Silverblue Update Failure

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1

Hi!
I’m having a problem with system upgrade:

$rpm-ostree upgrade
[Removed Stuff]
Resolving dependencies… done
Checking out packages… done
Running pre scripts… done
error: Running %prein for unbound-libs: bwrap(/bin/sh): Child process killed by signal 6; run journalctl -t ‘rpm-ostree(unbound-libs.prein)’` for more information or some similar error.

This problem occurs every once in a while and will fix by a reboot, or sometimes more than one reboot. Retrying to upgrade in the same boot will not help.

And of course, here’s the result of journalctl:

$journalctl -t ‘rpm-ostree(unbound-libs.prein)’
Jun 06 00:49:17 fedora rpm-ostree(unbound-libs.prein)[36047]: groupadd: /etc/group.4: lock file already used
Jun 06 00:49:17 fedora rpm-ostree(unbound-libs.prein)[36047]: groupadd: cannot lock /etc/group; try again later.
Jun 06 00:49:17 fedora rpm-ostree(unbound-libs.prein)[36052]: useradd: group ‘unbound’ does not exist

I had this problem since the beginning of using Silverblue (some 3-4 month I guess), and it didn’t go away with rebasing to F36.

Let me know if you need other details. And thank you all in advance!

2

I’ve seen this happen before. There’s an overlay for /etc/passwd and /etc/group, so the actual files are pretty empty, and if something goes wrong with the overlay computation, the rpm scripts break. To work around that, I’ve added the user/groups to /etc/passwd and /etc/group directly.

This should workaround it for you, as root (sudo -i first):

echo 'unbound:x:995:992:Unbound DNS resolver:/etc/unbound:/sbin/nologin' >> /etc/passwd
echo 'unbound:x:992:' >> /etc/group

Then try your rpm-ostree upgrade again.

3 Likes
3

Thank you! It worked like a charm.

Regarding overlays, I currently have: NetworkManager-l2tp NetworkManager-l2tp-gnome xl2tpd. It’s probable that the boots I was unable to upgrade from, were the ones in which some service was using these packages.

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4

This morning on January 9th, 2023 I tried to do a rpm-ostree upgrade.

I got a bunch of these that surfaced to do with unbound/unbound-anchor.

Dec 01 09:09:02 carouselYOW rpm-ostree(unbound-anchor.prein)[3726]: groupadd.rpmostreesave: lock /etc/group.lock already used by PID 4
Dec 01 09:09:02 carouselYOW rpm-ostree(unbound-anchor.prein)[3726]: groupadd.rpmostreesave: cannot lock /etc/group; try again later.
Dec 01 09:09:02 carouselYOW rpm-ostree(unbound-anchor.prein)[3728]: useradd.rpmostreesave: group 'unbound' does not exist

I applied your solution and it worked well. Thank you. Please note “unbound” lines were not in /etc/passwd nor in /etc/group beforehand.

These are the exact steps I did:

sudo -i
cat /etc/passwd |grep unbound
echo 'unbound:x:995:992:Unbound DNS resolver:/etc/unbound:/sbin/nologin' >> /etc/passwd

cat /etc/group|grep unbound
echo 'unbound:x:992:' >> /etc/group

sudo rpm-ostree upgrade