I was using /opt/gnome2 as install prefix for my Gnome developement on my SuSE Linux 9.3 box. One fine day, the /opt/gnome2 folder disappeared suddenly. I didn't know how. I ran YaST update before that. So, I assumed that YaST probably done something with this. Moreover, I never login as root on my machine. Neither I do su. Intially, I grant all access to my regular username using sudo. It seems that YaST has sent a mail to the root after purging /opt/gnome2 directory on which it has no business at all. But since I didn't login as root for a long time, I was not aware of this. Here is the message.

Hallo SuSE Linux user.

Filesystem hierarchy was significantly changed in SuSE Linux 9.0 and all GNOME/GTK related programs now reside in /opt/gnome.

Following directories was removed from live system and moved to /var/adm/backup/GNOME: /opt/gnome2

Please check if there is anything useful and then remove them.

GNOME themes can be simply moved to /opt/gnome/share/themes, all other programs must be re-installed.

Your SuSE GNOME team

So, if you have SuSE > 9.0 and your /opt/gnome2 disappears, don't get puzzled. You did a YaST update. So, don't use /opt/gnome2 prefix on a SuSE box.