I tried this request in the Linux Software section and didn't get much response. Maybe I should have tried this SuSE section first.

I installed SuSE 10.0 on a new (older) machine using the "internet" installation. Went to YOU online update and had no problem. A week later, I ran UPDATE again, selected the packages listed, but received an error: "YOU: could not reassemble rpm from delta" on the 2nd patch (binutils) The system becomes unstable and I have to reboot (I'm guessing because another patch that "took" was the kernel, but the installation was aborted.)

BTW, I have seem some suggestions to deactivate the delta on rpm's. Not sure how to do this.

Any suggestions?

I would assume that the patch was corrupted, either during download or on the mirror. You could try again to load the patch from another mirror, or to manually download the patch rpm.

To deactivate deltas, edit /etc/sysconfig/onlineupdate:
YOU_USE_DELTAS="no"

Thanks abisko00. I was able to edit this file and that immediately changed the behavior of the online update. The comments contained in that file also help to understand what 'delta' updating is about. I thought it was to insure file validity, but it's just to make updating a bit faster.

What is still weird is that updates are downloaded but cannot always be installed. For example, the Progress Log displays:
Retrieving ethereal: 'A Network Traffic Analyser' Ok
But later displays:
Installing ethereal: 'A Network Traffic Analyser' Error

It pops up a window indicating an error, gives me a button that says 'Retry', but then does nothing. When I reattempt the update, it usually works, but then another will fail. Not clear why there should be errors like this (CRC type errors?)

Would I have better success not using the GUI, but using rpm commands?

Thanks again, abisko. Problem 99% solved!





BTW for any other newbie's like me reading this, I needed to learn the rudiments of vim, a Linux editor in the low-tech fashion. All I needed to know I learned by typing vimtutor and that gave me the rudiments to insert text and save the file. I also made a backup of the file first using cp onlineupdate onlineupdate.bak. For more info on the vim editor, see the LQ wiki at: http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Vi

Having similiar errors now on new install when I moved Suse to a faster machine.
I remember I had this problem when I had oc'd an older machine to get more bang and after this new install I have been doing a bit of tweaking and lo and behold this error pops up again may want to go to cmos and reload default config and see if that helps. Compiling or similiar CPU intensive activity is probably sensitive to oc'ing and I cant remember exactly what happens when you apply a delta but my cpu pukes to 99/100%

Oh and by the way you can use Yast to edit sysconf Yast > system > etc/sysconfig editor blah blah.

And Abisk00's fix worked for me. Damn that guy is helpful