IDM fails to load after upgrade to eDirectory 8.8.6

After upgrading to 8.8.6, IDM drivers fail to start. Opening the NDS Server Console shows the dirxml.dlm process as not started (even if set to Manual start, the IDM module gets auto loaded on a server with a driver set associated to it).

Attempting to start dirxml.dlm manually may cause the service to crash.

Looking at the startup trace of IDM (Drvrs tag), the following can be seen:

Error initializing DirXML: java.lang.VerifyError: Incompatible JClient/DClient
package
JClient Revision: 1.6.1402
DClient Revision: 2.6.116

   at novell.jclient.JClient.<clinit>(JClient.java:988)


Subsequent attempts to load the drixml.dlm module will return this error:
Error initializing DirXML: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class novell.jclient.JCContext
    at com.novell.nds.dirxml.engine.MiscDS.createLocalContext(MiscDS.java:69)

IDM is failing to load due to an incompatibility with a newer version of jclient that ships with 8.8.6. This problem seems to affect only the Windows and AIX platforms. This issue is planned to be fixed in an upcoming patch, not yet available when this TID was written.

In order to workaround the problem until a final solution is available, the following instructions can be used. On Windows after upgrading to eDir 8.8.6, two copies of jclient.jar are available in the system. Assuming the install location is C:\Novell\NDS, the following two jclient jars will be present

a) C:\Novell\NDS\jclient.jar
b) C:\Novell\NDS\lib\jclient.jar

try the following steps:

1) Check the timestamps and verify that the jar (a) has a newer time-stamp than(b). If yes, continue to 2, else abort.

2) Shutdown eDirectory

3) Move the jclient.jar from (b) to an alternate location.

4) Move the jclient.jar from (a) to (b), i.e. move jclient.jar from C:\Novell\NDS\ to C:\Novell\NDS\lib\.

5) Start eDirectory

This procedure should allow IDM to use the correct version of jclient and remove the compatibility problem.