My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Bugfix packages for LibreOffice

Even with my most recent LibreOffice packages the bug had not been squashed which prevented documents from being saved with password protection. Applying a password would cause the file-save to fail with a “general input/output error” message.

There was a strong indication that this had something to do with NSS but the various distros where the same issue had been reported, appeared to have no more issues, with fixes having been added to the LibreOffice sources. But my Slackware packages were not fixed and no patching would help that.

Finally I discovered that my LibreOffice package built its own internal nss libraries, so I decided to explore the path which Slackware 14 has already stepped onto: I installed a mozilla-nss package on my Slackware 13.37 virtual machine. I changed the SlackBuild script to use the system nss library, waited many hours to let the compilatin finish and… I had the solution. When using the Slackware nss libraries, the password problem went away.

You should have no need for installing mozilla-nss on Slackware if you want to use LibreOffice. I am not even sure if it mozilla-nss was really required during compilation to fix this bug… in Slackware 13.37 the nss libraries are also provided by the seamonkey package. But, I did not want to spend yet another day of compiling in order to find out…

Before you rush off to download and install the new stuff, remember that the LibreOffice 3.6.2 packages are built on Slackware 13.37 but can be installed on Slackware 14 as well. In order to make this more obvious to people who do not read my blog, I have created “14.0” symlinks in the LibreOffice package directories which point to “13.37”. If you find any issues on Slackware 14 please tell me.

Packages are available here (mirrors will catch up in the next 24 hours):

Cheers! Eric

 

16 Comments

  1. David

    Eric, thank you for finding a solution to this problem. I think the mozilla-nss is required to make this work. I used your updated build script to recompile libreoffice 3.5.6 (sticking with that version for now) and using the seamonkey nss in 13.37 I got this error.

    configure: error: Package requirements (nss >= 3.9.3 nspr >= 4.8) were not met:
    Requested ‘nss >= 3.9.3’ but version of NSS is 2.12.1
    Requested ‘nspr >= 4.8’ but version of NSPR is 4.7.1

    I then installed your mozilla-nss package and it’s now compiling ok. Few hours to go yet though 😉

  2. toodr

    I have a small problem with these packages. When I use libreoffice base on kde-4.9.2 with the standard theme for kde – air, and I have a form, which contains a grid control, and a column in this grid control is a “combo box”, I cannot see anything in the combo box’s field.
    This is easily reproducible in any database, with any table, and any type of column, as far as one uses a form, with a grid control, one or more columns of which is a combo box.
    I suppose this is due to kde-air theme and the integration of libreoffice with kde at compilation time. This is specific for Alien’s packages.
    On another computer I have to use the packages provided by Slackbuilds, and there this problem dissapears. Possibly due to Slackbuild’s only repackaging the libreoffice’s binaries.

    This here is Slackware14, multilib, with kde-4.9.2.
    I tried different themes, but this still persists.
    Is it possible to tweak some kde settings, sao that the combo box becomes visible.
    When in xfce4 there is no such problem.
    Thanks,
    Best regards Eric,
    You are doing a great job!
    toodr

  3. alienbob

    I have no idea what you mean toodr… do you have an example file where you have this problem? Perhaps the official binaries do not have KDE integration enabled.
    Did you search KDE’s bugtracker?

    Eric

  4. chrisretusn

    This problem only if saving to native format. I’ve been saving documents with passwords in MS Office formats with no problems.

  5. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    Thanks. Confirmed to be working on -Current machine as well 🙂

  6. toodr

    How to send and where, one small database file and 2 snapshots, illustrating the combo box problem?

    Of course this is not a Slackware problem at all. This is probably due to a bad combination of selected font/background of the combo box + something in the way kde win renders the desktop effects.
    But whatever it may be, I cannot find a way around it.
    I’ve come across 2 postings of this problem in suse’s forums and Arch’s forums, neither came out with a solution anyway.

    There is nothing in the KDE’s bugtracker. It seems to me they have not tested it in this manner.

    Regards,
    toodr

  7. Eduardo

    Thank you Eric!

  8. DEF

    Hi !
    Thanks for your work !

    I’m building this on Slackware ARM 14.0, but it failed with this error:

    checking whether to use the system libpng… yes
    checking whether to use specific JVM search path at runtime… no
    checking for jakarta-ant… no
    checking for ant… /usr/share/ant/bin/ant
    checking if /usr/share/ant/bin/ant works… configure: WARNING: Ant does not work – Some Java projects will not build!
    checking whether Ant is >= 1.6.0… yes, 1.8.4
    checking whether Ant supports mapper type=”regexp”… configure: error: no. Did you install ant-apache-regexp?
    Error running configure at ./autogen.sh line 187.
    make: *** [/tmp/build/tmp-libreoffice/build/config_host.mk] Error 1
    mv: cannot stat ‘/tmp/build/package-libreoffice/usr/lib/libreoffice/sdk/classes’: No such file or directory
    libreoffice.SlackBuild FAILED at line 972
    root@darkstar:/tmp/libreoffice# /usr/share/ant/bin/ant
    Buildfile: build.xml does not exist!
    Build failed
    root@darkstar:/tmp/libreoffice#

    The only tweak is that i use a Debian jdk repackaged, which however works.

  9. DEF

    BTW, do i need to uncomment this patch ?

    #cat $SRCDIR/libreoffice.gcc3_linux_arm.patch | patch -p1 –verbose \
    # 2>&1 | tee -a $OUTPUT/patch-$PRGNAM.log

  10. alienbob

    Hi DEF, I have no idea. I currently do not have an ARM platform to test, and I have not tried compiling LibreOffice there for a long time.

    Eric

  11. jaycee

    Hi Eric! For the sake of being off topic, I noticed that VLC 2.0.4 was released today, and was just wondering if you intended to build packages for Slackware 13.37 as well as 14.0. Also, for the sake of being pedantic, I noticed that npapi-vlc 2.0.2 was tagged a few months ago – http://git.videolan.org/?p=npapi-vlc.git;a=tag;h=eec08d35cb931d61b4ad6e43fc088b912f444188. Lastly, thanks for packaging kross-interpreters the other day! 🙂

    Cheers,
    Jordan

  12. alienbob

    Hi jaycee

    Rest assured that I follow VLC development closely. I am in their IRC channel 24/7.
    For VLC I need to compile 8 packages (for Slackware 13.37 and 14.0, two architectures, and restricted/unrestructed builds) so that takes a while. I am halfway already, just be patient.

    I will not update npapi-vlc since there is not an official tarball. A question on the VLC forum several months ago, to create a release tarball, did not receive any response from the developer.
    It will not be difficult to build your own updated npapi-vlc package however.

    Eric

  13. Peter

    Dear Eric,
    You are my hero! It is very very nice of You, that You solved the password-problem! Now libreoffice works for me on slackware without any problems.
    Best regards
    Peter

  14. Janis

    I’d suggest a small improvement – to separate the extensions supplied along with LibOO in individual package. I may be wrong, but it is quite likely they are seldom-used by the users in general.

  15. alienbob

    Hi

    That question has been asked before. The answer remains the same for the moment: I am not going to do that now, unless I feel suddenly compelled to do so.
    You can of course rebuild the package from source and split off the extensions if you want.

    The only thing I did split off was the browser plugin because that would actually cause crashes for some people.

    Eric

  16. Janis

    I am already doing it… but not for the version built from sources – for the one acquired by reshuffling original rpms

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