fresh installation of oVirt-node 4.4.0 on a cluster -- the hosted-engine --deploy command fails if DNF is unable to download updates.

This cluster is not connected to the public network at the moment.

If I use a proxy (setting the relevant env. variables) it fails at a later stage (I think the engine VM is trying to download updates as well, but encounters the same issue and doesn't seem to use the proxy).

With oVirt-node 4.3.x I didn't have this issue -- any suggestions?

[~]# hosted-engine --deploy

[ INFO  ] Stage: Initializing
[ INFO  ] Stage: Environment setup
          During customization use CTRL-D to abort.
          Continuing will configure this host for serving as hypervisor and will create a local VM with a running engine.
          The locally running engine will be used to configure a new storage domain and create a VM there.
          At the end the disk of the local VM will be moved to the shared storage.
          Are you sure you want to continue? (Yes, No)[Yes]:
          Configuration files:
          Log file: /var/log/ovirt-hosted-engine-setup/ovirt-hosted-engine-setup-20200604214638-vae2wf.log
          Version: otopi-1.9.1 (otopi-1.9.1-1.el8)
[ INFO  ] DNF Downloading 1 files, 0.00KB
[ INFO  ] DNF Downloaded Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64
[ ERROR ] DNF Failed to download metadata for repo 'ovirt-4.4-epel'
[ ERROR ] DNF Failed to download metadata for repo 'ovirt-4.4-epel'
[ ERROR ] Failed to execute stage 'Environment setup': Failed to download metadata for repo 'ovirt-4.4-epel'
[ INFO  ] Stage: Clean up
[...]

Thanks,
Marco