Build of image completes with error "An unexpected error has occured. Please check the logs."

This document (000020977) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Manager 4.3
SUSE Manager 4.2
SUSE Manager Retail 4.3
SUSE Manager Retail 4.2

Situation

Impossible to successfully build an image. Any build will after 20-40 minutes result in the same error :

An unexpected error has occurred. please check the server logs.
(code -1)

This problem happens if the SUSE Manager server and the build server are on different networks, and have limited bandwith between them - like if the SUSE Manager server is hosted by a cloud provider, and the build server is onPrem

No more information is available in the SUSE Manager in the view in the minions event history on the image build event.

On the build server, normally successful builds finish by cleaning up the build, but in this situation, the build is left over at the build server in this directory :
/var/lib/Kiwi/buildnnn
on the SUSE Manager server the build arrives successfully in this directory :
/srv/www/os-images/1/

The logfile
/var/log/rhn/rhn_web_ui.log
will contain this message just before the rsync of the image to the suse manager server has finished :

2023-02-13 17:41:42,386 [salt-event-thread-22] ERROR com.suse.manager.reactor.PGEventListener - Unexpected exception while executing a MessageAction 
java.lang.RuntimeException: com.suse.salt.netapi.exception.SaltException: Response code: 504

Resolution

Add this statement at the end of :
/etc/salt/master

rest_timeout: 7200

and restart the SUSE Manager server

Cause

The default timeout of the salt runner that copies the built image, using rsync, is 300 seconds, and with limited bandwith, the rsync takes more time, and the salt runner times out even though the rsync finishes ok.
Simply increasing the timeout resolves the problem.

Disclaimer

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