salt-cloud should install same minion version as master

[kveroneau]

Description of Issue

When using salt-cloud to spin up cloud servers, when bootstrapping the salt-minion, the same version which is on the master should be bootstrapped onto the minion for maximum compatibility. I am currently trying to troubleshoot an issue, which I believe is related to the master and minion being different versions.

Setup

Use a Salt-master at version 2019.2.3, and bootstrap a cloud server using salt-cloud.

Steps to Reproduce Issue

Run the salt-cloud state to create the cloud VM, and notice that version 3000 ends up being bootstrapped.

Versions Report

Salt Version:
Salt: 2019.2.3

Dependency Versions:
cffi: Not Installed
cherrypy: Not Installed
dateutil: 2.5.3
docker-py: 4.1.0
gitdb: 2.0.0
gitpython: 2.1.1
ioflo: Not Installed
Jinja2: 2.9.4
libgit2: 0.24.5
libnacl: Not Installed
M2Crypto: Not Installed
Mako: Not Installed
msgpack-pure: Not Installed
msgpack-python: 0.4.8
mysql-python: Not Installed
pycparser: Not Installed
pycrypto: 2.6.1
pycryptodome: Not Installed
pygit2: 0.24.2
Python: 2.7.13 (default, Sep 26 2018, 18:42:22)
python-gnupg: Not Installed
PyYAML: 3.12
PyZMQ: 16.0.2
RAET: Not Installed
smmap: 2.0.1
timelib: Not Installed
Tornado: 4.4.3
ZMQ: 4.2.1

System Versions:
dist: debian 9.11
locale: UTF-8
machine: x86_64
release: 4.9.0-11-amd64
system: Linux
version: debian 9.11

[kveroneau]

This is the error I receive when using any mysql related execution commands, such as mysql.version. This same error does not occur on other minions configured the same way at salt version 2019.2.3, so I suspect that this error is being triggered due to the master being at 2019.2.3 and the minion running 3000.

The minion function caused an exception: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/salt/minion.py", line 1675, in _thread_return
    return_data = minion_instance.executors[fname](opts, data, func, args, kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/salt/executors/direct_call.py", line 12, in execute
    return func(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/salt/modules/mysql.py", line 858, in version
    dbc = _connect(**connection_args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/salt/modules/mysql.py", line 392, in _connect
    dbc = MySQLdb.connect(**connargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pymysql/__init__.py", line 90, in Connect
    return Connection(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pymysql/connections.py", line 690, in __init__
    self.encoders = dict([(k, v) for (k, v) in conv.items() if type(k) is not int])
AttributeError: 'unicode' object has no attribute 'items'

[garethgreenaway]

@kveroneau Thanks for the report. By default the bootstrap script will try to install the latest available version, but you can specify additional arguments that will allow it to install specific versions, https://ansible-cn.readthedocs.io/en/latest/topics/tutorials/salt_bootstrap.html, and include those arguments in the Salt cloud configuraiton, https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/cloud/misc.html#deploy-script-arguments.

[kveroneau]

@garethgreenaway Thank you for pointing that out. I was actually searching if I could set the salt-minion version which is installed by salt-cloud, but originally had problems trying to figure out how to set the version. I think this link should be useful. I will try an orchestration of a server today in our AWS environment and see if my original issues with MySQL as mentioned in my issue persist.

Although, it would make more sense to actually default the salt-minion installation version to match what the salt-master currently has installed to avoid potential issues. I am assuming me and others who run SaltStack do not immediately upgrade to the absolute latest version of SaltStack without first confirming in a sandbox environment that our existing states do not break in the latest release.

UPDATE: I was able to edit my salt-cloud state code to use a version and it worked.

[garethgreenaway]

@kveroneau Great! We'll consider this one resolved and consider the other request as a feature request for Salt Cloud. Thanks!