What happened?

Description

state.sls <mods> queue=True silently drops its positional arguments when the run is queued behind a conflicting state run, if the call did not originate from a salt scheduler or salt-call.

The disk-based state queue reconstructs the queued job's positional args from __pub_arg. That key is only populated for master-published jobs; scheduler- and salt-call-invoked runs never set it, so the persisted queue payload gets arg: []. When the minion's background process_state_queue later drains the file it
calls state.sls() with no mods:

[salt.minion :2813][WARNING ] Passed invalid arguments to state.sls: sls() missing 1 required positional argument: 'mods'

Setup

• Single minion.
• Salt 3006.27 (onedir).

Steps to Reproduce

1. Two SLS files:

slow.sls

slow_sleep:
  cmd.run:
    - name: sleep 60

target.sls

target_marker:
  test.succeed_without_changes:
    - name: target_ran

1. Run the long state, then invoke target with queue=True during the conflict:

salt-call state.sls slow
salt-call state.sls target queue=True

1. Inspect the persisted queue payload:

QF=$(find /tmp/saltrepro/cache -path '*state_queue*' -name 'queued_*.p' | head -1)
python3 - "$QF" <<'PY'
import sys, salt.payload
p = salt.payload.load(open(sys.argv[1], "rb"))
print("fun  :", repr(p["fun"]))
print("arg  :", repr(p["arg"]))     # expected ['target']
print("kwarg:", repr(p["kwarg"]))
PY

Expected

Queued payload preserves positional args; the queued run executes state.sls target once the conflict clears (pre-3006.21 behavior).

Actual

Step 3 returns Job queued for execution immediately; step 4 prints:

fun  : 'state.sls'
arg  : []
kwarg: {}

The SLS name target is gone. When process_state_queue drains this it calls state.sls() with no mods → sls() missing 1 required positional argument: 'mods' at salt.minion, and the
state never runs.

Type of salt install

Official rpm

Major version

3006.x

What supported OS are you seeing the problem on? Can select multiple. (If bug appears on an unsupported OS, please open a GitHub Discussion instead)

rockylinux-8, rockylinux-9

salt --versions-report output

Salt Version:
          Salt: 3006.27

Python Version:
        Python: 3.11.15 (main, Jun 29 2026, 22:21:49) [GCC 11.2.0]

Dependency Versions:
          cffi: 2.0.0
      cherrypy: 18.10.0
  cryptography: 47.0.0
      dateutil: 2.8.2
     docker-py: Not Installed
         gitdb: 4.0.12
     gitpython: Not Installed
        Jinja2: 3.1.6
       libgit2: Not Installed
  looseversion: 1.3.0
      M2Crypto: Not Installed
          Mako: Not Installed
       msgpack: 1.1.2
  msgpack-pure: Not Installed
  mysql-python: Not Installed
     packaging: 24.0
     pycparser: 3.00
      pycrypto: Not Installed
  pycryptodome: 3.23.0
        pygit2: Not Installed
  python-gnupg: 0.5.6
        PyYAML: 6.0.3
         PyZMQ: 27.1.0
        relenv: 0.22.16
         smmap: 5.0.2
       timelib: 0.3.0
       Tornado: 6.5.5
           ZMQ: 4.3.5

System Versions:
          dist: rocky 8.10 Green Obsidian
        locale: utf-8
       machine: x86_64
       release: 4.18.0-553.141.1.el8_10.0.1.x86_64
        system: Linux
       version: Rocky Linux 8.10 Green Obsidian