Some big refactoring in our Salt setup later, we now have an operational setup again: https://code.opensuse.org/heroes/salt/c/37c6d020e8e6e154717503d8bddacafb3be6aef9?branch=production https://code.opensuse.org/heroes/salt-formulas-git/c/7e7a1d137c46d24ea8362faeb1b7b9fb0b83428b?branch=production Now I can think of at least two other Salt infrastructures I maintain where the problematic symlink setup is used .. assuming this new behavior is now expected, I guess I will have to do the refactoring work there as well. Thank you for the help.