FYI: Gnome vs. SLED10 SP3 with Novell Client

[tbreeden]

Lookout:

Updated from SLED 10.2 to 10.3 over the Yast online update.
Seemed to go ok. It removed the 10.2 repositories and replaced them
with 10.3 repositories. Good to see Firefox 3.5 in there.

Rebooted, and logged in and found I could not get into my gnome desktop any longer. Gnome Session Manager always crashed upon entry.

Interestingly, I could get into a fvwm or twm session they worked (as well as could be expected, I guess).

Novell Support could not make anything of it, so I sent in the requested log files and kept chipping away at Linux out of ignorance.

Rule #1: Never install an update for which there is no readme document. At least on the web I could not find anything specific to SP3.

It turned out that there was readme information about this problem, but it was found in
Novell Client 2.0 SP3 for Linux Readme,
which specifically said that this was going to happen when you update to SLED 10.3!

Don't know whether you could avoid it by installing the Novell Client sp3 first, but the fix in the readme did the job.

Now I'm dead afraid of trying an update to SLED 11. Can anyone encourage me? (Win7 is looking better now :) )

Tom