'pip.installed' is not available

[robsteneha]

This is to reopen the issue https://github.com/saltstack/salt/issues/55247

I am also facing the same issue where python3-pip (system) is required to install anything using the virtual-env pip. bin_env also doesn't help in this case unless the pip is installed on system.

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[AriadneT]

I don't know anything about virtual-env pip or bin_env, but this appeared in a few Ubuntu machines along with another pip-related error I described in saltstack/relenv#186. This happened in one of two ways:

1. A pre-existing machine upgraded pip via a pip.installed state (most likely into version 24.1) and then began displaying this error.
2. A machine had pip version 24.1 installed during its installation/highstate, resulting in the other pip-related error. Downgrading pip afterwards can result in this error appearing during pip.installed states.

Installing a downgraded pip version might allow machines to avoid this error. If they already have it, one of the following may help:

1. /opt/saltstack/salt/bin/python3 -m pip install pip==(pre-24.1 version)
2. Removing and reinstalling salt-minion and salt-common (most likely after step 1) (the removal part may not be necessary)