Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Core System: CentOS AltArch 7 (1611) on i386 -----> CentOS 7 32-bit
Display Manager: GDM, Gnome Display Manager
OpenOffice4.1.3 installed from tarball, desktop-integration with freedesktop-menus
OpenOffice installs with no problems
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Using GNOME 3 GUI, CentOS 7-Gnome, straight out of the box:

OpenOffice runs fine.

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Using LXDE GUI, created by installing Fedora 23 LXDE binary packages onto the
CentOS 7 32-bit minimal system.

On trying to start any OpenOffice application, startup screen flashes momentarily, then nothing happens.
From /usr/bin, command line entry openoffice4 -writer %U (or any other application) brings up error
message: line 122: 2404 (or some other 2000+ number) Segmentation fault "$sd_prog/$sd_binary" "$@"

I've noticed this type of message in many instances over the years: I've tried two workarounds that have
been previously suggested in the startup script /opt/openoffice4/program/soffice:

export OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=gnome at the start of the script,
uncomment the line SAL_NO_XINITTHREADS=TRUE; export SAL_NO_XINITTHREADS near the end of the script

Neither of these 2 remedies helped.
(export OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=LXDE didn't help either).
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Using XFCE GUI, created by rebuilding XFCE source rpm's from EPEL repository into 32-bit binaries for
installation onto the CentOS 7 32-bit minimal system.

Same problems as with LXDE GUI.
(export OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=xfce didn't help either).
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I simply can't find the needle in the haystack. Why does everything work with the Gnome 3 GUI,
and not with the LXDE and XFCE GUI's ???????

Any advice on how to fix this, or recommendations on further diagnostic procedures, would be welcome.

Len E.

I can't answer your problem, which might better be posted to the Open?Office developer mailing list, where the developers hang out. This list is at dev@openoffice.apache.org.

To the best of my knowledge, development of many (all?) of the linux binaries for OO is carried out on virtual machines running on CentOS.

Please run it in a debugger and post the output, ie.:

$ gdb /path/to/soffice.bin
(gdb) run

You'll eventually get something like this:

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
[Switching to Thread 80d806400 (LWP 101000/soffice.bin)]

Type these:

(gdb) backtrace
(gdb) quit

and post the output.

Following dacha's prescription, 3 outputs, attached as .txt files, have been produced.

Len E.

It crashes in dlopen@@GLIBC_2.1, trying to open a library.

It could be a corrupt library, either in AOO or the system. I can't tell which library from the output. Maybe run "sudo rpm -Va" to verify checksums of all files on the system?

Following dacha's suggestion, 3 outputs, attached as text files, have been produced.

I checked that the md5sums for the Apache OpenOffice tarballs used (separate downloads) did match
the value posted on the website.

The specific package for GLIBC_2.1 is glibc-2.17-157.el7_3.1.i686.rpm.

For some reason, the XFCE-gui installation had an earlier version installed.
I did a sudo yum update glibc to install the latest version, but it made no difference
to the problem.

Len E.

I've just stumbled onto a tentative partial solution to the problem:

The information and insight that dacha has provided focused the suspicion on the glibc package.

Recall that the LXDE desktop environment has been constructed using Fedora 23 (fc23) components
installed on the CentOS 7 32-bit minimal configuration. (Gnome 3 is the only official desktop environment
currently available for CentOS 7 32-bit). In keeping with a partial fc23 environment, the 4 glibc-related
packages (glibc, glibc-common, glibc-devel, glibc-headers) were updated to the fc23 version 2.22-18.fc23
on the earlier configuration using the lightdm display manager. On that installation, OpenOffice4.1.3 now
runs normally.

Still to be determined is why AOO won't run on the XFCE configuration which was constructed from CentOS 7
source packages where required.

Many thanks to dacha for providing the necessary clues to get this far !

Len E.

The problem solution successfully applied to the LXDE configuration using
the lightdm display manager has worked for the LXDE and XFCE configurations
using the GDM display manager also.

With the XFCE configuration, some of the source rpm's, most notably the xfconf package,
could not be successfully rebuilt, so fc23 binary rpm's (xfconf, xfconf-devel) were used.

Rory: If you agree, please flag this problem as solved.
Thank you for expediting the solution.

dacha: Thank you again for all your help. Without it, a solution
would not have been possible.

Len E.

How to tag a topic as solved.

In your first post, click the Edit button. Go to the subject line and add [Solved] at the beginning of the subject.

Then select the tick as the Post icon (just below the subject line). Preview if you wish to see how it looks.
Finally, hit Submit - done!

So what did you actually do to solve the problem? What was "that configuration" and how did you achieve it?