A Junos software upgrade may fail during the package cleanup phase when the package database contains a corrupted junos-install entry. The upgrade process is unable to remove the existing package metadata and aborts before installing the new software image.

During software installation, the following error is observed:

Removing package 'junos-install'...
pkg_delete: the package info for package 'junos-install' is corrupt
(use -f to force removal)

Additionally, the shell may report:

pkg_info: the package info for package 'junos-install' is corrupt

While the currently installed Junos release is displayed correctly.

Login to shell with root user creedentials.

1. Verify the corrupted package entry:

pkg_info | grep junos
ls -ld /var/db/pkg/junos-install*

2. Attempt to remove the corrupted package metadata:

pkg_delete -f junos-install

3. If the force removal fails, manually move the corrupted package directory:

mv /var/db/pkg/junos-install* /var/tmp/

4. Confirm the corruption message is no longer present:

pkg_info | grep junos

5. Retry the Junos software installation:

request system software add <image-file> no-copy

.