Software Updater Error

[Reason]

When I boot I get the following message:

System.NullReferenceException: A null value was found where an object instance was required.

Server stack trace:
at Novell.Zenworks.Zmd.Packaging.PackageManager.GetUp dates (Novell.Zenworks.Zmd.Catalog catalog) [0x00000]
at Novell.Zenworks.Zmd.Packaging.PackageManager.GetUp dates () [0x00000]
at Novell.Zenworks.Zmd.Packaging.RemotePackageMa

As far as I know everything works fine except the software updater/installer (ZEN), it won't start, it will appear to be starting up but nothing happens. If I download an rpm and choose to open with Zen it will hang. When I try to install an rpm with yast I get the message: another process is accessing the package database package management cannot be used now. So I can't install rpms, but strangely when I updated with yast the there were rpms that were installed and I didn't get any errors.

Running Suse 10.2 64 bit with KDE 3.5

Any help is much appreciated

[Hollow06]

http://www.softwareinreview.com/cms/content/view/60/

ctrl+f.. then find packman on the page and follow directions, if that doesn't work find an alternative packman to put in installation sources. Then go into yast and SYSTEM UPDATE. This all worked for me and if anyone wants to tell me what exactly this installation source does..it would be appreciated.

All i know is it comes with mplayer and windows codecs and I was able to fully update with it no prob..even if it had an impact.

Yeah, n e ways, use yast and system update, it works.

also don't have terminal open and/or software update and/or yast(keep yast to one window only. This is something i always do because there sometimes is a problem. So one at a time.

[Reason]

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, packman, I forgot about all of that stuff. I now have a lot more goodies installed and yast will install rpms again. But that still didn't fix Zen, I have the same issue. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling it but no luck. I suppose I could use Yum instead. I'm pretty sure it does the same stuff. I'll install Yum And uninstall Zen and post back on whether or not I get that error message on startup. In the meantime, if anyone knows what could be causing that error message please post some info. It's one of those things that erks me, I mean, If it does go away just from uninstalling Zen I'll always be wondering what caused it.

[Hollow06]

This post is moving down the line, i would suggest you repost in order to find that out. Glad that worked, I just started using linux when i subscribed to this forum.

[dth1]

Run the following commands from a console as su:-

killall zen-updater
/etc/init.d/novell-zmd stop
rm -f /var/lib/zmd/zmd.db
/etc/init.d/novell-zmd start
zen-updater &

[Reason]

Well I removed the Zen installer and I no longer get that error message upon startup. Still wonder what that was though... As for that massage I got when trying to install rpms with yast, the one that states that package management cannot be used, I realized that the suse auto updater was causing that. When I quit the updater yast worked fine. I have the feeling that someone knows what that error message means but isn't bothering to explain because they figure it will involve too much technical jargon for a noob. But even a gist would be sufficient, I could google the rest.

[dth1]

your zen database of installed rpm's was messed up was what the error message was trying to say