smt-ncc-sync returns: cannot open file /etc/zypp/credentials.d/NCCcredentials for read: Permission Denied

Subscription Management Tool (SMT) for SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP1
Subscription Management Tool (SMT) for SUSE Linux Enterprise 11
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 3 (SLES 11 SP3)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 2 (SLES 11 SP2)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 1 (SLES 11 SP1)

Running smt-ncc-sync returns:

cannot open file /etc/zypp/credentials.d/NCCcredentials for read: Permission Denied

Looking at the facls of the /etc/zypp/credentials.d/ will show that the facls for user and group are set incorrectly:

:/etc/zypp/credentials.d # getfacl NCCcredentials
# file: NCCcredentials
# owner: root
# group: root
user::rw-
group::---
other::---

or some variation of the above listing.  The problem is that the smt user and www group need r-x access to the file.  This can be fixed by using setfacl to set the correct facls for the NCCcredentials file.

While in the /etc/zypp/credentials.d/ subdirectory run the following commands as root:

setfacl -m user:smt:r-x NCCcredentials
setfacl -m group:www:r-x NCCcredentials

NOTE: On the SLES 12 SP1 Subscription Management Tool the file name is SCCcredentials and not NCCcredentials.

smt-ncc-sync should now run without returning the Permission Denied error.

NOTE: if setfacl returns "Operation not supported" check the entry for the partition contain /etc in the /etc/fstab file.  The line must include the acl option:

 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD20EARS-00MVWB0_WD-WCAZA1258151-part2 /                    ext3       acl,user_xattr        1 1

for example.