Well, turns out having a full /var/log partition might've had some effect here, too.

I backed up the sysrestore directory, tried again, and got slapped in the face by a "no space left on device" error. With a logfile purge, everything worked without doing surgery on the sysrestore directory.

Thanks, Rob!

On 06/22/2018 09:05 AM, Rob Crittenden wrote:

Bret Wortman via FreeIPA-users wrote:

...

I'm trying to uninstall and reinstall the ipa client on a particular system. Here's what it looks like:

 # ipa-client-install --uninstall -U
 # ipa-client-install --enable-dns-updates --mkhomedir
 IPA client is already configured on this system.
 If you want to reinstall the IPA client, uninstall it first using
 'ipa-client-install --uninstall'.
 The ipa-client-isntall command failed. See
 /var/log/ipaclient-install.log for more information
 # ipa-client-install --uninstall -U
 #

Repeat at will.

I've not encountered a client this "sticky" before. Any suggestions for busting it loose so I can get this system working again? It's currently enrolled with a set of IPA servers that have been decommissioned. I even tried powering one back on but that didn't help.

Interesting. This is controlled mostly by two files, /var/lib/ipa-client/sysrestore/sysrestore.[state|index]

Before deleting everything in /var/lib/ipa-client/sysrestore I'd suggest seeing what, if any other files remain (these are the backed-up files) and what the contents of the state/index are to see if something was not restored.

I'd also ensure that /etc/ipa/default.conf and /etc/ipa/ca.crt are not present.

rob