My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

LibreOffice, Chromium news

I had a couple of busy weeks at work, and even though I managed to get some updated packages out the door, there was no opportunity to write about them earlier. I bought a ChromeCast and played with that instead to force myself to stay awake after dinner. So, what was new in the last two weeks?

LibreOffice:

Right before LibreOffice turned four years old, The Document Foundation announced LibreOffice 4.3.2. Belated happy birthday to the project! More than 80 fixes went into this minor release, with a focus on interoperability issues when reading or writing Microsoft Office (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX) files.

My previous article which I wrote for LibreOffice 4.3.1 has some additional info on the 4.3 series, should you not have read it before.

LibreOffice 4.3.2 packages for Slackware 14.1 and -current are ready for download from the usual mirror locations:

If there is anyone who has a solution for LibreOffice being incapable to ignore the system harfbuzz library and use an internal version instead… please let me know. It annoys the hell out of me that I can not use the updated harfbuzz in my ‘ktown‘ repository without breaking LibreOffice.

Chromium:

chromium_iconA couple of days ago Chromium stable was updated to 38.0.2125.101. The package which I have built is just for Slackware 14.1 & current. I am pondering an update for the package for Slackware 13.37 & 14.0 but don’t hold your breath. I’ll meet you halfway: I have refreshed the chromium_1337.SlackBuild script in case you want to compile a new one yourself (that script builds the package which I offer for both the older Slackware releases).

Taken from the Chrome releases blog: Chromium 38.0.2125.101 addresses a whopping amount of 159 security fixes, of which these stand out –

  • [$27633.70][416449] Critical CVE-2014-3188: A special thanks to Jüri Aedla for a combination of V8 and IPC bugs that can lead to remote code execution outside of the sandbox.
  • [$3000][398384] High CVE-2014-3189: Out-of-bounds read in PDFium. Credit to cloudfuzzer.
  • [$3000][400476] High CVE-2014-3190: Use-after-free in Events. Credit to cloudfuzzer, Chen Zhang (demi6od) of NSFOCUS Security Team.
  • [$3000][402407] High CVE-2014-3191: Use-after-free in Rendering. Credit to cloudfuzzer.
  • [$2000][403276] High CVE-2014-3192: Use-after-free in DOM. Credit to cloudfuzzer.
  • [$1500][399655] High CVE-2014-3193: Type confusion in Session Management. Credit to miaubiz.
  • [$1500][401115] High CVE-2014-3194: Use-after-free in Web Workers. Credit to Collin Payne.
  • [$4500][403409] Medium CVE-2014-3195: Information Leak in V8. Credit to Jüri Aedla.
  • [$3000][338538] Medium CVE-2014-3196: Permissions bypass in Windows Sandbox. Credit to James Forshaw.
  • [$1500][396544] Medium CVE-2014-3197: Information Leak in XSS Auditor. Credit to Takeshi Terada.
  • [$1500][415307] Medium CVE-2014-3198: Out-of-bounds read in PDFium. Credit to Atte Kettunen of OUSPG.
  • [$500][395411] Low CVE-2014-3199: Release Assert in V8 bindings. Credit to Collin Payne.

This list shows that there is a healthy interest from external researchers to audit the code and contribute to the security of the browser (not only Chrome, but Chromium and Chrome OS profit from these as well). The biggest bonus of over 27 thousand dollars shows that Google is taking security very seriously. They recently announced that they were going to increase the value of these bonuses… et voilà!

Get my Chromium 38.0.2125.101 packages in one of the usual locations:

Let me remind you again, that you can subscribe to the repository’s RSS feed if you want to be the first to know when new packages are uploaded.
Eric

18 Comments

  1. Jen

    And no agent needed for netflix with chrome, either.

    ChromeCasts look interesting, but our problem is getting regular TV. (Bad reception, don’t want to rely upon cable companies for something we should be able to get for free. Our options for that are evil or slightly less evil.) Think the only solution is moving. Aereo was great while it lasted.

  2. Eduardo

    Thank you Eric!
    I have a weird problem now. In Chromium, certain actions completely crash the Intel GPU to the extent that I no longer have video. I have to reboot. So far, searching into the Chrome Web Store search box and making a new post in TweetDeck are the triggers. Anyone else experiencing the same?

  3. regnad kcin

    I have Slackware 64 -current -multilib (& latest kernel) and kde 4.14.0 from ktown. I had trouble with a recent build of LibreOffice in that it crashed and would not start. I tried reloading the latest alienbob version and it didnt help so I went to LibreOffice and got the latest dev version RPMs, did a rpm2tgz and have had no further issues with LO. I have the 4.4.0.0 alpha version of LO also now (alongside 4.3.x.x) and it works fine. Maybe 4.4.0.0 is a bit quicker.

    Havent seen any harfbuzz issues

    Back-and-forth LO compatibility with Microsoft Word and Powerpoint is not perfect yet. Actually version to version compatibility of microsoft files is also imperfect. I still am forced to boot win7 to clean up some .doc and .docx before sending them out to colleagues who have no options other than microsoft word.

    Chromium seems to block SCIM character inputting somehow so that SCIM is inoperative in Chromium. I can use firefox or other options or cut and paste into chromium when i need chinese characters.

    I use a variety of monitor configurations with this small portable i7/ITX box and sometimes KDE 4.14.0 gets confused about which monitor I want. XFCE is more robust on starting no matter what my monitor config is but is not as pretty as KDE can be when KDE is working well.

  4. alienbob

    Trying to compile Chromium on Slaclware 13.37 but so far, I am running into issues I can not solve.
    I will keep you informed, but if I can not find a way to build Chromium 38 for 13.37 then I will upload the build log and let other people try and figure it out.

  5. regnad kcin

    I have also found some trouble with libreoffice upgrading that was fixed by deleting the libreoffice directory in ~/.config… there might be another way, but that worked…

  6. John Yost

    (libreoffice slack64)
    get this error followed by many more when trying to build with just english.
    Any hints appreciated.
    /tmp/build/tmp-libreoffice/libreoffice-4.3.2.2/external/np_sdk/npsdk/npupp.h:91:27: error: expected ‘)’ before ‘NPP_InitializeUPP’
    typedef void (* NP_LOADDS NPP_InitializeUPP)(void);
    Thanks
    John

  7. alienbob

    What release of Slackware, John?

  8. John Yost

    Sorry! I’m using slackware 64 14.1
    John

  9. cwizardone

    Netflix does not work Chromium 38.0.2125.101 (downloaded your package).
    The error code was M7357-1003, which is saying the widevine module is not installed, but the module is installed.
    Not critical to me as I’m not a fan of google and have been able, after many attempts, to get Netflix to work with Firefox using an agent changer.

  10. alienbob

    cwizardone, I thought you received RSS updates for the blog? I wrote that on October 11, as a comment to the previous article about Chromium and Netflix.

  11. alienbob

    John, since I was able to compile this successfully on a clean slackware64 14.1 there must be something amiss on your computer.

  12. John Yost

    Good Morning Eric
    Thanks for the response. When you say a “clean slackware64-14.1” did you also have all the security updates installed? It seems that the build works on a fresh install I did on a spare partition. However after update –install-new of the patches directory I am getting the same error. I am trying to track down what my problem is. Seems like this may take a long time.
    Thanks
    John

  13. alienbob

    Hi John

    The “clean Slackware” virtual machine does not have some of the latest security updates. I will update my VM’s to the latest state of affairs for Slackware 14.1 and next time, I will probably run into these same issues… and will try to fix them.

    In the meantime, there’s always my binary packages.

  14. John Yost

    Good morning Eric
    Did a lot of testing last night. It seems that the culprit is Seamonkey-2.29.1-x86_64-1_slack14.1.txz. I can successfully build with all other security updates installed.
    Cheers
    John

  15. Joe

    I can’t compile Chromium 38 on my slackware 14.0 (32bit), using your slackbuild (chromium_1337.SlackBuild.).

    I read you have run in to some issues at compiling on Slack 13.37… Have you tried on slack-14.0 (32bit) too?

    Thanks anyway for your works! 🙂

  16. alienbob

    Hi John

    I’ll be careful to check seamonkey’s version when I compile the next LibreOffice…

  17. alienbob

    Hi Joe, I am not compiling LibreOffice on 14.0, but I guess it’s the same issue as in 13.37. You and I both did not share build logs publicly so I can not compare your error to mine.

  18. Joe

    Thank you for your answer Eric!
    I’ve posted my logs at slacky.eu community:
    http://slacky.eu/forum/download/file.php?id=843

    I would appreciate it if you could look at that file and that “issue”.
    Let me know if you solve! 🙂
    Tanks again!

    PS.
    I’ve started a thread about Chromium on slacky.eu forum to solve an issue related to omnibox search… that I noticed using your chromium package version 37… Then I’ve tried to build the new 38 version using your slackbuilds on slacky.eu:
    http://slacky.eu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=38103
    That topic is written in italian….
    I’ve also write a comment on this blog, on october 11. Yu can find it at the bottom of this page:
    http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/your-feedback/.

    Hope my feedback will help in some way.
    Again, thank you!

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