Symptom: on every attempt to install online update patches, opensuseupdater-kde 'does something' briefly, then goes back to 'New updates available' without any error message.

Cause: I had installed debuginfo and debugsource for a package to be patched, that are no longer available.  Zypper had to ask what to do about the conflict (see below)

Expected: Explanation of conflict and choice of steps to resolve, followed by installation of patches beginning.

Zypper illustrates the problem:
coquet:/suse/wstephenson # zypper up -t patch
Reading installed packages...

Problem: libqt4-debuginfo-4.4.0-12.1.x86_64 requires libqt4 = 4.4.0-12.1, but this requirement cannot be provided
 Solution 1: deinstallation of libqt4-debugsource-4.4.0-12.1.x86_64
 Solution 2: do not install patch:libqt4-104.noarch
 Solution 3: Ignore some dependencies of libqt4-debuginfo

Choose from above solutions by number or cancel [1/2/3/C]: 1
Resolving dependencies...

The following packages are going to be upgraded:
  kernel-debug libqt4


The following NEW patches are going to be installed:
  kernel libqt4


The following packages are going to be REMOVED:
  libqt4-debugsource libqt4-debuginfo


Overall download size: 22.1 M. After the operation, 333.0 M will be freed.
Continue? [YES/no]: no