[BUG] "PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '.'" when running 'salt-key' from user's '$HOME' on NFS

[rjc]

Description

$ cd $HOME && sudo salt-key -L

The above command run in user's home directory with very strict access permissions and which residing on NFS, causes the error below:

$ cd $HOME && sudo salt-key -L
Usage: salt-key [options]

salt-key: error: Error while processing <function SaltKeyOptionParser.__create_keys_dir at 0x7f64642035e0>: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/salt/utils/parsers.py", line 212, in parse_args
    mixin_after_parsed_func(self)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/salt/utils/parsers.py", line 2777, in __create_keys_dir
    os.makedirs(self.config["gen_keys_dir"])
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/os.py", line 223, in makedirs
    mkdir(name, mode)
PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '.'

Please read #31507 as this is exactly the same issue but, unfortunatelly, that one just got closed as completed.

Setup
User, who has admin permissions granted via sudo and $HOME on an NFS server with permission not allowing the local root user to view it.

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

• VM (Virtualbox, KVM, etc. please specify)
• classic packaging

Steps to Reproduce the behavior

1. Set up an NFS server with 0700 permissions on user's $HOME directories.
2. On a client machine, which is not the NFS root, run cd $HOME && sudo salt-key -L - user obviously has local admin rights via sudo.
3. Get the above error message.
4. cd / && sudo salt-key -L works as expected and obviously doesn't display the message as there are no NFS access constraints on local /, which is then the $PWD.

Expected behavior

$ cd $HOME && sudo salt-key -L

run in user's $HOME directory, which resides on NFS and has strict access permissions (0700) should still display the list of keys.

Versions Report

salt --versions-report

$ salt --versions-report
Salt Version:
          Salt: 3005.2

Dependency Versions:
          cffi: Not Installed
      cherrypy: Not Installed
      dateutil: 2.7.3
     docker-py: Not Installed
         gitdb: 2.0.6
     gitpython: 3.0.7
        Jinja2: 2.10.1
       libgit2: 0.28.3
      M2Crypto: Not Installed
          Mako: 1.1.0
       msgpack: 0.6.2
  msgpack-pure: Not Installed
  mysql-python: Not Installed
     pycparser: Not Installed
      pycrypto: 2.6.1
  pycryptodome: 3.6.1
        pygit2: 1.0.3
        Python: 3.8.10 (default, May 26 2023, 14:05:08)
  python-gnupg: 0.4.5
        PyYAML: 5.3.1
         PyZMQ: 20.0.0
         smmap: 2.0.5
       timelib: Not Installed
       Tornado: 4.5.3
           ZMQ: 4.3.2

System Versions:
          dist: ubuntu 20.04 focal
        locale: utf-8
       machine: x86_64
       release: 5.15.0-72-generic
        system: Linux
       version: Ubuntu 20.04 focal

Additional context
Add any other context about the problem here.