Users don't get created when installing packages with yum

[rrauenza]

With selinux enabled, useradd fails to run in the %pre scripts in rpm/yum.

This was on CentOS 6.4 with the ntpdate package.

The fix might just be a warning about selinux. Not sure. But filing this in case anyone else has same problem.

strace showed:
execve("/usr/sbin/useradd", ["/usr/sbin/useradd", "-u", "38", "-g", "38", "-s", "/sbin/nologin", "-M", "-r", "-d", "/etc/ntp", "ntp"],
[/* 20 vars */]) = -1 EACCES (Permission denied)

[terminalmage]

This sounds like an selinux issue. There's nothing that Salt does by itself when installing packages with yum, that would cause user creation to be skipped.

@thatch45 thoughts?

[carwyn]

I've hit this with a number of packages e.g. memcached and libcgroup:

2013-08-18 22:34:37,037 [salt.loaded.int.module.yumpkg][ERROR ] Error in PREIN
scriptlet in rpm package libcgroup-0.37-7.el6.x86_64
2013-08-18 22:35:24,985 [salt.loaded.int.module.yumpkg][ERROR ] libcgroup-0.37
-7.el6.x86_64 /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.IZUECB: line 1: /usr/sbin/groupadd: Permission denied
error: %pre(libcgroup-0.37-7.el6.x86_64) scriptlet failed, exit status 126
error: install: %pre scriptlet failed (2), skipping libcgroup-0.37-7.el6

Ironically getting libcgroup on the machine was done to enable the selinux state to then switch it to permissive mode (state.selinux depends on semange which on RHEL 6.4 pulls in libcgroup).

The list of packages that this affects is quite large nrpe, nagios, samba for me so far with many of these packages installing reporting no errors. On systems running selinux salt needs more privs than it has by default at least on RHEL-a-like systems.

[carwyn]

This bug and those linked from it cover similar issues: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=844167

[carwyn]

Duplicate of #1223, also see #1392 and SHA: 6dc2ca1

[basepi]

So should this one be closed as a duplicate?

[carwyn]

I'd say so yes. The current troubleshooting docs cover the workaround and #1392 covers the future ideal.

[rallytime]

Closing as a duplicate.