Impossible to add Centos products into SUSE Manager as they are not shown

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Environment

SUSE Manager 4.2
SUSE Manager 4.1

Situation

Any of the supported Centos versions are to be added into SUSE Manager as a new product, in order to manage systems running such operating systems. The products are now shown, neither in the SUSE Manager web user interface (Admin - Setup Wizard - Product) or when trying to use the corresponding procedure in the console (with commands such as "mgr-sync add product" willing to select the product from the provided interactive list afterwards).

Resolution

Users should sync with their network departments and allow connections to the site from which, among others, packages are to be downloaded: mirror.centos.org
Ports 80 and 443 (TCP) should be enough.
Moreover, similar URLs for other products can be checked in the file:
/var/lib/spacewalk/scc/scc-data/*_product_tree.json
As soon as the connection is granted, refreshing the product catalog (either on the web user interface, same screen as explained in the environment section, by selecting the option to do so on the top right part of the screen, or in the console, by running "mgr-sync refresh"), should make the new products pop up in the list.

Cause

No access to the URL: mirror.centos.org

Status

Reported to Engineering

Additional Information

Engineering is aware of the issue and sent patches to correct this issue, so that all "free" products are just listed in the product wizard and they can be added. In case of a firewall blocking the access, the reposync will simply fail.
Together with this change, the notification feature has also been improved, and the reposync logs can be seen directly in the web user interface, hopefully directing the administrator in the right direction.

Disclaimer

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