Description of problem: We have a customer converting from CentOS 8.5 to RHEL 8.5. The conversion fails with a backtrace: -------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< -------- (ERROR) PACKAGE_UPDATES.UNEXPECTED_ERROR: Unhandled exception was caught: in method 'ConfigParser_setSubstitutions', argument 2 of type 'std::map< std::string,std::string,std::less< std::string >,std::allocator< std::pair< std::string const,std::string > > > const &' Please file a bug at https://issues.redhat.com/ to have this fixed or a specific error message added. Traceback: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python3.6/site- packages/convert2rhel/actions/__init__.py", line 393, in run action.run() File "/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/convert2rhel/actions/system_checks/package_updates.py", line 51, in run packages_to_update = get_total_packages_to_update(reposdir=reposdir) File "/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/convert2rhel/utils.py", line 245, in wrapper raise process.exception TypeError: in method 'ConfigParser_setSubstitutions', argument 2 of type 'std::map< std::string,std::string,std::less< std::string >,std::allocator< std::pair< std::string const,std::string > > > const &' -------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< -------- The reason for that was "system-release" provided by `centos-linux-release` package was not installed on the system. We could see this in `rpm -Va` output: -------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< -------- Unsatisfied dependencies for setup-2.12.2-6.el8.noarch: system-release is needed by (installed) setup-2.12.2-6.el8.noarch -------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< ---------------- 8< -------- Installing the package fixed the issue, still I would recommend we harden convert2rhel code a bit more to handle such issues, e.g. report a message such as "Check rpm -Va output for any issues". Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): convert2rhel-1.3.1-1.el8.noarch How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Forcibly remove "centos-linux-release" using "rpm -e centos-linux-release --nodeps" command 2. Execute convert2rhel Actual results: Backtrace above Expected results: Some better message