This has been covered on a couple of forums out there, but I’ve yet to find a decent comprehensive post. This is for 32bit systems, it’s easily modified for 64bit setups.
First off, search your favorite RPM repo for binutils-2.19-9.3. I like to use http://rpm.pbone.net, but at the time of writing, they happen to be down.
Get a copy of the Novell Client ISO from http://download.novell.com and mount it:
sudo mount -o loop novell-client-2.0-sp2-sle11-i586.iso /mnt
Extract the files from the RPM:
rpm2cpio binutils-2.19-9.3.i586.rpm | cpio -idv
This should create a “usr” directory in your present working directory. Go ahead and copy it’s contents to your filesystem:
sudo cp -R usr/* /usr/
Change directories to wherever you mounted your ISO (in this case “/mnt”) and run the installer:
cd /mnt && sudo ./ncl_install
As the packages attempt to install, you’ll be given options and warnings concerning libbfd and several other packages. Choose option “2” for everything (“Break dependencies”). Don’t worry about actually breaking anything, just roll with option 2.
Lastly, issue ldconfig as root and reboot:
sudo /sbin/ldconfig
sudo /sbin/reboot
That should get you up and running. You can run “ncl_tray” directly from the command line, or create a shortcut to the client. If you’re having connection issues, make sure that openSLP is configured.
The only issues I’ve had so far is the inability to browse trees, which turned out to be a DNS problem on my end. Occasionally I get warnings on login about novfs kernel modules not being properly loaded, but this appears to be benign.
