Hi All.
I have been battling with getting YOU to work all day, and finally concede defeat. Hence I am posting to see if anyone can help. This post is a little long, but trying to be as specific as possible. Please bear with me.

I installed Suse 10.0 from one of those 5 cd sets from a linux mag. Initially I couldn't get firefox to connect to the web, but that is sorted after following advice on here-disabled IPv6.
Now I am trying to get YOU to update, and failing. Here's what has happened so far:-
-initially i used Susewatcher, to hit button "onlilne update". This process takes ages, then get error message "cannot fetch remote server list. Only user defined patch sources will be available. Possible solution:check network connection". The machine is connected and browsing, so it's not a network connection failure

-I then went to support.novell.com. They suggest there is a server you should use first, ie. http://sdb.suse.de/youfix. But again I got an error message, "patch information retrieval failed. Couldn't resolve host 'http'"

-Then I googled, and used coolsolutions site at novell, which walks you through adding packman as an installation source. Followed this exactly, and again, get error message " unable to create installtion source from ....the url... InstSrc:E_n0_instsrc_on_media".

-I googled the error message,, which also sent me to links discussing how to add a installation source, but same failures ie, failed to create installation source.

- I found a reference that if gcc compiler missing, it creates this error message. So added all packages (getting desperate now) that were on my installation CD's, listed when doing a search for GCC. I wasn't that surprised when adding installation source still failed.

-if you are still reading, thank you in advance.

-i lastly followed some advice on here, to open a terminal window, and type in "rpm --rebuilddb". And nope, still no difference

I am , as you can see, scrambling, and doing all sorts of nonsense I don't really understand. Guess it's time to ask for help!

Any ideas, would be greatly appreciated.

Since you don't specifically mention it, I'll ask the obvious question. Did you try the SuSE-modified KDE Control Center?

From the Kde menu, click on Control Center, then YaST2 modules, then Software. At the top of the list, click on Change Source ... Then fill in the blanks - you will need the URL of the source of the updates you wish to use.

If that fails, give up and try apt4suse and have done with it.

Hiya. Using Yast was how I originally tried to insert the installation source. But I got nowhere with that.
Like a real newbie, I have to say "apt4suse"? huh? Don't know what it is. Will start searching for it while I wait for a reply.

Thanks so much

You want to be certain you get the apt4rpm for the SuSE distro, which includes some concluding scripts which are run in SuSE when using YaST (or at least calls to those scripts in SuSE). If you don't run those scripts (automatically or manually) YaST could choke bigtime if you try to maintain apps installed via apt.

Hiya. I fluffed up somewhere along the line, cos I killed Suse. It just hung and I had clearly killed it. I have done a re-installation (this time using a different source for the install i.e. a DVD).
I am still not able to update using online update, but now that I've been through this a few times, I can give a bit more information regarding the errors I get- perhaps that will help someone recognise the problem.
If I don't hear anything in the next few days, I'll brave the apt4suse again.

I log in as root
I try and add a site as a mirror site (these were easily added once, but not since)
but this fails, ie. after i type in a possible mirror site, it takes about 10 mins to check, and then gives me a failure message. The site details are correct, I'm sure because I got them from novell.
The list of installation sources currently only has the installation media on it, so I know that if I try and do an online update now, it won't work.

Any ideas?

only to clarify some things

YOU has nothing to do with the server list you can control manually in YAST. This is the first point. The second point ist that this whole thread is so confusing that nobody will understand what exactly your problem ist. So, please tell us the following:

1) Did you try to reinstall YAST in a console or in runlevel 3 (this means without graphics) by using rpm?
2) please post the output of rpm -qi yast*
3) please post the server list you got from novell, perhaps it IS wrong, don't trust these guys*g
4) Did you check that all necessar yast packages are really installed?

Hi. Thank you for the reply. Apologies for the tendency to waffle on without being clear.

I found a thread last night that highlighted that YOU has nothing to do with the server lists I can control manually- progress!

As for the other questions:
1) No, I reinstalled Suse in it's entirety, after formatting the drive and starting over with a new installation, so the YAST is now as would be during a full installation.
2)EEk, output of rpm -qi yast* says "package yast* is not installed".
3) Server list I got from novell site includes:

packman.iu-bremen.de (suse/10.0)
packman.unixheads.com (suse/10.0)
ftp.gwdg.de (pub/linux/misc/suser-guru/rpm/10.0)
mirrors.kernel.org (suse/i386/supplementary/KDE/update_for_10.0/yast-source)
pi3.informatik.uni-mannheim.de (~schiele/suse/10.0)
There were some others, but I didn't get far with even these, so don't know if you want the entire list, there were about 9

4) The next reply is a little tricky because given the output you asked about in question 2, truth is I don't know, but suspect of course that the answer is no.

Where to from here?

To follow up on this question, I have gone into yast>software>software management.
I searched for "yast" and it seems that all the yast packages are ticked, except for:
-Y2pmsh (shell interface for the Yast2 packagemanager)
-yast2-instserver (installtion server configuration and management)
-yast2-pervasive_postgres (Tool for configuring and managing pervasive postres...)

Also some language translation packages, which i'm sure aren't needed.