From rick Fri Mar 14 11:06:45 2003
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 11:06:45 -0800
To: "Robert G. Scofield" rscofield@afes.com
Subject: Re: [off-list] CD burn request for Saturday's demo
User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i
Hi, I'm not posting to the LUGOD mailing lists these days on
account of
extreme lack of faith in the listadmin, Mr. Salzman. Details
at
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/linux-info/lugod.html
. Accordingly, this is in
private e-mail.
Quoting Robert G. Scofield (rscofield@afes.com):
> I got my Open Office CD from some mail order place, and
the CD has no
> install instructions. So I had to pull out my old Star
Office 5.1
> instructions. There are about three different types of
installations.
> The best, if you have more than one account on your machine,
is the
> "network" install followed up by the "user" install. This
gives a
> couple of megs of stuff for each user who then accesses a
central
> program. This requires adding some type of switch to the
./setup
> command.
They're really done a sucky job with documentation of that --
both in
OpenOffice.org and in Star Office. The way it works is:
(1) Create a directory stub, e.g. /opt/soffice, that you'll
install the
package to. Chown that directory to the username you'll install
it as.
(You do _not_ need to be root to install it! Root authority
should be
avoided for software installation for complex, buggy software
like
software installers when it's not necessary.)
(2) Change logins to that username. You'll need to have X11
access.
Do that whichever way appeals to you. The lazy way is to logout,
then
login and run X11 as the user to do the installation as. (There
are
better ways, e.g., "ssh -X username@localhost", which
requires that your
system be running an ssh daemon.)
(3) Run the OpenOffice.org ./setup with an option of "/net"
to
do the basic install for the system as a whole (around 150 MB).
If you
_don't_ include "/net" at this stage, what you get is an
installation
usable by _only_ the installation username.
(4) Each individual login that wants to actually use
OpenOffice.org must
then also run ./setup, under his own username, without the
"/net"
option. This creates a tree for user-specific files within the
user's
home directory (around 2 MB). Fortunately, if the user starts
up
/opt/soffice/bin/soffice (the program) the first time, instead,
it's
smart enough to launch ./setup on his behalf.
You'll also want to have KDE links, /usr/local/bin symlinks,
or whatnot,
pointing to the binary(ies) in /opt/soffice/bin/, since that's
such an
out-of-the-way spot.
One gathers that this extremely awkward shuffle -- and the
usage of a
non-standard command-line switch delimiter (switches use "-" in
Unix)[1]
-- harks back to Star Office / OpenOffice.org having been
developed as
an MS-Windows single-user application by developers with an
MS-Windows
single-user mindset: Thus, multi-user installation was an
afterthought,
and thus the use of DOS command-option syntax.
The versions for Linux should long ago have done away with
that mess, or
at least documented it better. Too bad they haven't gotten around
to
that.
--
Cheers, "Heedless of grammar, they all cried 'It's him!'"
Rick Moen -- R.H. Barham, _Misadventure at Margate_
rick@linuxmafia.com
[1] The Web forum post below from "Sanal" at Sun Microsystems
states
that Star Office 6.0's installer also takes "-net" as valid
syntax.
Therefore, very likely OpenOffice.org does, also.
OpenOffice 1.0 installation issues
Date Posted: 11-jul-02, 17:35
Posted by: m_dv Hello,
I downloaded OpenOffice v1.0 from www.openoffice.org, and
tried the
installation until I get and unexpected problem. I'm using a
Toshiba
portege 3110CT laptop, running RedHat 7.3 with current updates.
The
problem basically is durring step number 5 on the Linux
set-up
installation instructions in www.openoffice.org of OpenOffice
v1.0.
Anyway, the problem is the following. After step 4, I actually
follow
step 5 which is to go /opt/OpenOffice.org1.0/ however the folder
/opt/
is empty. Yes, I did as step 4 said, prefix=/opt.
Any help with will be greatly appreciated, thank you!
11-jul-02
23:57
Sanal
Not sure if both OpenOffice 1.0 and StarOffice 6.0 have the
same
installation procedure, but this is how installation is done
in
StarOffice 6.0. You may want to replace all references in the
below
explanation from StarOffice 6.0 to OpenOffice 1.0 and try your
luck.
If you have a multiuser environment, you need to use the -net
switch
when running the installation the first time. It doesn't matter
if you
use a single Linux box or a "networked" box. The "net" install
should
NOT go into /root (this directory is offered by default when
installing
as root, change it to /opt/staroffice6.0 or
/usr/local/staroffice6.0).
Step by step:
1. Uninstall your current installation by running
staroffice6.0/program/setup as the same user who installed the
program;
2. Be sure that the files ~/.sversionrc and ~/.user60.rdb have
been
removed from the user's staroffice directory
(/home/username/staroffice6.0 or the place where Staroffice
was
installed).
3. Log in as root and run your installation file with the
switch -net
(or /net): ./so-6_0-ga-bin-linux-<your_language>.bin -net
When prompted
for the installation directory, change it from /root to
/opt/staroffice6.0 (or another directory which is accessible by
regular
users);
4. When done, log out of root and log in as the first one of
the regular
users;
5. Run /opt/staroffice6.0/program/setup (without the -net) and
install
to the user's $HOME directory (Worstation install, 4MB each
user); enter
user-specific information (e-mail address, etc...);
6. Log out of that user, and log in as each one of the other
users,
repeating step 5.
7. Each user may uninstall their own Workstation install by
running the
same setup of step 5; Root may uninstall or modify the whole
program
(base install) by running: /opt/staroffice6.0/program/setup
-net
8. Remember, if you forget to remove $HOME/.sversionrc hidden
files,
you'll get the "already installed" error when trying to
reinstall.
For further questions; please refer to the following URL to
post queries
regarding OpenOffice1.0.
http://www.openoffice.org/mail_list.html
Hope this helps,
Sanal
Sun Microsystems Inc.