Comments on: Novell Client on openSUSE 11.2

By: Wouter

Wouter — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:44:34 +0000

This may be off topic, but I use ncpfs, which is in the openSUSE distro, so no need to break dependency’s, to mount NetWare volumes. Previously I’ve used the Novell Client for Linux, but I think the only thing it ads to ncpfs is that it executes your login script. For me it’s just as easy to set up the mounts I need myself.

I do use the -N NFS option with ncpfs. This works better for OpenOffice.

By: Ludwig Nussel

Ludwig Nussel — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 08:12:36 +0000

Do you really mess with your system like that? *shudder* Not
surprising if you system breaks if you download random rpms off the
internet and force them on the system, even bypassing rpm.

I better don’t comment on the product itself but I can tell you
tricks how I would probably install it if I was forced to use it.
The libbfd requirement can be satisfied by binutils from the
official openSUSE 11.1 repo. So use that one instead of some random
internet search result. libbfd is required by a library that has
RPATH set to /opt/novell/xtier/lib (lib64 on x86_64). So you can
copy the library there. That still bypasses package management but
doesn’t affect other parts of the system. To even fix that you could
use mkbaselibs from the build package to repackage just the needed
library:
$ cat > baselibs.conf < arch x86_64 targets x86_64
arch i586 targets i586

binutils
targetname libbfd-2_19
+/usr/lib(64)?/libbfd-2.19.so
EOF
$ /usr/lib/build/mkbaselibs -c baselibs.conf binutils-2.19-9.3.*.rpm
# rpm -Uvh /usr/src/packages/RPMS/*/libbfd-2_19-2.19-9.3.*.rpm

In case of ncl there's also an even easier way to install the
product itself:

# zypper ar iso:/?iso=/space/novell-client-2.0-sp2-sle11-i586.iso ncl
# zypper in -t pattern novell-ncl

By: smspvdm

smspvdm — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 19:32:26 +0000

It’s just like Ford building a car and then offering a Ford radio that doesn’t fit.
It will fit with a hammer and some tape though.

By: smspvdm

smspvdm — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 19:14:15 +0000

Why don’t they just build a version of the novell client for their *OWN* linux distribution (openSUSE) that just installs?
I just don’t get it.

By: Thomas T.

Thomas T. — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 18:54:18 +0000

Thanks for sharing!