Summary

OpenBao fails to start after upgrading to the August 3rd 23.1.2 build in specific cluster upgrade scenarios.

Affected Upgrade Path

This issue occurs only when upgrading to the August 3rd 23.1.2 build from:

• June 15th 23.1.2-GA (Bionic), or
• June 23rd 23.1.2-GA (Jammy)

Other upgrade paths are not affected.

Workaround

Step 1: Fix ownership on every node of the cluster

Run on each node (Primary, Secondary, and arbiter nodes):

sudo chown -R versa:versa /var/versa/vnms/share/bao/data/

Step 2: Restart services on the Primary node only

vsh restart
vsh status | grep openbao

Expected result: openbao is Running.

Important Notes

• Ownership change only — do not run chmod on this folder.
• Restart only on the Primary node; do not restart Secondary/other nodes.
• Permanent fix: September 23.1.2 hotfix (not yet released as of Sept 8th 2026). Until then, use this workaround.