Leapp: "netconsole" SysV initscripts symbolic links are not removed after upgrade

Environment

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
• netconsole package (any version)

Issue

• After leapp in-place upgrade to RHEL 8 is completed, the legacy SysV symbolic links for netconsole point to non-existing file ../init.d/netconsole

  # ls -l /etc/rc.d/*.d/*netconsole
  lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root   20 Oct  6  2017 /etc/rc.d/rc0.d/K50netconsole -> ../init.d/netconsole (Blinking red)
  lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root   20 Oct  6  2017 /etc/rc.d/rc1.d/K50netconsole -> ../init.d/netconsole (Blinking red)
  lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root   20 Oct  6  2017 /etc/rc.d/rc2.d/K50netconsole -> ../init.d/netconsole (Blinking red)
  lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root   20 Oct  6  2017 /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/K50netconsole -> ../init.d/netconsole (Blinking red)
  lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root   20 Oct  6  2017 /etc/rc.d/rc4.d/K50netconsole -> ../init.d/netconsole (Blinking red)
  lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root   20 Oct  6  2017 /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/K50netconsole -> ../init.d/netconsole (Blinking red)
  lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root   20 Oct  6  2017 /etc/rc.d/rc6.d/K50netconsole -> ../init.d/netconsole (Blinking red)
  

Resolution

• The issue is cosmetic only, there is no impact on the running system.

• Remove these files manually from the system:

    # rm /etc/rc.d/rc*.d/*netconsole
  

Root Cause

With RHEL8, the netconsole service is no longer a SysV initscript delivered by the initscripts package, but is delivered by the netconsole-service package.
The initscripts package in RHEL 7 did not do any symlink cleanup when uninstalled, so when the package gets removed during the RHEL 8 upgrade, it leaves dangling symlinks behind. Due to the cosmetic nature of this issue and RHEL 7 being in Maintenance Phase 2 of its lifecycle, it is unlikely that this issue will be fixed.

Diagnostic Steps

• Listing the content of /etc/rc.d/*.d directory shows dangling symbolic links:

# ls -l /etc/rc.d/*.d/*netconsole
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root   20 Oct  6  2017 /etc/rc.d/rc0.d/K50netconsole -> ../init.d/netconsole (Blinking red)
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root   20 Oct  6  2017 /etc/rc.d/rc1.d/K50netconsole -> ../init.d/netconsole (Blinking red)
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root   20 Oct  6  2017 /etc/rc.d/rc2.d/K50netconsole -> ../init.d/netconsole (Blinking red)
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root   20 Oct  6  2017 /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/K50netconsole -> ../init.d/netconsole (Blinking red)
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root   20 Oct  6  2017 /etc/rc.d/rc4.d/K50netconsole -> ../init.d/netconsole (Blinking red)
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root   20 Oct  6  2017 /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/K50netconsole -> ../init.d/netconsole (Blinking red)
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root   20 Oct  6  2017 /etc/rc.d/rc6.d/K50netconsole -> ../init.d/netconsole (Blinking red)

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