Saltstack not respecting watch/require

Question

I am trying to deploy nginx using Saltstack. I am not using the nginx formula. Here is what I have:

nginx:
  pkg.installed
  service.running:
    - require:
      - pkg: nginx
      - file: /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/com.example.static
    - watch:
      - file: /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/com.example.static
      - method: reload

I also have an entry defined for /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/com.example.static. It is working correctly -- the file is getting copied to the right location.

The problem is that nginx isn't getting reloaded when when Saltstack puts the configuration file on the system. I need to run /etc/init.d/nginx reload before the server will respond to requests for static.example.com.

Answer 1

You probably need to add a reload directive to service.running

https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/ref/states/all/salt.states.service.html

"By default if a service is triggered to refresh due to a watch statement the service is by default restarted. If the desired behavior is to reload the service, then set the reload value to True."

nginx:
  ...
  service.running:
    ...
    - reload: True
    - watch:
      - file: /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/com.example.static

Also see github ticket #1122