Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 39693
OO.o 1.1.4 Installer crashes, chokes on certain AFM files
Last modified: 2005-07-26 17:35:26 UTC
Thanks again for the excellent job in developing OO.o. These are my system specs: P4 2GHz, 512 MB RAM, 40 GB HDD, running Slackware Linux 10.0 in an updated condition (i.e., stock system + patches). Glibc is identified as version 2.3.2. I downloaded OO.o 1.1.4 for the purposes of doing an upgrade. I called the "setup" program in a xterm window. This program displayed the initial progress bar "unpacking" before calling the install proper. The progress bar reached the end, and disappeared, and after a while, the command prompt returned to the xterm, and all OO.o-related processes were finished without activating the installer program. I tried to do the same in a laptop also running Slackware 10.0 and got the same behavior. This is obviously not expected. Evidently, the installer crashes without giving even a hint of it in stdout/stderr instead of launching the installer GUI, as expected. Previous versions up to 1.1.2. (which is the one I'm using right now) are not affected by this issue. I'm able to install 1.1.2 properly without trouble. Any hints or help in solving this issue will be greatly appreciated. Eduardo Sanchez
I've tried with a downloaded version from http://ftp.stardiv.de/pub/OpenOffice.org/stable/1.1.4/. No problem at all. Have you checksummed your downloaded file? Maybe it's broken. Maybe ot's related somehow to your slackware distribution. Please ask at the mailinglist 'user@openoffice.org'. I think there you can find the support you need.
Please reconsider. The downloaded file was MD5 checked. If this is a distro-specific issue, then why it is that OO.o versions 1.1.2 and below works without a hitch? I don't think that code differences between one or two minor versions were so sweeping as to introduce incompatibility. In my opinion, the issue is alive. I would really like to give you even more information about the crash, but I can't because the program exits silently without printing a message. Thanks for your patience and help. Eduardo
I have no idea what went wrong on your system. I haven't heard about any similar problem. Do you have enough disk space also in your temp directory? I would like to ask you again to refer to the community for assistance. Otherwise a stacktrace for the setup can help us out.
Thanks for your patience in dealing with this issue. Yes, I have more than enough space in the temp dir. It is inside a partition with 6 GB of disk space free, which I consider to be enough for this purpose. I am subscribed to OO.o users so I could follow your advice to resort to the community. Also, I would like to give you a stacktrace if possible, but I need to know how to produce one. Thanks again, Eduardo
I've subscribed to the OO.o-users list, and posted my problem. People there were willing to help, but the only substantive suggestion was to produce a strace. I'm attaching the strace now.
Created attachment 21458 [details] stack trace of OO.o 1.1.4 setup, bzipped.
Finally could work around the issue. And this is what happened: I had some Bitstream Type1 fonts installed from a legacy Corel Draw application. Removing all the AFM files I got with the fonts, and generating a fresh set of AFMs using pf2afm solved the problem. After this step, both OpenOffice.org 1.1.3 and OpenOffice.org 1.1.4 were able to install and run normally. This issue does not exist in 1.1.2. That is, I am able to set-up, install, and use 1.1.2 normally with the old, Bitstream-provided set of AFM files. However, since it is evident that 1.1.3 and 1.1.4 chokes on those AFM files, I would call this a regression. I would appreciate either a fix, or a mention in the release notes as a known issue. Thanks again for your time and patience. Eduardo
of @ us: This is a font related problem. Please have a look.
Eduardo, could you pls. attach the AFMs in question. Thanks in advance. -Ulf.
Ulf, I'm attaching the files now. Thanks. Eduardo
Created attachment 22831 [details] AFM files crashing OO.o 1.1.3 and 1.1.4, bzipped
internal comment: On SuSE 9.2 ghostscript AFM's are in /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts exchanging original path with AFM files submitted by sombragris01 do not crash the writer component, starting setup component will print "error in fontpath (salvaged)"; starting setup for first time not yet tested
As you know the installer provided with 1.1.x versions is abandoned in favor of native installers. Hence we won't make any fixes to the old installer. Hope it's acceptable to close as will not fix, the more as the problem seems to be with the afm files.
closing.