Working with Codeweavers on this game - thanks, Stefan! - we have managed to get past the error on "Too many missing files" for the patcher. You have to increase the open file descriptors to something much higher. To get Darkness Rising client patcher to run, I had to increase with ulimit -n 131072. As I run SuSE 10.1, I increased it in the /etc/sysconfig/ulimit file, as well.
However, in the latest builds, the game now often cannot connect to the server and drops straight to the desktop. Doesn't work with running login.dll anymore, either. I created a log file, but its well over 2 gigabytes in size.