# running salt as normal user tutorial

Before continuing make sure you have a working Salt installation by following the Installation and the configuration instructions.

Stuck?

There are many ways to Salt Community Resources including our mailing list and our IRC channel #salt.

## Running Salt functions as non root user

If you don't want to run salt cloud as root or even install it you can configure it to have a virtual root in your working directory.

The salt system uses the `salt.syspath` module to find the variables

If you run the salt-build, it will generated in:

    ./build/lib.linux-x86_64-2.7/salt/_syspaths.py

To generate it, run the command:

    python setup.py build

Copy the generated module into your salt directory

    cp ./build/lib.linux-x86_64-2.7/salt/_syspaths.py salt/_syspaths.py

Edit it to include needed variables and your new paths

    # you need to edit this
    _your_current_dir_ = ...
    ROOT_DIR = _your_current_dir_ + "/salt/root"

    # you need to edit this
    _location_of_source_code_ = ...
    INSTALL_DIR = _location_of_source_code_

    CONFIG_DIR = ROOT_DIR + "/etc/salt"
    CACHE_DIR = ROOT_DIR + "/var/cache/salt"
    SOCK_DIR = ROOT_DIR + "/var/run/salt"
    SRV_ROOT_DIR = ROOT_DIR + "/srv"
    BASE_FILE_ROOTS_DIR = ROOT_DIR + "/srv/salt"
    BASE_PILLAR_ROOTS_DIR = ROOT_DIR + "/srv/pillar"
    BASE_MASTER_ROOTS_DIR = ROOT_DIR + "/srv/salt-master"
    LOGS_DIR = ROOT_DIR + "/var/log/salt"
    PIDFILE_DIR = ROOT_DIR + "/var/run"
    CLOUD_DIR = INSTALL_DIR + "/cloud"
    BOOTSTRAP = CLOUD_DIR + "/deploy/bootstrap-salt.sh"

Create the directory structure

    mkdir -p root/etc/salt root/var/cache/run root/run/salt root/srv
    root/srv/salt root/srv/pillar root/srv/salt-master root/var/log/salt root/var/run

Populate the configuration files:

    cp -r conf/* root/etc/salt/

Edit your `root/etc/salt/master` configuration that is used by salt-cloud:

    user: *your user name*

Run like this:

    PYTHONPATH=`pwd` scripts/salt-cloud