Installing OpenOffice

[rshepherd]

I need to install OpenOffice to support document conversion in OpenMeetings (a Red5 web-conferencing front-end). I've been trying all week with no luck, and could use some help/advice.

I've downloaded the latest OO in Linux RPM format. The included 'setup' doesn't work because it's an X app (expects a GUI). Tried 'rpm' directly, but again, it choked trying to find a desktop package (e.g. Gnome). Also tried 'yum', but it couldn't figure out the dependencies--it said it couldn't find required packages that were in the same directory (!).

BTW, out of desperation I installed the 'vnc-server' package to try to use a remote desktop. Looks like the process terminates immediately. Any thoughts on why it didn't work/how to make it work?

Any advice?

(To calibrate how condescending you need to be: Just switched my Web dev biz to LAMP at the first of the year, but before that I worked for a dozen years with Windows servers. So, while I'm surely ignorant of a lot of Linux details [it has me bleeding from the ears, in fact], I'm not at all ignorant about the technology in general. Be kind...)

Thanks.

[HostV Alfred]

Hello,

We understand your concern, and would like to help you, We normally does not install Open Office on web servers, It may need some digging on different forums. No problem, please post a ticket to our support desk with all the details and we will definitely have a look on this.

Thank you

[inteluser]

I was able to install openoffice with a simple
yum install openoffice.org.i386
I seem to have GNOME installed - probably left over from when I was getting VNC working; I don't use it anymore.

Running `yum deplist openoffice.org.i386` shows a lot of gtk, glib, gnome, and X dependencies. You might be best served installing GNOME first - although yum really should be able to resolve these dependencies itself. Can you be more specific about the error?

How much memory does your VPS have? VNC (just the X server, without any applications, desktop environment, or display manager) takes about 30MB on my system; considerably more (up to about 160MB) with a window manager and firefox. Memory issues might be causing VNC to die.

[rshepherd]

Thanks, inteluser.

yum install openoffice.org.i386

works, sort of, but it installs an obsolete version (1.1.5), 'obsolete' in terms of OpenMeeting's requirements. The OpenOffice installation page @ OpenMeetings is at http://code.google.com/p/openmeeting...fficeConverter , and seems to be saying that OpenMeetings needs at least version 2 to be able to run 'headless', which I think means without a UI. When I try to start OpenOffice 1.1.5 it complains

"X11 error: Can't open display"

I would have expected yum to resolve that problem too. But my similar failure to install vnc-server makes me wonder whether HostV is doing something to block use of any desktop (maybe they don't want the overhead of vnc?).

I tried yum localinstall on the OpenOffice 2.4 RPMs, and it almost worked, except that it complained about unsigned packages. The -t ("tolerant") option wouldn't suppress that error. Any ideas? I feel like I'm sooooo close!

Thanks for your good advice to get me this far.

[rshepherd]

Originally Posted by HostV Alfred

Hello,

We understand your concern, and would like to help you, We normally does not install Open Office on web servers, It may need some digging on different forums. No problem, please post a ticket to our support desk with all the details and we will definitely have a look on this.

Thank you

Thanks, Alfred. I'd prefer to learn how to take care of it myself, though, because (if I can figure it out) this will be the first of a lot of servers I set up this way. I need to know what I'm doing. If we come up with an answer in the forum, other people might benefit from it, too, and that would be good.

inteluser had a suggestion that looks promising. Please take a look, and if you can add anything to it, please do.

[inteluser]

The complaint about X11 is as follows: Open Office demands that it be run in an X (desktop) environment. Since you aren't running one, it explodes. There are a couple of ways to deal with this:

1. Yum (I think) installed X when it installed openoffice.org.i386. As a result, you can run a virtual X session with Xvfb (I think this is installed by default with X; if not, look around for it or let me know). Of course, this makes the applications (like OpenOffice) completely inaccessible, but it does allow them to run, if that is all that is required.

2. You can use VNC on a Virtual Server, with whatever desktop environment you want. Xvnc is a particularly good flavor to use for this purpose. I can say with confidence that you can, because I do. My VNC server initially had font issues. I ended up symlinking everything to everything else (more or less) and running commands to update the X server font lists. If you think that's it, I'll dig up what exactly I did.

Again, it seems that open office is installed - you are just having issues running it because you don't have an X server running.



I don't know about your localinstall packages. Try it and see?

Again, posting exact error message text is helpful.

[rshepherd]

Originally Posted by inteluser

The complaint about X11 is as follows: Open Office demands that it be run in an X (desktop) environment. Since you aren't running one, it explodes. There are a couple of ways to deal with this:

1. Yum (I think) installed X when it installed openoffice.org.i386. As a result, you can run a virtual X session with Xvfb (I think this is installed by default with X; if not, look around for it or let me know). Of course, this makes the applications (like OpenOffice) completely inaccessible, but it does allow them to run, if that is all that is required.

2. You can use VNC on a Virtual Server, with whatever desktop environment you want. Xvnc is a particularly good flavor to use for this purpose. I can say with confidence that you can, because I do. My VNC server initially had font issues. I ended up symlinking everything to everything else (more or less) and running commands to update the X server font lists. If you think that's it, I'll dig up what exactly I did.

Again, it seems that open office is installed - you are just having issues running it because you don't have an X server running.



I don't know about your localinstall packages. Try it and see?

Again, posting exact error message text is helpful.

The 'headless' mode in OpenOffice 2.4 is designed specifically for unattended operation, if I'm correctly interpreting comments on that OpenMeetings wiki page. It's specifically designed to elminate the need to run Xvfb. It has its own package: openoffice.org-headless-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm

Useful background: OpenMeetings is an OpenLaszlo (Flash/Flex clone) application providing video/audio streaming through the Red5 streadming server, as well as document sharing based on OpenOffice. It uses OpenOffice to convert uploaded docs in a wide variety of formats to a standard image format for sharing in web conferences.

OpenOffice has to run unattended, and can't be run through VNC in this application. It runs as a service, not as an application.

I was able to get 1.1.5 installed using your instructions, but it doesn't support "headless" mode--it needs the desktop--so I uninstalled it again.

I then tried yum localinstall on OpenOffice 2.4 RPMs which I downloaded to the server from openoffice.org. yum seems to expect all RPMs to be digitally signed; a typical fatal error message is:

Package openoffice.org-core04u-2.4.1-9310.i586 is not signed

Bottom line: It looks like, if I can get yum to forget about requiring digitial signatures, I could install OpenOffice 2.4. How do I tell it to skip that test?

It's very close.

[inteluser]

Can you get `rpm` to install it? I don't think it checks signatures.

If you can track down the public key of the pacakge (I couldn't with a casual check at openoffice's site) you can import it into yum.

Sorry about misunderstanding the issues.

[rshepherd]

Oh yeah! Got it!

First, no need to apologize about misunderstanding, inteluser. I can see how I didn't explain myself well, and some of my explanations were pretty convoluted. Let's see if I can be clearer when I describe what I did, for the benefit of somebody coming along later.

I downloaded the Linux RPM version of OpenOffice 2.4 from openoffice.org, and unpacked it into a working directory.

I sort of followed the directions at the OpenMeetings wiki @ http://code.google.com/p/openmeeting...fficeConverter , but had to interpret a few things as I'll note.

OpenMeetings needs a subset of the OO2.4 installation. I installed the package using 'rpm' and listed the specific packages per the wiki:

rpm -i  openoffice.org-calc-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-core01-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-core02-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-core03-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-core03u-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-core04-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-core04u-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-core05-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-core05u-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-core06-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-core07-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-core08-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-core09-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-core10-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-draw-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-graphicfilter-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-headless-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-impress-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-javafilter-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-kde-integration-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-math-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-onlineupdate-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-testtool-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-writer-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm openoffice.org-xsltfilter-2.4.1-9310.i586.rpm

Note: The packages were not installed where the wiki thought they would be. I finally tracked them down at /opt/openoffice.org2.4 , and modified the paths used in the wiki accordingly. For example, their test script came out looking like this:

unset DISPLAY
/opt/openoffice.org2.4/program/soffice "-accept=socket,host=localhost,port=8100;urp;StarOffice.ServiceManager" -nologo -headless -nofirststartwizard

That was it. The installation passes the tests outlined in the wiki.

Thanks for your help, inteluser. It's interesting that I had tried rpm initially, but I was misusing it, expecting it to work out a dependency tree based on some arbitrary root package. After I went through the exercize with 'yum' and came back to 'rpm', I knew to just list all the packages I wanted to install.

[inteluser]

Great. Glad I could help.