How to Install & Set Up Salt

Prerequisites

• ✓A master host and one or more minion hosts (they can be the same box for testing)
• ✓Root/sudo access and network connectivity from minions to the master on ports 4505/4506

Install master and minion with the bootstrap script

The -M flag installs the master and -P allows pip-based dependencies. Run it on the box that will be the master.

curl -o bootstrap-salt.sh -L https://github.com/saltstack/salt-bootstrap/releases/latest/download/bootstrap-salt.sh
sudo sh bootstrap-salt.sh -M -P

About the bootstrap script's distro coverage

bootstrap-salt.sh already detects the underlying OS and calls the right package manager itself — apt on Debian/Ubuntu, dnf/yum on RHEL/Fedora/Amazon Linux — so the single command above is genuinely the same on every supported Linux distro.

Accept minion keys on the master

sudo salt-key -L        # list pending keys
sudo salt-key -A        # accept all pending minions

Verify the installation

salt --version
sudo salt '*' test.ping

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