Novell client on OpenSuse 10.3

October 8, 2007 in Linux by admin | 2 comments

The latest (10.3) version of OpenSuse was released a few days ago. As I use Suse as my main development environment at work, I eagerly downloaded it as soon as I could, and installed it on a virtual machine.

First impressions are very good - very quick startup time, easy 1-click installs and a bright and cheery colour scheme.

Unfortunately, I can’t switch for real as the Novell Client doesn’t work yet, and I need to client to access my shared drives at work. (Although I could use WebDAV, it doesn’t work so well). Attempting to install the Beta 2.0 version yields a single dependency error (wrong version of binutils). Satisfying the dependency results in the Novell Client loading - but not connecting at all. Seemingly, the public Beta 2.0 of the client is no longer available for download.

There was quite a wait on Suse 10.2 for a working Novell Client - which was released in beta form a couple of months ago (and it works very nicely too). I’ll eagerly await and hope that Novell release a new client soon, then I will more than happily switch to the new version.

UPDATE 29th Nov 2007

I”ve just spotted that Novell have posted a way to run the 10.2 client on 10.3, over at coolsolutions.

It has a simple step-by-step guide that just involves entering a few commands into the shell.

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  1. winxfan on November 20, 2007 at 6:49 pm

    I currently use GNOME and you should be able to just map by using the smb://serverIP/folder then you should get a password prompt. Then just save it as a favorite.

  2. Dan on November 21, 2007 at 10:42 am

    Thanks for the reply winxfan.

    Surely the smb:// protocol will only work with shares exposed as Windows style Samba shares?

    I’ve dabbled a bit with the protocols, and the only one that seems to work here is WebDAV - which is very flaky on Suse (no file previews, complains files already exist when I try to copy them).

    Seems the only reliable OS implementation is using my Macbook and OSX’s afp:// protocol to connect.

    Perhaps I need to contact our networking people and ask them which protocols I can use…