FMAs with categories not available in older versions of Fleet fail to add

[allenhouchins]

Fleet version: 4.78 and older

Web browser and operating system: Any

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💥  Actual behavior

Recently we added two new software categories: Security and Utilities

If a Fleet-maintained app has one of these categories as its default category, it will fail to add on versions of Fleet prior to when these categories were introduced.

When categories are validated (error occurs)
The validation happens in AddFleetMaintainedApp() (lines 167-177 in ee/server/service/maintained_apps.go), which is called when:

• A user clicks the "Add" button in the UI to add a maintained app to their team
• The POST /api/latest/fleet/software/fleet_maintained_apps API endpoint is called

Summary:

• Users can browse and view maintained apps without errors, even if they have "Security" or "Utilities" categories
• The error only occurs when they try to add the app to their team
• At that point, the code validates that all categories exist in the database, and if "Security" or "Utilities" don't exist, it returns: "some or all of the categories provided don't exist"
• So the app will appear in the list and be viewable, but adding it will fail until those categories exist in the database.

🛠️ To fix

Allow the app to be added with no category if the default category doesn't exist.

🧑‍💻  Steps to reproduce

These steps:

• Have been confirmed to consistently lead to reproduction in multiple Fleet instances.
• Describe the workflow that led to the error, but have not yet been reproduced in multiple Fleet instances.

1. Use an FMA that has a default category of Security or Utilities on a build of Fleet prior to 4.79.

🕯️ More info (optional)

I made this mess, I will attempt to clean it up.

This may continue to be an issue in the future if we determine additional categories need to be made so it is in our best interest to come up with a permanent fix like the one proposed in the To fix section above.

[allenhouchins]

@noahtalerman as discussed. I believe I captured the right "to fix" but let me know if you disagree!

[allenhouchins]

This change, which is still needed to help prevent future issues, is only going to be a fix from the point of merge and going forward. Customers running older versions of Fleet will not receive the fix.

Good news is none of our FMAs are using these new categories yet.

[noahtalerman]

🛠️ To fix

Allow the app to be added with no category if the default category doesn't exist.

@allenhouchins that looks right to me!

@marko-lisica @cdcme @georgekarrv we missed this in the test plan for the user story but I think we call it an unreleased bug. Up to @georgekarrv.

I added this issue to the #g-software board.