"chown: invalid group" error received on non root post installation step of Spectrum

Products

• Network Observability
• Spectrum

Issue/Introduction

You installed spectrum using non-root account and get the following error on the post install step 7.

 

 /usr/Spectrum/Install-Tools

 ./spectrum_nonroot_prepost_install.sh

          option 2 for post installation steps entered

  

SPECROOT folder /usr/Spectrum

Install user <install owner>

Installing capki

chown: invalid group: ‘<install owner>:<install owner>’

Stopping the processd daemon from unregister_init_processd

Created symlink /home/<install owner>/.config/systemd/user/multi-user.target.wants/processd.service → /home/<install owner>/.config/systemd/user/processd.service.

Unit /home/<install owner>/.config/systemd/user/processd.service is added as a dependency to a non-existent unit multi-user.target.

executing sysctl -e -q -p command

sysctl: setting key "kernel.nmi_watchdog": Unknown error 524

 Updating the network buffers!!

sysctl: setting key "kernel.nmi_watchdog": Unknown error 524

Environment

Non root Spectrum Install

Cause

The script is trying to change group ownership of the CAPKI files to the <install owner> group but this group does not exist. On Most Linux systems, when you create a user, a matching group is added. This did not happen here or the group was removed or corrupted somehow.

Resolution

1. Delete existing <install owner>

2. Re-add <install owner> using useradd command.  

3. verify the group exists using "id  <install owner>"

4. Rerun the spectrum_nonroot_prepost_install.sh.

If this does not work, you will need to:

1) uninstall installation

2) Delete existing <install owner>

3) Re-adde <install owner> using useradd command

4) Installed 23.3 again with same steps.

 

Additional Information

How to Perform a Spectrum Non-root Installation on RHEL 7.x/8.x?

to check if a group exists for your user:

sudo useradd HelloWorld
id HelloWorld
uid=1007(HelloWorld) gid=1013(HelloWorld) groups=1013(HelloWorld)