Description
I have a Debian12 with salt installed by following this guide (but I also tried with bootstrap and it failed too) and MariaDB 10.11 installed using the following repo (in salt state language):

install MariaDB's 10.11 repo:
  pkgrepo.managed:
    - humanname: MariaDB 10.11
    - name: deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/mariadb.gpg]  http://mirror.mariadb.org/repo/10.11/debian/ bookworm main
    - dist: bookworm
    - file: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mariadb.list
    - gpgcheck: 1
    - key_url: http://mirror.mariadb.org/PublicKey_v2
    - aptkey: False

Install MariaDB server and client:
  pkg.installed:
    - names:
      - mariadb-server
      - mariadb-client
    - require:
      - pkgrepo: install MariaDB's 10.11 repo

when I tried to use the mysql_present module like so:

add mysql test user:
  mysql_user.present:
    - name: test
    - host: localhost

it failed with:

# salt 'test2' state.apply states.mysql.test
test2:
----------
          ID: add mysql test user
    Function: mysql_user.present
        Name: test
      Result: False
     Comment: State 'mysql_user.present' was not found in SLS 'states.mysql.test'
              Reason: 'mysql_user' __virtual__ returned False: mysql module could not be loaded
     Changes:

After a lot of debugging/googling, I realised that salt minion pip's mysqlclient was missing. I tried to install it manually and got (removed most output to save space):

# salt-pip install mysqlclient
Collecting mysqlclient
...
    File "/tmp/pip-build-env-8g8j3ryq/overlay/lib/python3.10/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 320, in run_setup
      exec(code, locals())
    File "<string>", line 156, in <module>
    File "<string>", line 49, in get_config_posix
    File "<string>", line 28, in find_package_name
  Exception: Can not find valid pkg-config name.
  Specify MYSQLCLIENT_CFLAGS and MYSQLCLIENT_LDFLAGS env vars manually
  [end of output]

  note: This error originates from a subprocess, and is likely not a problem with pip.
error: subprocess-exited-with-error

Getting requirements to build wheel did not run successfully.
exit code: 1

See above for output.

note: This error originates from a subprocess, and is likely not a problem with pip.

[notice] A new release of pip is available: 23.3.2 -> 25.0.1
[notice] To update, run: /opt/saltstack/salt/bin/python3.10 -m pip install --upgrade pip
root@test2:~#

After a lot of googling about potential missing dependencies, I had to first install the following:

• libmariadb-dev
• build-essential
• pkg-config

and then everything worked as expected.

Setup

• I've included everything in the description section, what I want to add (without affecting the result) is that the master is running on SmartOS and is running 3006.7nb1.
• as explained, both MariaDB and Salt on the minion are installed NOT with the default system's packages
• The minion is running on a Debian12 image within a Bhyve VM on a SmartOS host (image_uuid: 3089fa2a-ee6e-44e5-aeb2-2cb985f9eb61 , version: 20250123).

Please be as specific as possible and give set-up details.

• on-prem machine
• VM (Virtualbox, KVM, etc. please specify)
• VM running on a cloud service, please be explicit and add details
• container (Kubernetes, Docker, containerd, etc. please specify)
• or a combination, please be explicit
• jails if it is FreeBSD
• classic packaging
• onedir packaging
• used bootstrap to install

Steps to Reproduce the behavior
Everything is explained in the Description section. To summarise, install MariaDB 10.11 on the minion:

• sudo apt install dirmngr ca-certificates software-properties-common apt-transport-https curl –y
• curl -fsSL http://mirror.mariadb.org/PublicKey_v2 | gpg --dearmor | tee /usr/share/keyrings/mariadb.gpg > /dev/null
• echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/mariadb.gpg] http://mirror.mariadb.org/repo/10.11/debian/ $(lsb_release -cs) main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mariadb.list
• apt update
• apt install mariadb-server mariadb-client
• mysql_secure_installation
• mariadb-upgrade
• systemctl enable mariadb

Install salt on the minion (following [salt's guide](https://docs.saltproject.io/salt/install-guide/en/latest/topics/install-by-operating-system/linux-deb.html)):

• mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings
• curl -fsSL https://packages.broadcom.com/artifactory/api/security/keypair/SaltProjectKey/public | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/salt-archive-keyring.pgp
• curl -fsSL https://github.com/saltstack/salt-install-guide/releases/latest/download/salt.sources | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/salt.sources
• apt update
• echo 'Package: salt-*
  Pin: version 3006.*
  Pin-Priority: 1001' | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/salt-pin-1001
• apt-get install salt-minion
• apt-mark hold salt-minion # not necessary
• systemctl enable salt-minion && systemctl start salt-minion

Then, configure your minion to communicate with the master and add the following state to the master:

add mysql test user:
  mysql_user.present:
    - name: test
    - host: localhost

and then send that state to the minion, to see this:

# salt 'test2' state.apply states.mysql.test
test2:
----------
          ID: add mysql test user
    Function: mysql_user.present
        Name: test
      Result: False
     Comment: State 'mysql_user.present' was not found in SLS 'states.mysql.test'
              Reason: 'mysql_user' __virtual__ returned False: mysql module could not be loaded
     Changes:

Summary for test2
------------
Succeeded: 0
Failed:    1
------------
Total states run:     1
Total run time:   0.000 ms
ERROR: Minions returned with non-zero exit code
[root@salt-master /var/salt/file-roots/states/mysql]#

Expected behavior
Ideally I would have expected the mysql_user state to have worked OOTB, but I understand that there's a dependency on MySQL, so I would have expected salt-docs to explain how/what to install as a dependency on some known distros. The docs are mentioning MySQLdb python module, I'm not even sure if I evntually installed that dependency for it to work. And as IIUC salt uses its own python env, some reference to some guide on installing dependencies with salt-pip would help too.

If it was for a less known service, I wouldn't have bothered writing this issue, but this is for MariaDB on a Debian system, so I think people expect this configuration to run smoothly.

Screenshots
If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem.

Versions Report
AFTER having installed mysqlclient

PASTE HERE