Thanks.
Sigh.   That's  is a lot further off into the weeds than I wanted to get, but I can probably make something work.
My usage for SUSE Manager and Uyuni is about 50% patching, 40% pushing config files, and 10% remote execution.  I really haven't gotten into the Salt states, because until I started finding that macros don't work, I haven't had much need to change my process from the original way I've been doing things forerver (pre-salt).  Postfix was the example I gave, but I've been using salt postfix.set_main to set relayhost and the hostname. 
What I'm trying to do is to deploy an rpm-based agent to about 500 clients, then push the config file, having the hostname populated.  With this, I can figure out enough of salt to do a salt state to put the agent out there, then do what you suggested with the file replace, or push it as I had planned, and remote execute something to use sed in a shell script to do it.  Or, I can remote execute a shell script to do the whole thing.

Allen B.

--
Allen Beddingfield
Systems Engineer
Office of Information Technology
The University of Alabama
Office 205-348-2251
allen@ua.edu

From: Julio Gonzalez
Sent: Friday, May 28, 2021 4:52 PM
To: uyuni-users@opensuse.org; users@lists.uyuni-project.org
Cc: Allen Beddingfield
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: Equivalent of macros functionality with salt registered system?

On viernes, 28 de mayo de 2021 21:48:28 (CEST) Allen Beddingfield wrote:
> Is there an equivalent of the Spacewalk macros that work with traditional
> clients for systems registered with salt?
>
> For example, here is what I used to put in the /etc/postfix/main.cf config
> file: myhostname = {| rhn.system.hostname |}
>
> When the client is registered with salt, it puts that string of text,
> instead of putting the value of the hostname. How can I accomplish this
> with a salt client?
>
> Here is a link to the functionality I mention.
> https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_satellite/5.6/html/get
> ting_started_guide/getting_started_guide-channel_management-managing_configu
> ration_channels-including_macros_in_configuration_files

You use grains, and can use pillar data, depend on what you need.

https://www.uyuni-project.org/uyuni-docs/uyuni/salt/salt-states.html
https://docs.saltproject.io/en/3002/topics/grains/
https://docs.saltproject.io/en/3002/topics/pillar/index.html

And since 2021.05 you can have also any custom data as pillar data, that then
you can use at the salt states:

https://www.uyuni-project.org/doc/2021.05/release-notes-uyuni-server.html#_custom_data_as_pillar

For your example, if you only want to change a single line, you could use
file.replace as part of a state
https://docs.saltproject.io/en/latest/ref/states/all/salt.states.file.html#salt.states.file.replace

mystate:
  file.replace:
    - name: /etc/postfix/main.cf
    - pattern: 'myhostname = .*'
    - repl: 'myhostname = '"{{salt['grains.get']('fqdn')}}"'

But as I guess you want to change more things at that postfix configuration,
then you should consider "file.managed" and jinja templates:
https://docs.saltproject.io/en/3002/topics/jinja/index.html#jinja-in-files

Hope it helps :-)

> Thanks!
> Allen B.
> --
> Allen Beddingfield
> Systems Engineer
> Office of Information Technology
> The University of Alabama
> Office 205-348-2251
> allen@ua.edu


--
Julio González Gil
Release Engineer, SUSE Manager and Uyuni
jgonzalez@suse.com