Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Following: [Tutorial] Installing OOo on Ubuntu, Debian and Co.:

This is an excellent how-to for dist-upgrading packages. Using this tutorial, one could bring in most RPM-based packages and run them from Ubuntu (deb-based system). When I was using Hoary Hedgehog and Warty OOo had an issue with a file called javadx which was supposed to show a java EULA, but didn't on some systems (I suspect web-based apt-get upgrades without the original cd had a lot to do with that). I had to delete the javadx file and then OOo worked fine. Every apt-get dist-upgrade brought it back again, though.

Why not just dist-upgrade to each new version of Ubuntu as the stable version becomes available? Remembering to back out an updated package when you dist-upgrade the OS seems middling hard. You may have a few you have upgraded... Debian users have far longer intervals between versions, so it makes sense to dist-upgrade individual packages in Debian. Ubuntu is moved on past Feisty. Gutsy Gibbon is a stable release and the 8.04 edition is in pre-alpha release stages.

saphil wrote:Why not just dist-upgrade to each new version of Ubuntu as the stable version becomes available?

Personally, I stick to the Dapper (6.06) flavor for 2 reasons : first, I don't want to dist-upgrade by the net, too many users have reported issues when doing so (I'm waiting for a live DVD in a magazine to test it first before installing). Second, the OOo version of Ubuntu is systematically bugged (especially the Gutsy release), so even if I had to upgrade, I would immediately remove the Ubuntu version and install the official one !

Thanks for that. I am about to give up on upgrading OS compulsively, at least on my machines that hold critical information. I have 2.3 on my Fedora 7 laptop and 2.2 on my Ubuntu Feisty (server). I have not had any problems with the bugs you mention on the Ubu-box, but it could be because server does not install any GUI components and I added just what I wanted.


Now I just need to get a couple of machines just to test packages on fedora 9 and Ubuntu 8.04.

-Wolf

Not sure it really belongs in this thread but is it possible to install the go-oo version of OO? The guide on their website just says to do apt-get install openoffice.org, which would presumably install the Ubuntu version of OO. Or am i missing something here?

You are right.. apt-get will get you the version of the software that has been approved for your version of Ubuntu. You can go to the OOo website and get the newest version of OOo. Installs can be more complicated going that route, and uninstalls are also more complicated as you are sort-of working around the automated installation system. Does that help?

saphil wrote:You are right.. apt-get will get you the version of the software that has been approved for your version of Ubuntu. You can go to the OOo website and get the newest version of OOo. Installs can be more complicated going that route, and uninstalls are also more complicated as you are sort-of working around the automated installation system. Does that help?

Well no, i know i can install the regular version of OOo that way, it says so in the top post. I'm talking about this version of Openoffice. Which is supposed to be better.

OK, so pushing on...
http://download.go-oo.org/OOG680/ooo-bu ... 0.3.tar.gz is source of the new version from that site...

saphil wrote:OK, so pushing on...
http://download.go-oo.org/OOG680/ooo-bu ... 0.3.tar.gz is source of the new version from that site...

ah thanks, will give that a try later.

Hagar de l'Est wrote:From 2.3, OOo is also available in .deb format, no need to convert the packages with alien as before.

Hey, just wanted to say thanks for this post and how-to. I have a recent install of sidux (Debian sid), and had a few very minor problems with how OpenOffice was dealing with some display issues. I followed your instructions and everything has cleared up. Thank you very much.

Greg

First I wanted to say thanks for taking the trouble to post easy to follow instructions that actually (almost) work. I have a minor problem in that the default install location for the .DEB's is under /opt. While this may not normally matter, I need to install under /usr/local/ instead. Does anyone know how to install a group of .DEB's to a different base directory?

Thanks!

Thanks for the guide.
I dont understand why ubuntu doesnt provide already 2.3.1 on its repos. :-/

I have a little problem on the first step.

When i do
apt-get remove openoffice.org-core
It askme to delete all openoffice plus my language packs:

Eliminar los paquetes siguientes:
language-pack-en
language-pack-en-base
language-pack-es
language-pack-es-base
language-pack-gnome-en
language-pack-gnome-en-base
language-pack-gnome-es
language-pack-gnome-es-base
language-support-en
language-support-es
openoffice.org-base
openoffice.org-calc
openoffice.org-common
openoffice.org-draw
openoffice.org-evolution
openoffice.org-gnome
openoffice.org-gtk
openoffice.org-help-en-us
openoffice.org-help-es
openoffice.org-impress
openoffice.org-java-common
openoffice.org-l10n-en-gb
openoffice.org-l10n-en-za
openoffice.org-l10n-es
openoffice.org-math
openoffice.org-style-human
openoffice.org-thesaurus-en-us
openoffice.org-writer
python-uno
ubuntu-desktop

If i delete those language packs, my system will get complete in English.
If those language packs depends on openoffice, and if i install them again after being installed 2.3.1, it will install oo2.3.0 again from the repos.
That will give me a mess.

there isn't a way to just unzip oo2.3.1 on /opt and run it from there together with 2.3.0?
That will be more safe, i think.

Also i am using ubuntu amd64 and the downloads page http://download.openoffice.org/other.html#es doesnt provide any 64 bits solution. Can i just install the "Intel" English provided on my 64 bits system?

Wont a OO by faster on 64 bits?

For the dependancies, that's rather strange. Try to remove the OOo packages one by one in Synaptic.

To install another version in parallel, see that thread: How to install OpenOffice.org 2.0.0 as non-root OR on a non-RPM system on the older oooforum site.

I don't know if the Ubuntu version of OOo is also available in 64 bits.

trying to delete openoffice.org-l10n-common:

Eliminar los paquetes siguientes:
language-pack-en
language-pack-en-base
language-pack-es
language-pack-es-base
language-pack-gnome-en
language-pack-gnome-en-base
language-pack-gnome-es
language-pack-gnome-es-base
language-support-en
language-support-es
openoffice.org-help-es
openoffice.org-l10n-en-gb
openoffice.org-l10n-en-za
openoffice.org-l10n-es


trying to delete openoffice.org-l10n-en-za:

Eliminar los paquetes siguientes:
language-pack-en
language-pack-en-base
language-pack-gnome-en
language-pack-gnome-en-base
language-support-en
thunderbird-locale-en-gb

If it just try to remove writer, base or what ever, all of it language packs are selected.



I will see the link you give me.

Thanks

Hey, i have just installed from rpm and it worked nice without removing any system package.
I think that it is a much more safe way to update openoffice on ubuntu.

I only have one problem. Openoffice doesnt get the installed or the provided java.

The rpms comes with a java 1.6 wich should be installed on /usr/java but i lefted it in /opt/openoffice/usr/java.

I tryed to change in Tool -> Options -> OpenOffice.org -> Java
And add the /usr/bin/java already installed on my system, but it keeps saying "The folder you selected does not contain a java runtime environment. Please select a different folder.". It says the same if i try to setup the java provided by the rpms.

Have you converted the RPMs in DEBs? or used the other method? You can try to convert the RPM package for Java to deb and install it to see if it upgrades the current one.

I used the rpm2cpio method. Not the RPM to DEB.

My OpenOffice 2.3.0 has java configured to /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.03/jre

But configuring this path in 2.3.1 shows the above message.

Also, the "Add.." dialogs are different.
In 2.3.0 is a gtk dialog and it allows me to add the same path again without errors.
In 2.3.1 the dialog is more windowish and doesnt shows any file on the browsed directory, only shows dirs, and doesnt show any filtering information. It does not accept the previous path or any other.

Also, the installed java is the same version as the provided.

Could be a bug in the "add.." dialog?

Strange that the default Java environment is not recognized. The dialog only shows the directories, that's normal behavior IIRC. I'm not at home, I can't check right now. But if you've used the rpm2cpio method, I think it can't work for the Java installation. You should try to convert only the Java package to a .deb and install that .deb. Perhaps that it will create a missing file/link.

I think that i have found wha is the problem.
I have my system in 64 bits.
So the java in my path is 64 bits.
But, OOo 2.3.1 is 32 bits and runs perfectly.
It may need a 32 bits java. So i should use the provided one.
The OOo provided java is under /opt/OpenOffice.org2.3.1/usr/java/java-version/...
But OOo doesnt take this directory when i try to setup.
I tryed to move it to /usr/java/... both also doesnt work.

I tried to run 32 bits OOo's java. And give me the next results:
Error occurred during initialization of VM
java/lang/NoClassDefFoundError: java/lang/Object

Then i tryed with linux32 java, and it worked.
So it mey be a bits-weight problem. I dont know how OOo uses java and for what but it maybe is trying to load a 32 bits lib in 64 bits mode, or running the commandline java without linux32.

Any way, i think that wont be a fix for that until i recompile the entire OOo.

OOo is working perfectly, for what kind of uses should i need java on it?

See here: Turning off Java - Consequences?

You should see a new folder, say ooo_inst_folder.

After completing step 3, I didn't see a new folder and a search of the file system didn't locate it either. Any ideas?

Run a 'ls' to see what are the folders available.

Thanks, Hagar. Great directions!

I've rewritten the post few hours ago taking into account your comments, it should be clearer than before.

(Why does OO have to make installing so braindead? WHY?) Okay, I feel better. I uninstalled my old OO (2.2) in Synaptic as per Step 1. I downloaded the deb.tar.gz for 2.4. In the third step: sudo dpkg -i *.deb I get the error message that there is no such file as "install".

A look through the downloaded and unpacked dirs shows that the top created dir has a shell script called "update" but that there is indeed no "install" either there or in the subdirs.

I'm not wise in the ways of dpkg. Can I just type this: Probably not. Especially since this is presumably NOT an update. The old version 2.2 is uninstalled.

Hope there's a simple solution!

Thanks for these instructions, by the way. It beats my old method, where I wound up with three installed versions of OO taking up gobs of space on my hard disk! (Did I mention that I hate hate hate OO's idea of an install package?)

I tried since I thought since it's a shell script, maybe I should just run it like a shell script. That seems to be the right idea, but now I get a list of errors saying it's "skipping deselected package openoffice-whatever" i.e. all the packages I marked for removal under synaptic.

Should I have marked them for complete removal? It said that would get rid of all my config files, and I was sort of hoping I wouldn't have to recustomize OO all over again.

Continuing puzzled....

This is Really Embarrassing. I managed to skip the step about changing dirs to the DEBS subdirectory.

Once I did that before the sudo dpkg -i *.deb command, it worked like a charm. Duh.

Thanks again for this great howto!

I'm not a scripting guru, but a quick look into that offending script "update", shows that it does a whole lot of fuzz to determine how to get a root shell under Gnome or KDE and if there are rpms or debs. On a debian-like system it finally calls with root privileges: Well, that seems to be pretty much the same as although I can not understand the meaning of --selected-only

man dpkg wrote: -O | --selected-only
Only process the packages that are selected for installation. The actual marking is done with
dselect or by dpkg, when it handles packages. For example, when a package is removed, it will
be marked selected for deinstallation.

What is that "marking"? Why mark it before removal?

I must admit, I didn't look at the script. But you're right. That does look like the long way around to the same idea.

Thanks! Worked great!

Question:

How do I convince Update Manager not to inform me about "updating" to 1.23.Ubuntu versions? It's going to be a problem to constantly have the orange Updates Available icon constantly showing - I'll never know if I have a REAL update.

As long as the vanilla version is higher than the Ubuntu version, this should be no problem, I believe. If unshure, I would read the apt reference once again, particulary about "pinning".