Don’t forget that RC1 is still an unofficial release itself. It looks like they’re testing the update and debugging process in hopes that if they find a way to improve matters or resolve problems in the process they can implement it before everyone starts installing the final GM OpenSUSE 11.1.
Kernel updates in the official releases have gone smoothly for a long time. The current problems are similar to what used to happen a long time ago, with incomplete dependencies, botched, not complete install processes, etc.
Don’t worry. It’s good that the problems are occurring now. I’m not saying that any software is entirely bug free, but important things like this are good to concentrate on before the whole world of OpenSUSE users are downloading and installing these updates. OpenSUSE is a quite stable distro. Temporary hitches effect any software distribution, especially in the last minutes before a release. And some of this is just due to availability and packaging of all the parts of the updates.
I can confirm that and have no doubt that the final release will be solid. I have never experienced any major problem with past versions. Rock-solid, reliable software I have been using for my day job for about 10 years now. As a user, both Suse and openSuse have served me well.
Trying a test release is definitely a first for me. The large flux of changes surprised me. But, hey, if that is what it takes to make 11.1 as good as previous releases, no problem.
Browsing around bugzilla and the mailinglists showed me that the issues in the update applet are known.
My inexperience made me happily click accept on anything the update applet fed me. I should/could have known better: this test kernel update was not meant for public consumption. But then again, testing is about experiments. The exercise did lead to a bug report that is now being looked into. It is only a minor issue but still it feels good to have made a (albeit tiny) contribution.
Thank you all for your comments, advice and encouragement. It has been fun, I’ll be back for openSuse 11.2-RC1.
Your hint about two different kernels did point me to booting into the xen-kernel. I ran a manual online update from there. That immediately resulted to boot the non-xen kernel. Nice, the main issue is now solved, thanks!
I have the same problem as you. Can you explain how you solve it? How to boot into xen-kernel?
I am quite new to opensuse. thank you