Installation

SaltStack Nornir Proxy Minion tested only for Linux, it is never tested with and unlikely will work on Windows. It is recommended to use Red Hat/CentOS or Ubuntu Linux distributions.

Python 2 is not supported, recommended version is Python 3.6 and higher.

Install from PyPi:

pip install salt-nornir[prodmin]

Or explicitly specifying Python version:

python3 -m pip install salt-nornir[prodmin]

Or install GIT and install latest code from master brunch:

python3 -m pip install git+https://github.com/dmulyalin/salt-nornir

Salt-Nornir Minion need to be installed on proxy minion machine.

Note

If planning to use salt-nornir-runner module, salt-nornir should be installed on Salt Master machine as well.

For installation of SaltStack master and minion/proxy-minion modules refer to official documentation.

Warning

Python 3.6 support deprecated starting with version 0.12.0

Installation extras

Salt-Nornir comes with these installation extras.

Salt-Nornir extras packages
Name	Description
`dev`	Installs libraries required for development e.g. pytest, black, pre-commit etc.
`prodmin`	Production ready minimum set. Installs Netmiko, Ncclient and requests libraries to provide support for managing devices over SSH, NETCONF and RESTCONF. In addition, installs libraries to extended Salt-Nornir functionality such as Tabulate, Rich, TTP etc. All libraries have versions fixed to produce tested and working environment.
`prodmax`	Production ready maximum set. Installs all `prodmin` libraries together with additional modules required to support complete Salt-Nornir feature set such as PyGNMI, PyATS, Scrapli, NAPALM etc. All libraries have versions fixed to produce tested and working environment.
`netmiko`	Installs these libraries: netmiko, nornir-netmiko
`napalm`	Installs these libraries: napalm, nornir-napalm
`scrapli`	Installs these libraries: scrapli, scrapli-community
`pyats`	Installs these libraries: genie, pyats
`netconf`	Installs these libraries: ncclient, scrapli-netconf
`gnmi`	Installs these libraries: pygnmi
`restconf`	Installs these libraries: requests
`dataprocessor`	Installs these libraries: cerberus, jmespath, ntc-templates, pyyaml, tabulate, ttp, ttp-templates, xmltodict, lxml

To install Salt-Nornir only, without any additional plugins:

pip install salt-nornir

To install minimum production set:

pip install salt-nornir[prodmin]

To install maximum production set:

pip install salt-nornir[prodmax]

SaltStack versions tested

Nornir Proxy minion was tested and confirmed working with these versions of SaltStack:

salt 3005 - Salt-Nornir 0.15.x, 0.16.x, 0.17.x
salt 3004 - Salt-Nornir 0.15.x, 0.14.x, 0.13.x, 0.12.x
salt 3003 - Salt-Nornir 0.11.x
salt 3002 - Salt-Nornir 0.9.x

Other SaltStack versions might work too, but not tested.

Nornir Salt Dependency

Salt-Nornir and Nornir-Salt uses SemVer approach for version numbering following this naming convention <major number>.<minor number>.<maintenance number> for example 0.11.1, 1.2.3 etc.

Main dependency for Salt-Nornir is nornir-salt package, it must be of the same major and minor versions as salt-nornir package itself. For example, compatible Salt-Nornir and Nornir-Salt versions are 0.11.*, on the other hand Salt-Nornir of version 0.11.0 is not compatible with Nornir-Salt 0.8.0.

Upgrade Procedure

Uninstall existing packages:

python3 -m pip uninstall nornir-salt salt-nornir

Install updated packages:

python3 -m pip install nornir-salt salt-nornir --upgrade

Optionally, upgrade sets of extras libraries:

python3 -m pip install salt-nornir[extras-name-here] –upgrade

Restart your proxy minions to pick up updated version.

Optionally run to verify software versions after Proxy Minions Started:

salt nrp1 nr.nornir version

Common installation issues

Issues mainly arise around installing all required dependencies. General rule of thumb - try Googling errors you getting or search StackOverflow.

1 PyYAML dependency - if getting error while doing pip install salt-nornir:

ERROR: Cannot uninstall 'PyYAML'. It is a distutils installed project and thus we cannot accurately
determine which files belong to it which would lead to only a partial uninstall.

try:

python3 -m pip install salt-nornir --ignore-installed

2 setuptools dependency - if getting error while doing pip install salt-nornir:

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'setuptools_rust'

try:

python3 -m pip install -U pip setuptools

Using docker containers

Refer to Salt Nornir Docker Repository on how to setup SaltStack Master and Nornir Proxy Minion using docker containers.