Now with new kiwi, I get 
Pattern match or DESCRDIR search failed: default   failed

==> but the pattern name is "default-10.3"

??

That's not the issue.
The error "Pattern match or DESCRDIR search failed" is printed after checkContentData function. But checkContentData already got the empty string as $content variable. So there was no name matching inside checkContentData.

that's true but I can't reproduce this here: I used the following
location: 

   ftp://10.20.3.1/netboot/find/openSUSE-10.3-RC1-DVD-i386-DVD1

will it work if you use this location ?
I mean the content is checked by:

        my $browser  = LWP::UserAgent->new;
        my $location = $publics_url."/content";
        my $request  = HTTP::Request->new (GET => $location);
        my $response = $browser  -> request ( $request );
        $content     = $response -> content ();
        if (! defined $content) {
            return (undef,"Failed to load content file: $location");
        }

but you got the error later, so the download works but the contents
of the download couldn't be evaluated. That's unclear to me ?

I think that $content is empty string (but defined) so it doesn't fail on "! defined" check.
See initial comment: '_content' => '' in the $response hash.

I'm confused that it works for you with the 10.20.3.1 location.

yes it does, this was the test I made before committing. Does it work for you or not with this location ?

I have tested the following code on your machine:

use strict;
use LWP;

my $publics_url="ftp://10.20.3.1/netboot/find/openSUSE-10.3-RC1-DVD-i386-DVD1";
#my $publics_url="http://cml.suse.cz/netboot/find/openSUSE-10.3-RC1-DVD-i386-DVD1";

print "start\n";
        my $browser  = LWP::UserAgent->new;
        my $location = $publics_url."/content";
        print "$location\n";
        my $request  = HTTP::Request->new (GET => $location);
        my $response = $browser  -> request ( $request );
        my $content     = $response -> content ();
print "stop\n";

print $content;

http works ftp doesn't. On my system here in Nuremberg both works.
Could you confirm ?

Thanks

Yes, http works ftp doesn't.
That ftp source is valid and YaST is able to install from it.

This is interesting maybe this is a perl LWP problem ? I have
10.2 perl-libwww-perl-5.805-32 you have 10.3 perl-libwww-perl-5.806-11

I don't think it's a kiwi problem


Anna, could you check this. See my sample application in comment #11

Thanks

The script works for me with ftp perfectly (current perl-libwww-perl on 10.3 machine). I am sorry.

Hm, it all looks like my configuration is somehow broken; I should reinstall to RC2. But the fact that yast is able to use the ftp source and perl script fails just confuses me.

maybe you should install RC3 :-)

let me know if this fixes your problem

Installed GM, ftp works. 
Something in my setup had to be wrong :-(