I've just been installing a new Dell PowerEdge 850 server with Novell Open Enterprise Server SP1, based on SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 9 SP2.  (This hardware requires OES SP1/SLES 9 SP2 due to the need for an ICH7 SATA chipset driver.)

I found that the system did not install correctly during multiple attempts, failing at the stage of installing the OES SP1 CD #3.  When i looked at the message details, i noticed this message was slightly different to the usual "insert next CD" messages, and referred to /mnt/var/tmp/./suse/CD3.

Looking for this directory (by switching to virtual console 2 with Ctrl-Alt-F2), i found it didn't exist.  However, /mnt/var/tmp/suse/CD1 & CD2 did, and they appeared to be the places that the installer copied the contents of the SP1 CDs (there's a message about this earlier in the installation process).

It appears that there is a bug in the SP1 installer in that it fails to copy the 3rd CD.  You can get around this by mounting the CD and copying the data manually as follows:

mkdir /mnt/var/tmp/suse/CD3
mount -o ro /dev/hda /mnt/mnt
cd /mnt/mnt
cp -vrp media.3/ suse/ /mnt/var/tmp/suse/CD3/
cd /
umount /mnt/mnt

Then switch back to VC7 and continue with the installation.

I don't know whether this is a quirk of my package selection (i only chose the "minimal graphical system" and "high availability" selections, plus a few manual extras), the above workaround seems to result in a functional system with no side-effects.