Salt minion reporting the Salt master's key did not authenticate

Products

• VMware Aria Suite

Issue/Introduction

The Salt minion log is reporting an error similar to the following:

2024-09-26 21:48:44,694 [salt.crypt       :903 ][CRITICAL][13] The Salt Master server's public key did not authenticate!
The master may need to be updated if it is a version of Salt lower than 3006.9, or
If you are confident that you are connecting to a valid Salt Master, then remove the master public key and restart the Salt Minion.
The master public key can be found at:
/etc/salt/pki/minion/minion_master.pub

NOTE: The path mentioned at the end of the message may change based on OS

Environment

SaltProject all versions

SaltStack all versions

Cause

The public key for the Salt master that is cached on the Salt minion is not the same as the public stored on the Salt master. Compare the file /etc/salt/pki/master/master.pub on the Salt master to the file /etc/salt/pki/minion/minion_master.pub on the Salt minion. These files likely do not match.

Resolution

1. Stop the Salt minion daemon
   1. systemctl stop salt-minion (Linux)
   2. net stop salt-minion (Windows)
2. Remove the master's public key from the Salt minion
   1. rm -v /etc/salt/pki/minion/minion_master.pub (Linux)
   2. del C:\ProgramData\SaltProject\conf\pki\minion_master.pub
   3. If either of these paths do not exist on the minion, then please reference the error message for the expected path and remove the file from that location
3. Start the Salt minion
   1. systemctl start salt-minion (Linux)
   2. net start salt-minion (Windows)
4. Confirm that the Salt minion is now able to run commands from the Salt master
   1. This can be done by executing a command like "salt-call test.version"