The regular salt modules execute in a separate context from the salt minion and manipulating the actual salt modules needs to happen in a higher level context within the minion process. This is where the sys pseudo module is used.
The sys pseudo module comes with a few functions that return data about the available functions on the minion or allows for the minion modules to be refreshed. These functions are as follows:
Display the inline documentation for all available modules, or for the specified module or function.
Instruct the minion to reload all available modules in memory. This function can be called if the modules need to be re-evaluated for availability or new modules have been made available to the minion.
List all available (loaded) modules.
List all known functions that are in available (loaded) modules.
