Salt stack grains

Grains is an interface that provides information specific to a minion. The information available through the grains interface is static. Grains get loaded when the Salt minion starts. This means that the information in grains is unchanging. So grains information could be about the running kernel or the operating system.

Types of grains

There are two types of grains (these come with the Salt installation) and custom grains. The latter are found in

*/etc/salt/grains

*/etc/salt/minion

*Grains directory, synced to minions

Grains Targeting

Grain data can be used when targeting minions, which is defined in the following code block.

#salt -G 'os:Ubuntu' test.ping

ubuntu-01:

    True

Listing Grains

Grains can be listed by using the ‘grains.ls’ module,

# salt '*' grains.ls

ubuntu-01:

    - SSDs

    - biosreleasedate

    - biosversion

List Items

Grains data can also be listed by using the 'grains.items’.

# salt '*' grains.items

ubuntu-01:

    ----------

    SSDs:

    biosreleasedate:

        12/01/2006