Registration of a client against SUSE Manager Server fails with "not supported between instances of 'dict' and 'int'"

This document (000021349) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Manager 4.3 Server

Situation

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) client using the "Push via SSH" contact method was registered against the SUSE Manager Server, however, running salt states after initial registration failed with following error message:

  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/jinja2/_compat.py", line 37, in reraise
    raise value.with_traceback(tb)
  File "<template>", line 15, in top-level template code
TypeError: '<' not supported between instances of 'dict' and 'int'

When salt states (highstate) were re-triggered manually they finished correctly. In this particular case this was not an option as clients were registered via automation and when the initial salt states failed, clients were not setup correctly after registration.

Resolution

Check all network components between the SUSE Manager Server and clients for any enabled protection against flood of ssh connections and disable it (when a security policy allows that).

Cause

A firewall between the SUSE Manager Server and clients which denied flood of ssh connections. Multiple ssh connections are established during the registration (using Push via SSH contact method) and initial setup of the client.

Additional Information

During the registration of clients against SUSE Manager Server using the Push via SSH contact method, multiple ssh connections are established. Following test:

for run in {1..20}; do ssh REMOTE_USER@REMOTE_HOST uname -a; done

showed, that the connection is being RESET after several ssh attempts:

user@some.hostname's password:
Linux some.hostname 4.18.0-425.3.1.el8.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Sep 30 11:45:06 EDT 2022 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
kex_exchange_identification: read: Connection reset by peer
Connection reset by 10.228.0.225 port 22
kex_exchange_identification: read: Connection reset by peer
Connection reset by 10.228.0.225 port 22
kex_exchange_identification: read: Connection reset by peer
Connection reset by 10.228.0.225 port 22

During such a test tcpdump was captured on both ends (SUSE Manager Server and the client) and this showed that both sides were getting RST(reset) packets, but neither of those sides were sending them. So there had to be a component in the middle which were sending the RST packets.

Disclaimer

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