Some more findings: Apparently with a directory.yast file on the DVD, there is now an attempt at signature verification, which failed due to missing "CHECKSUM*" files in the directory.yast. It works fine now with that added. However, lnussel monkeypatched that on download.opensuse.org for testing, by doing a "cp -R de he_IL" and adding the CHECKSUM files manually in directory.yast. This got accepted, which implies that no signature verification of directory.yast was done, meaning that it's AFAICS possible to remove files from the media without any notice whatsoever. By renaming "he_IL" to "he" the slide show breaks again, which means that the YaST bug in determining whether a directory exists is indeed the only remaining issue here.