saltstack: user defined pillars unusable for other targets than dom0

Qubes OS version Qubes release 4.0 (R4.0)

Affected component(s) or functionality user defined pillars in saltstack

Brief summary Using user defined pillars leads to an exception if tageting any other vm than dom0

To Reproduce setup.zip

/srv/salt/user_pillar/top.sls: user: 'target':

/srv/salt/user_pillar/get.sls: host: www.qubes-os.org

/srv/salt/user_salt/get.top base: target:

user_salt.get

/srv/salt/user_salt/get.sls: get file: cmd.run:

name: wget {{pillar['host'] }}

To enable them during a qubesctl execution, I'm running:

sudo qubesctl --show-output state.apply --pillar-root=/srv/salt/user_pillar/

This works quite well when running this for dom0, but when I'm running it towards a target:

sudo qubesctl --show-output --target myTarget state.apply --pillar-root=/srv/salt/user_pillar/

I receive this error after the disp-mgmt-vm starts: ERROR (exception list index out of range)

Calling qubesctl without --pillar-root results in not finding the pillar in /var/log/qubes/mgmt-target.log: output: - Rendering SLS 'base:user_salt.get' failed: Jinja variable 'salt.utils.context.NamespacedDictWrapper object' has no attribute 'host'

Expected behavior Pillars are applied same way like it's done for dom0 with:

sudo qubesctl --show-output state.highstate --pillar-root=/srv/salt/user_pillar/

Actual behavior I receive this error after the disp-mgmt-vm starts:

ERROR (exception list index out of range)

Solutions you've tried

Instead of using user defined pillars, it's possible to use jinja variables which does work.

Passing pillars as command line params also doesn't work:

sudo qubesctl --show-output  --target myVM state.apply  pillar=true  pillar='{"myPillar":"value"}'

this leads to this error:

myVM:
  TypeError encountered executing state.apply: apply_() takes from 0 to 1 positional arguments but 7 were given

Also the following fails:

sudo qubesctl top.enable user_salt.myPersonalTopFile pillar=true

With the stack trace:

SaltRenderError: Could not find relpath for user_salt.myPersonalTopFile.top
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/bin/qubesctl", line 110, in <module>
    salt_call()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/salt/scripts.py", line 391, in salt_call
    client.run()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/salt/cli/call.py", line 58, in run
    caller.run()
[setup.zip](https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/files/5213887/setup.zip)

  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/salt/cli/caller.py", line 134, in run
    ret = self.call()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/salt/cli/caller.py", line 204, in call
    ret['return'] = func(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/var/cache/salt/minion/extmods/modules/topd.py", line 74, in enable
    return TopUtils(__opts__, **kwargs).enable(paths, saltenv)
  File "/var/cache/salt/minion/extmods/utils/toputils.py", line 600, in enable
    toppaths, unseen = self.prepare_paths(paths)
  File "/var/cache/salt/minion/extmods/utils/toputils.py", line 453, in prepare_paths
    toppath = self.toppath(path)
  File "/var/cache/salt/minion/extmods/utils/toputils.py", line 332, in toppath
    saltenv = saltenv or self.saltenv(path, saltenv)
  File "/var/cache/salt/minion/extmods/utils/pathutils.py", line 128, in saltenv
    relpath = self.relpath(path)
  File "/var/cache/salt/minion/extmods/utils/pathutils.py", line 486, in relpath
    return self.path(path, saltenv)
  File "/var/cache/salt/minion/extmods/utils/toputils.py", line 269, in path
    return super(TopUtils, self).path(path, saltenv, path_type=path_type)
  File "/var/cache/salt/minion/extmods/utils/pathutils.py", line 445, in path
    raise SaltRenderError('Could not find relpath for {0}'.format(path))
salt.exceptions.SaltRenderError: Could not find relpath for user_salt.myPersonalTopFile.top
DOM0 configuration failed, not continuing

Relevant documentation you've consulted https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/salt/ https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-mgmt-salt https://docs.saltstack.com/en/getstarted/config/pillar.html

QubesOS / qubes-issues

saltstack: user defined pillars unusable for other targets than dom0 #6033