Description:

The new salt package in community has the salt-master running as
uprivileged user salt. This blocks external authentication and the use of halite (webgui).

Additional info:
package version: 2014.1.1

Config and/or log files etc.
/etc/salt/master:
# The user under which the salt master will run. Salt will update all
# permissions to allow the specified user to run the master. The exception is
# the job cache, which must be deleted if this user is changed. If the
# modified files cause conflicts set verify_env to False.
user: salt


Steps to reproduce:

1. add the following to /etc/salt/master (please two space indentation)
the user must be present on the system with a password

external_auth:
pam:
[username]:
- .*
- '@runner'
- '@wheel'

2. run this command: salt -a pam \* test.ping
it will ask a username and password
provide the username as stated in the config file and the password

This mechanism is also used in halite to login the webinterface.
The reason is eauth needs to be root to access pam.

The Suse package and Centos package of salt keep salt running as root
by default. Why not keep this file in it's default configuration?