Zypper commands failing after patching in SLES 15sp5 with protobuf error

This document (000021477) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP5

Situation

After patching or migration, some zypper components do not update in line with the rest of the stack, resulting in errors anytime a zypper command is run.

The error message contains strings both 'google' and 'protobuf' similar (if not identical) to the following:

zypper: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib64/libzypp.so.1734: undefined symbol:_ZN6google8protobuf8internal14UntypedMapBase12TransferTreeEPN4absl12lts_202401169btree_mapINS1_10VariantKeyEPNS1_8NodeBaseESt4lessIS6_ENS1_12MapAllocatorISt4pairIKS6_S8_EEEEEPFS6_S8_E

Resolution

Manually download and install the libprotobuf-lite25_1_0-25.1-150500.12.2.2 package from the SCC with RPM.

( RESOLUTION )
(1)
Login to SCC and download the below RPMs to the system from the SCC package search (https://scc.suse.com/packages)

libprotobuf-lite25_1_0-25.1-150500.12.2.2

libzypp-17.34.1-150500.6.2.1

libsolv-tools-0.7.29-150400.3.22.4

zypper-1.14.73-150500.6.2.1

libyaml-cpp0_6-0.6.3-150400.4.3.1

(2)

Install the packages with RPM

# rpm -Uhv /path/to/rpms/*.rpm

(3)
Test any zypper command for resolution:

#> zypper refresh

If zypper still does not work, open a ticket with SUSE support.

Cause

An update to zypper's stack did not trigger an update to all packages that zypper relies on, resulting in a loss of symbol tables and then library conflicts that breaks zypper and requires manual intervention.

Disclaimer

This Support Knowledgebase provides a valuable tool for SUSE customers and parties interested in our products and solutions to acquire information, ideas and learn from one another. Materials are provided for informational, personal or non-commercial use within your organization and are presented "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.