Difference between revisions of "Third-party software integration: OpenOffice.org"

Revision as of 11:02, 14 April 2010

OpenKM can convert some document types to PDF. This is a great help if need to read an Microsoft Office / OpenOffice.org document and you don't have the software installed in the computer.

You need an OpenOffice.org installation in the OpenKM server, and also this OpenOffice.org application has to be running in server mode (also known as headless). In Debian / Ubuntu, depending of you OpenOffice.org version you will have to install an X11 virtual server or not:

$ apt-get install xvfb

And start it using this command:

$ xvfb-run /usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice -headless -accept="socket,host=127.0.0.1,port=8100;urp;" -nofirststartwizard

From OpenOffice.org 2.3, it is not necessary the X11 virtual server but you should install these packages:

$ aptitude install openoffice.org-headless openoffice.org-java openoffice.org

But before of this, you must enable a couple of repositories:

 deb http://en.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-updates universe
 deb http://en.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-updates multiverse

This script simplifies the start process (For security reasons, you should no start OpenOffice.org as root):

#!/bin/sh
unset DISPLAY
/usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice "-accept=socket,host=localhost,port=8100;urp;StarOffice.ServiceManager" -nologo
 -headless -nofirststartwizard

OpenOffice.org will listen at port 8100, so you can check that the application has started running this:

$ netstat -putan | grep 8100

Also you can configure OpenOffice.org as a service with this script:

#!/bin/bash
# openoffice.org headless server script
#
# chkconfig: 2345 80 30
# description: headless openoffice server script
# processname: openoffice
#
# Author: Vic Vijayakumar
# Modified by Paco Avila and Federico Ch. Tomasczik
#
SOFFICE=/usr/bin/soffice
PIDFILE=/var/run/openoffice-server.pid
set -e
case "$1" in
    start)
        if [ -f $PIDFILE ]; then
            echo "OpenOffice headless server has already started."
            sleep 5
            exit
        fi
        echo "Starting OpenOffice headless server"
        $SOFFICE -headless -nologo -nofirststartwizard -accept="socket,host=127.0.0.1,port=8100;urp" & > /dev/null 2>&1
        touch $PIDFILE
        ;;
    stop)
        if [ -f $PIDFILE ]; then
            echo "Stopping OpenOffice headless server."
            killall -9 soffice && killall -9 soffice.bin
            rm -f $PIDFILE
            exit
        fi
        echo "Openoffice headless server is not running."
        exit
        ;;
    *)
        echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop}"
        exit 1
esac
exit 0

Change the permissions to this file:

$ chmod 0755 /etc/init.d/openoffice

Install openoffice init script links:

For Debian based distros like Ubuntu

$ update-rc.d openoffice defaults

For RedHat based distros like CentOS

$ chkconfig --add openoffice

And this script will launch OpenOffice.org on every system reboot. Also you can launch it manually this way:

$ /etc/init.d/openoffice start

More info at:

• http://www.artofsolving.com/node/10
• http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=11890
• http://code.google.com/p/openmeetings/wiki/OpenOfficeConverter