How do I pass parameters to a salt state file?

I want to create a group and user using salt state files, but I do not know the group, gid, user, uid, sshkey until I need to execute the salt state file which I would like to pass in as parameters.

I have read about Pillar to create the variable. How do I create pillars before execution?

/srv/salt/group.sls:

{{ name }}:
  group.present:
    - gid: {{ gid }}
    - system: True

Command line:

salt 'SaltStack-01' state.sls group name=awesome gid=123456

Answer

You use Pillars to create “dictionaries” that you can reference into State files. I’m not sure if I’m understanding you correctly, but here’s an example of what you can do:

1. mkdir /srv/pillar/

2. Create /srv/pillar/groups.sls and paste something like this into it:

   groups:
     first: 1234
     second: 5678
   

   These are names and GIDs of the groups you want to create.

3. Create /srv/pillar/top.sls so you can apply this pillar to your minions. This is very similar to a salt top file, so you can either apply it to all minions ('*') or just the one ('SaltStack-01'):

   base:
     'hc01*':
       - groups
   

   To test that that has worked, you can run salt '*' pillar.items and you should find the groups pillar somewhere in the output.

4. Now, your /srv/salt/group.sls file should look like this:

   {% for group,gid in pillar.get('groups',{}).items() %}
   {{ group }}:
     group.present:
       - gid: {{ gid }}
   {% endfor %}
   

   This is a for loop: for every group and gid in the pillar groups, do the rest. So basically, you can look at it as if the state file is running twice:

   first:
     group.present:
       - gid: 1234
   

   And then:

   second:
     group.present:
       - gid: 5678
   

This was incorporated from this guide.