Adding packages to salt-master/minion path with overlay

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1

Hi there,
The salt-master and salt-minion service using package salt is a bit crippled because the attribute path contains only references to parts of util-linux. I would like to use for instance git or rsync but that gives errors that salt can’t find the bin files. This is the path of the salt-master service:

Environment="PATH=/nix/store/g3f2i92cihcbbap4fz1x91lsb4yaks1c-util-linux-2.39.2-bin/bin:/nix/store/26zdl4pyw5qazppj8if5lm8bjzxlc07l-coreutils-9.3/bin:/nix/store/sn1hi205k632b3l13dwxdwx4f0mf7ysr-findutils-4.9.0/bin:/nix/store/22fcki4y6mwqah9rmh1d0qh5jiw32y70-gnugrep-3.11/bin:/nix/store/ii9ma4ck06pcb9g3v9hdg8bx9cga4ax3-gnused-4.9/bin:/nix/store/hacx6zmpap5vcqa2bbl2gqlmdc7bi3vg-systemd-254.10/bin:/nix/store/g3f2i92cihcbbap4fz1x91lsb4yaks1c-util-linux-2.39.2-bin/sbin:/nix/store/26zdl4pyw5qazppj8if5lm8bjzxlc07l-coreutils-9.3/sbin:/nix/store/sn1hi205k632b3l13dwxdwx4f0mf7ysr-findutils-4.9.0/sbin:/nix/store/22fcki4y6mwqah9rmh1d0qh5jiw32y70-gnugrep-3.11/sbin:/nix/store/ii9ma4ck06pcb9g3v9hdg8bx9cga4ax3-gnused-4.9/sbin:/nix/store/hacx6zmpap5vcqa2bbl2gqlmdc7bi3vg-systemd-254.10/sbin"

I tried to use overlay within the nixos configuration.nix file, I added only the salt-master part:

# Overrides
  nixpkgs.overlays = [
    (final: prev: {
      systemd.services.salt-master = prev.systemd.services.salt-master.override{
        path = with pkgs; [
          util-linux  # for dmesg
          git
          rsync
        ];
      };
    })    
  ];

The nixos-rebuild switch gives errors:

      … while evaluating attribute 'path' of derivation 'nixos-rebuild'

         at /nix/store/wdzp0hmh5lbykyvchd1wihszcyab78qv-nixos-23.11/nixos/pkgs/os-specific/linux/nixos-rebuild/default.nix:25:3:

           24|   nix_aarch64_linux = fallback.aarch64-linux;
           25|   path = lib.makeBinPath [ coreutils gnused gnugrep jq util-linux ];
             |   ^
           26|   nativeBuildInputs = [

       (stack trace truncated; use '--show-trace' to show the full trace)

       error: Dependency is not of a valid type: element 6 of buildInputs for util-linux
building Nix...
building the system configuration...
error:
       … while calling the 'head' builtin

         at /nix/store/wdzp0hmh5lbykyvchd1wihszcyab78qv-nixos-23.11/nixos/lib/attrsets.nix:922:11:

          921|         || pred here (elemAt values 1) (head values) then
          922|           head values
             |           ^
          923|         else

       … while evaluating the attribute 'value'

         at /nix/store/wdzp0hmh5lbykyvchd1wihszcyab78qv-nixos-23.11/nixos/lib/modules.nix:807:9:

          806|     in warnDeprecation opt //
          807|       { value = builtins.addErrorContext "while evaluating the option `${showOption loc}':" value;
             |         ^
          808|         inherit (res.defsFinal') highestPrio;

       (stack trace truncated; use '--show-trace' to show the full trace)

       error: Dependency is not of a valid type: element 2 of buildInputs for procps

My metadata for nixos is:

 - system: `"x86_64-linux"`
 - host os: `Linux 6.1.86, NixOS, 23.11 (Tapir), 23.11.6359.53a2c32bc66f`
 - multi-user?: `yes`
 - sandbox: `yes`
 - version: `nix-env (Nix) 2.18.1`
 - channels(root): `"nixos-23.11"`
 - nixpkgs: `/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos`

I would appreciate it if someone looked into it

2

Hi,

I’m also trying to get Salt working in my environment, found this post, and also the salt package in nixpkgs here: nixpkgs/pkgs/tools/admin/salt/default.nix at 9f4128e00b0ae8ec65918efeba59db998750ead6 · NixOS/nixpkgs · GitHub

… it looks like you can specify extra packages to include for Salt using the “extraInputs” option – but how?

I’m not seeing a configuration option to set this – looking for how to specify additional packages to pass into extraInputs…

Thanks,
John

3

Hi,

Nice to hear you trying to get Salt working. I’m not familiar with defining “extraInputs”. But could you explain which packages you would like to insert and why it is necessary?

Currently I’m working with a local repository of nixpkgs to change the module definition. This could also be a workaround to add extra packages.

4

So we have a bunch of configuration in Salt already. I’ve been replicating a bunch of things in my Nix configuration, because the salt-minion wasn’t able to run things due to missing a bunch of these modules.

We’re still at least in the short term using Salt to manage secrets – generally deploying scripts or env files in particular protected locations, and then having Nix shell scripts read them to use them as needed.

So far I got a lot of this working by doing an overlay to provide the “extrainputs” I needed, and I think it’s working? It at least let me run a bunch of salt states that were failing before.

The gist of what I’ve done is add to the outputs section of my top-level flake.nix – not sure if this is redundant or correct, but as I said it’s working for me at least so far:

...
outputs = inputs@{ nixpkgs, self, ... }:
  let
      salt_override = with nixpkgs.python311Packages; [
          dateutils
          cherrypy
          gitdb
          gitpython
          pygit2
          m2crypto
          timelib
        ];

      salt_overlay = final: prev: {
            salt = prev.salt.override {
              extraInputs = with prev.python311Packages; [
               dateutils
               cherrypy
               docker-python311Packages
                gitdb
                gitpython
                pygit2
                m2crypto
                timelib
              ];
            };
          };
  in {
    nixosConfigurations.mymachine = 
      nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
         ...
        modules = [
           ./path/to/configuration.nix
           ({ ... }: { nixpkgs.config.overlays = [ salt_overlay]; })
       ];
   };

… I’m not entirely sure if that’s working as it’s supposed to, or if that’s a good way to do it, but it did get me a working result…