NOWS SBE2 - WebUI Does Not Show Updates

  • 7002144
  • 09-Dec-2008
  • 27-Apr-2012

Environment

Novell Open Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition v2.0 (NOWS SBE 2)

Situation

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.

Resolution

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.