Okay, so I’ve been messing around with SaltStack lately, and I wanted to get a better handle on how the “weight” in the Salt API works. It’s kinda important for ordering things, you know?
My Little Experiment Setup
First, I fired up a couple of test minions. Nothing fancy, just two basic VMs to play with. I made sure they were all connected and talking to my Salt master properly. You gotta have that working first, or nothing else will.
Digging into the Code
Next, I started poking around the Salt API documentation. I specifically looked for anything related to “weight” or “order”. It took a bit of scrolling, but I eventually found the relevant sections.
Trying Things Out
Now for the fun part! I started writing some simple state files. I gave different weights to different states, just to see how it would all shake out. Like, I set one state to `weight: 10` and another to `weight: 20`. Pretty basic stuff.
- I used the `salt` command to apply these states.
- I kept an eye on the output to see the order in which things were happening.
- I played around with different weight values, both positive and negative, just to get a feel for it.
Making a Mess (and Cleaning It Up)
Of course, I screwed up a few times. I think I mixed up the weights at one point and things happened in the wrong order. It’s all part of learning, right? I just went back, fixed my mistakes, and tried again.
What I Figured Out
So, after all this tinkering, I got a pretty good grasp of how the weight thing works. Basically, states with lower weights get executed first. If two states have the same weight, then, it’s a little random what happens, I think it uses alphabetical order, but I change the weight to make sure. Makes sense, I guess.
It’s not rocket science, but it’s definitely something you want to understand if you’re using Salt. It can save you a lot of headaches when you’re trying to orchestrate complex deployments.
