NOWS SBE2 - WebUI Does Not Show Updates

Many similar symptoms are seen regarding this issue, including but not limited to:

• Simba, the web-interface for managing a Novell Open Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition v2.0 (NOWS SBE 2) server, does not show available updates when you click on Check Updates button.
• Updating mechanism works fine, Simba simply refuses to show any updates. 
• Cursory analysis of /var/log/simba/*.log does not reveal any obvious errors that could be responsible for this.
• YOU (YaST Online Update) shows all the available updates.
• Third-party updates are not shown, though it is known there are updates available.
  

A Simba update is available at download.novell.com/patch/finder which corrects this problem.  Should you experience problems downloading this update, please contact Novell Technical Services. The patch name is:

MD5SUM     c861987b0d4ee59990569077bc2abd43     NOWS-SBE-simbaUpdate20081215.sbu

To apply this patch please follow these steps:

1. Download the patch to a workstation.
2. Log into the webUI on the NOWS SBE 2 server as sbsadmin.
3. Click on the [Component Update Summary] button.
4. In the Add New Update Package section, click on the [Browse] button and browse to the location where you saved the file from step #1.
5. Click on [Start Upload].
6. In the Upload section, click on the [Install] button next to NOWS-SBE-simbaUpdate20081215.sbu.
   

Alternatively, you can manually run the following commands to correct this problem:

1. 'zypper refresh'
2. 'zypper update'
3. 'rug refresh'
4. 'rug sub SLES10-SP1-Updates'
5. 'rug sub OES2-Updates'
6. 'rug sub OES2-SBE2-Updates'
7. 'rug refresh'
8. 'mkdir /opt/simba/lib/rss/Third-Party'
   
9. 'mkdir /opt/simba/lib/rss/Novell'
10. Restart your server and test the update option through the webUI.
    

NOTE: because the NOWS SBE RSS feed is only updated daily, should you need access to the RSS feeds before Simba's next update, please run'/etc/cron.daily/simbaRssWatcher', then re-authenticate to the webUI.
NOTE: make sure you DON'T have a SLES10-SP2 catalog as an option.  In case you have it, make sure it is flagged as NO (not subscribed) when running the 'rug ca' command otherwise SLES10-SP2 patches will be installed and you will break your NOWS SBE v2.0 server.