Error: "A child process exited with code: 234" when upgrading to VCDA 4.7.4

Products

• VMware Cloud Director
• VMware Cloud Director Availability - Disaster Recovery 4.x
• VMware Cloud Director Availability - Migration 4.x

Issue/Introduction

• When attempting to upgrade a VMware Cloud Director Availability appliance to VCDA 4.7.4, the upgrade does not complete.
• The error "A child process exited with code: 234" is shown in the UI on the Ready For Upgrade page after clicking Finish.
• In /var/log/upgrade.log you may see similar errors:

Error verifying signature of: /mnt/cdrom/update/dnf/x86_64/vim-9.1.1441-1.ph4.x86_64.rpm
[2025-12-02 19:18:26 UTC] Error processing package: x86_64/vim-9.1.1441-1.ph4.x86_64.rpm
[2025-12-02 19:18:26 UTC] Error(1514) : RPM is signed but failed to match with known keys. Use --nogpgcheck to ignore.
...
[2025-12-02 19:18:26 UTC] Downloading:
[2025-12-02 19:18:26 UTC] importing key from file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/vcav-public-key.asc
[2025-12-02 19:18:26 UTC] Bad exit code: 234
[2025-12-02 19:18:26 UTC] {
    "code": "BadExitCode",
    "msg": "",
    "args": [
        "234"
    ]
}

Environment

VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7.3.x

Cause

Photon started using a newer 4096 bit gpg key for signing rpms on 28-Mar-2024, which has not been imported to the package manager on the appliance.

Resolution

Run the following command on the appliance and retry the upgrade:

rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/VMWARE-RPM-GPG-KEY-4096