Rocky 9.2 -- Odd message about /root/.ssh from dnf?

Rocky Linux General
1

I’m working w/ Rocky Linux 9.2 and am running into an odd message from dnf. It has happened a couple of times now, but here is a concrete, reproducible sample:

trantor.phys #] dnf reinstall -y grafana-pcp
      [...]
Running transaction
  Preparing        :                                                        1/1 
  Reinstalling     : grafana-pcp-5.1.1-1.el9.x86_64                         1/2 
  Cleanup          : grafana-pcp-5.1.1-1.el9.x86_64                         2/2 
  Running scriptlet: grafana-pcp-5.1.1-1.el9.x86_64                         2/2 
"/root/.ssh" already exists and is not a directory.

  Verifying        : grafana-pcp-5.1.1-1.el9.x86_64                         1/2 
  Verifying        : grafana-pcp-5.1.1-1.el9.x86_64                         2/2 
      [...]

What is this weird message about “/root/,ssh”???

It is true that we have a symlink rather than a directory for /root/.ssh, but why is it doing anything w/ /root/.ssh?

If I remove /root/.ssh completely, I find that a new /root/.ssh directory has been created.

What is going on here?

2

Okay, I think I figured out what is going on, though I’m not thrilled about it.

The ‘systemd’ package has numerous ‘file triggers’ including one on the /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d directory, so anytime any dnf/rpm action changes things in that directory (say by adding its own directory in there), the systemd package runs a /usr/bin/systemd-tmpfiles --create for the entire directory – not just what has been changed. And one of the files in there – provision.conf – has instructions to tweak the ownership/permissions for the /root/.ssh directory and ends up complaining if it happens to be a symlink. Grrr…

3

So I suggest to find out the culprit package which dropped provision.conf into /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/

What does
sudo rpm -qf /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/provision.conf
show?