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Cast

Cast is a command line utility that abstracts away SaltStack for compatible configurations.

It is the successor to the SIFT CLI but made in such a way that it is no longer specific to SIFT.

The goal is to deliver a simple command line utility to install custom distributions that are build with saltstack.

Installation

Visit the releases page to download the appropriate file for your architecture. There are .deb files for installation with dpkg -i, there are just vanilla binaries that you can download and put into /usr/local/bin if you'd like to as well.

Usage

cast install <owner/repo|alias>

cast install teamdfir/sift-saltstack

Existing Aliases

Cast comes with two built in aliases for existing support distributions, additional aliases will not be added, it's a short term solution until the older install methods have fallen off.

Note: there are only two aliases currently supported, sift and remnux which are resolved to teamdfir/sift-saltstack and remnux/salt-states respectively.

What is a Cast Distribution?

Simply put a cast distro is one published by the cast binary. The underlying technology used for installing the distro is Saltstack.

To create a Cast distribution you need a .cast.yml file and need your repository to be a valid SaltStack configuration that would work with a state.apply command.

Existing Distributions

There are only two (2) version 1 cast distros out there and they are SIFT and REMnux and what makes them a v1 is the way the release files are generated and signed and how the saltstack files are organized in the repository.

A version 2 cast distro is one like cast-example-distro where the salt states start in the root of the project and the release is generated by the cast release. The reason for moving the states to the root is for git submodule usage for distros that extend another distro.

Configuration

Cast is configured via the .cast.yml file in the root of the cast distro project. This configuration is required and contains important information like what GitHub Repository should releases be published to, what the manifest file contents should be.

Part of the configuration is the manifest definition that ultimately gets uploaded as a release asset. The manifest dictates things like base, modes, and supported operating systems.

• name - the name of the distro
• base - (optional) this is the name of the base directory where the saltstack files exist in the project root
• modes - this is a way to define modes that the user can specify along with the default mode, if none is specified
• supported_os - this is a way to define what operating systems are supported

For Developers

If your distro is called alpha then your name should be alpha, all base saltstack states should be based out of the root of the project, however if all the states have to be in a subdirectory, then the base_dir must be set to the name of that subdirectory.

Aliases

Aliases are only for SIFT and REMnux and not intended for long term use. The aliases serve a more specific purpose for supporting backwards compatibility for older versions of SIFT and REMnux that were not released as a cast distro originally.

Developers

Developing a distro for cast is very simple, this documentation will walk you through cast initialization.

Saltstack

To make embedding a distro easier in another distro both for the community and for SANS builds purposes, the salt states have now been moved to the root of the project. This allows for a repo to be submodule into another repo and the manifest.yml dictates to the installer how things should be extracted and installed.

Release

Requirements

• Tag must be created outside the tool and pushed to the remote
• Cosign private key and public key must be present in the repo

Creating a release has never been more simply. However, one thing is required, that you tag and push the tag to GitHub prior to running the command.

git tag v1.0.0 && git push origin --tags

Then you simply run the release command from your local branch.

cast release