[BUG] Upgrading salt masters on ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04 from 3006.2 to 3006.3 fails with "pre-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 8" #65175
Description
During the run of 'apt upgrade' on Ubuntu 22.04 and 20.04 at least, the upgrade fails. Full output of the upgrade command are listed below.
Reviewing the output, I found that the .preinst script for salt-common was throwing an error which shows up in the output as "usermod: user salt is currently used by process xxx". Manually running that script produced the same error. The process in question was the salt-api service.
As a workaround, I stopped both the salt-api and salt-master services and was able to successfully run the upgrade. Note that a failed upgrade can require running "apt --fix-broken install" instead of being able to run a clean "apt upgrade".
Complete output of the apt upgrade command, relative lines marked in with -->
# apt upgrade salt-api salt-common salt-master salt-minion
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
#
# You can verify the status of security fixes using the `pro fix` command.
# E.g., a recent Ruby vulnerability can be checked with: `pro fix USN-6219-1`
# For more detail see: https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-6219-1
#
The following packages will be upgraded:
salt-api salt-common salt-master salt-minion
4 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 42.8 MB of archives.
After this operation, 17.4 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
Get:1 https://repo.saltproject.io/salt/py3/ubuntu/20.04/amd64/latest focal/main amd64 salt-minion amd64 3
006.3 [80.7 kB]
Get:2 https://repo.saltproject.io/salt/py3/ubuntu/20.04/amd64/latest focal/main amd64 salt-master amd64 3
006.3 [93.0 kB]
Get:3 https://repo.saltproject.io/salt/py3/ubuntu/20.04/amd64/latest focal/main amd64 salt-common amd64 3
006.3 [42.6 MB]
Get:4 https://repo.saltproject.io/salt/py3/ubuntu/20.04/amd64/latest focal/main amd64 salt-api amd64 3006
.3 [64.8 kB]
Fetched 42.8 MB in 2s (23.8 MB/s)
(Reading database ... 118200 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../salt-minion_3006.3_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking salt-minion (3006.3) over (3006.2) ...
Preparing to unpack .../salt-master_3006.3_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking salt-master (3006.3) over (3006.2) ...
Preparing to unpack .../salt-common_3006.3_amd64.deb ...
--> usermod: user salt is currently used by process 454
--> dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/salt-common_3006.3_amd64.deb (--unpack):
--> new salt-common package pre-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 8
Preparing to unpack .../salt-api_3006.3_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking salt-api (3006.3) over (3006.2) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/salt-common_3006.3_amd64.deb
needrestart is being skipped since dpkg has failed
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)