While trying to execute /sbin/ldconfig child terminated abnormally

Was working on an issue where vRA Upgrade from 7.5 to 7.6 failed due to an exception during the upgrade phase.

As we all know vRA upgrade has 3 phases

• Pre-Update

• Upgrade

• Post-Update

Snippet from an environment where it worked
17/11/2020 14:16:30 [INFO] Update status: Running package installation
17/11/2020 14:16:30 [INFO] Running /opt/vmware/var/lib/vami/update/data/job/4/run_command
warning: /opt/vmware/var/lib/vami/update/data/package-pool/package-pool/vmware-tools-core-10.3.6-1.sles11.x86_64.rpm: Header V3 RSA/SHA1 signature: NOKEY, key ID 001e5cc9
Preparing packages for installation...
glibc-2.11.3-17.110.24.2
/sbin/ldconfig: /lib64/libhistory.so.6 is not a symbolic link
/sbin/ldconfig: /lib64/libreadline.so.6 is not a symbolic link
/sbin/ldconfig: /opt/vmware/support/lib64/libpng.so.3 is not a symbolic link
/sbin/ldconfig: /opt/vmware/support/lib64/libicudata.so.58 is not a symbolic link
/sbin/ldconfig: /opt/vmware/support/lib64/libcares.so.2 is not a symbolic link
/sbin/ldconfig: /opt/vmware/support/lib64/libicutest.so.58 is not a symbolic link
/sbin/ldconfig: /opt/vmware/support/lib64/libicui18n.so.58 is not a symbolic link
/sbin/ldconfig: /opt/vmware/support/lib64/libpng12.so.0 is not a symbolic link
/sbin/ldconfig: /opt/vmware/support/lib64/libcurl.so.4 is not a symbolic link
/sbin/ldconfig: /opt/vmware/support/lib64/libicuuc.so.58 is not a symbolic link
/sbin/ldconfig: /opt/vmware/support/lib64/libicutu.so.58 is not a symbolic link
/sbin/ldconfig: /opt/vmware/support/lib64/libicuio.so.58 is not a symbolic link
/sbin/ldconfig: /opt/vmware/support/lib64/libxml2.so.2 is not a symbolic link
vmware-tools-foundation-10.3.6-1.sles11
VMware-Postgres-osslibs-9.5.16.0-12585967
vmware-studio-appliance-config-3.0.0.6-190321154832
libopenssl1_0_1-1.0.2r-1.vmw.sles.12677144
vmware-tools-libraries-nox-10.3.6-1.sles11
libxml2-2.9.9-1.vmw.12267021
/sbin/ldconfig: /lib64/libhistory.so.6 is not a symbolic link

Snippet from an environment where it failed
10/12/2020 14:43:34 [INFO] Update status: Running package installation
10/12/2020 14:43:34 [INFO] Running /opt/vmware/var/lib/vami/update/data/job/3/run_command
warning: /opt/vmware/var/lib/vami/update/data/package-pool/package-pool/vmware-tools-core-10.3.6-1.sles11.x86_64.rpm: Header V3 RSA/SHA1 signature: NOKEY, key ID 001e5cc9
Preparing packages for installation...
glibc-2.11.3-17.110.24.2
/usr/sbin/glibc_post_upgrade: While trying to execute /sbin/ldconfig child terminated abnormally
error: %post(glibc-2.11.3-17.110.24.2.x86_64) scriptlet failed, exit status 112
vmware-tools-foundation-10.3.6-1.sles11
VMware-Postgres-osslibs-9.5.16.0-12585967
vmware-studio-appliance-config-3.0.0.6-190321154832
libopenssl1_0_1-1.0.2r-1.vmw.sles.12677144
vmware-tools-libraries-nox-10.3.6-1.sles11
libxml2-2.9.9-1.vmw.12267021
/var/tmp/rpm-tmp.34745: line 1:  5830 Aborted                 /sbin/ldconfig
error: %post(libxml2-2.9.9-1.vmw.12267021.x86_64) scriptlet failed, exit status 134
tomcat-template-8.5.37.0-1.vmw.11804273
VMware-Postgres-osslibs-server-9.5.16.0-12585967
krb5-1.6.3-133.49.113.10.1
/var/tmp/rpm-tmp.34745: line 1:  5835 Aborted                 /sbin/ldconfig
VMware-Postgres-libs-9.5.16.0-12585967
vmware-studio-vami-tools-3.0.0.6-12673961
vmware-studio-init-3.0.0.6-190321154832
Shutting down vami-sfcbd: done.
vmware-studio-vami-cimom-3.0.0.6-12673961
Detected x86_64 arch
Updating /etc/pam.d/vami-sfcb for x84_64

There were lots of ldconfig errors in /var/log/messages of appliance

grep -i ldconfig /var/log/messages

Keeping these errors in mind an upgrade will only succeed if we clear these out

Here's the plan which was followed to clear ldconfig exceptions or cache corruption

All thanks to Nikolay Boshnakov for sharing solution with the limited amount of data we collected at the time of an upgrade

Remediation Plan

Execute below command

strace ldconfig

This will fail with an abort exception

Browse to the following path

cd /var/cache/ldconfig/  

You would see a file called aux-cache

Delete this aux-cache file

rm -rf aux-cache

Execute the below command again which will recreate the aux-cache file again

strace ldconfig

Monitor /var/log/messages , you should not see any ldconfig exceptions anyomore