

- 'salt/job/*/ret/*':
    - /srv/reactor/mrSaltSlack_ret.sls

To disable notification on minion-key authentication check, comment the following lines:

- 'salt/auth':
    - /srv/reactor/mrSaltSlack_auth.sls

Debugging

If you run into issues, we recommend using the debug mode of the Salt master:
salt-master -l debug
This mode gives more information than simply setting the logging mode to "debug" in the master configuration file.

You can also monitor the event bus with:
salt-run state.event pretty=True

Have you tried turning it off and on again? Some configurations and other settings are loaded on start, try to restart the salt master and salt minions.