It seems much worse. I have just tried a pxe installation of a new host which also had trouble downloading various packages. For instance with bind-libs:
access of the client to the content proxy via
https://foreman-content.example.com/pulp/content/ORG/Production/centos7/custom/centos7/updates_x86_64/Packages/bind-libs-9.11.4-26.P2.el7_9.5.x86_64.rpm
(which is listed in the Packages/ directory view)
generates this access to the main server:
Aug 20 08:16:18 foreman-content.example.com pulpcore-content[36059]: Giving up download_wrapper(...) after 1 tries (aiohttp.client_exceptions.ClientResponseError: 404, message='Not Found', url=URL('https://foreman.example.com/pulp/content/ORG/Production/centos7/custom/centos7/updates_x86_64/Packages/b/bind-libs-9.11.4-26.P2.el7_9.5.x86_64.rpm'))
Aug 20 08:16:18 foreman-content.example.com pulpcore-content[36059]: pulp [None]: backoff:ERROR: Giving up download_wrapper(...) after 1 tries (aiohttp.client_exceptions.ClientResponseError: 404, message='Not Found', url=URL('https://foreman.example.com/pulp/content/ORG/Production/centos7/custom/centos7/updates_x86_64/Packages/b/bind-libs-9.11.4-26.P2.el7_9.5.x86_64.rpm'))
Aug 20 08:16:18 foreman-content.example.com pulpcore-content[36059]: pulp [None]: pulpcore.content.handler:WARNING: Could not download remote artifact at 'https://foreman.example.com/pulp/content/ORG/Production/centos7/custom/centos7/updates_x86_64/Packages/b/bind-libs-9.11.4-26.P2.el7_9.5.x86_64.rpm': 404, message='Not Found', url=URL('https://foreman.example.com/pulp/content/ORG/Production/centos7/custom/centos7/updates_x86_64/Packages/b/bind-libs-9.11.4-26.P2.el7_9.5.x86_64.rpm')
The main server doesn’t use the initial letter directory, i.e. the correct URL would be:
https://foreman.example.com/pulp/content/ORG/Production/centos7/custom/centos7/updates_x86_64/Packages/bind-libs-9.11.4-26.P2.el7_9.5.x86_64.rpm
So neither the main server nor the content proxy use this initial letter subdirectory for bind-libs. It’s only on the external centos mirror…