Salt installed the so-* scripts into /usr/sbin owned by unprivileged service
UIDs (939/socore, plus 930-960 per service) at mode 755, while root executes
those same files from cron, systemd and state cmd.run. Any file-write
primitive as one of those UIDs was therefore root.
Two mechanisms behind this are not visible in the diff:
file.recurse also manages the destination directory, so /usr/sbin itself was
chowned to whichever service UID ran last. A directory's owner may always
chmod it, so that UID could replace even the scripts already declared
user: root -- so-config-backup, so-suricata-eve-clean, so-nsm-mount-nvme.
usr_sbin_perms now pins the directory to root:root 555, the mode the
filesystem RPM ships.
Omitting user:/group: is a no-op on files that already exist, because
check_perms only chowns when a user is named. Explicit user: root is what
lets upgraded grids self-heal on the next highstate, and what makes a
revert chown back rather than silently do nothing.
Josh Patterson
Jason Ertel