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Re: Package Installation....



On Sun, 11 Jan 1998 12:49:54 +0400, "Timothy M. Hospedales" wrote:
> Hi, just a quick question b4 I go to lunch.
> I just installed the StarOffice thing, and had two problems. The first, was
> mentioned in the FAQ; it wouldn't register the deamons. Unfourtunately, I hav
> no idea how to enable the portmapper that the FAQ said I had to do. Where do
> I start with this?

First let me say that I don't have any experience with this sort of 
error, so the list might be a good place to resolve this.  However, 
this doesn't sound too complicated: "..won't register daemons faq said 
you had to.."--that sounds like a job for the daemon initializer 
(init.d).  Deamons are initialized, stopped and started by the daemon 
initializer.  I found a README in /etc/init.d which (among other 
things) gives instructions to run postinst (post-install) scripts.  I 
think you can adapt this to suit your needs, but not having any first 
hand experience with either manually initializing daemons or the 
staroffice .deb, I'm reluctant to go much further out on the limb, 
particularly in consideration that my first limb-going-out-on yielded 
unsatisfactory results.  Is there a staroffice.postinst (or similar) 
file?

By the way, when you install a package, there is often a post-install 
script, and you can see what these look like by looking in 
/var/lib/dpkg/info/*.postinst.  This way you at least have some idea of 
what a post install script looks like.

Regarding a portmapper, I'm completely unfamiliar with such an animal.  
I know what ports are: they're what the deamons listen and respond to 
requests on.  All I can imagine is that part of daemon initialization 
assigns a specific port or ports to listen in on for the staroffice 
daemon.  Somehow this never came up when I was installing staroffice.

> Then I went to run the setup script, (which was annoying; I couldn't find it
> because dpkg -L staroffice3 didn't list staroffice as owning it).
> And  big install-sheild style window comes up with a smaller window in it tha
> never got a chance to paint because the Xserver died, saying it caught error 
> 11. The script gave the error that my environment wasn't setup, so I rebooted
> and set my XPPATH variable as suggested in the FAQ.

Error no. 11 is a subject for a thesis, but the jist of it is that 
memory is trying to be accessed which is not properly provided for.  
This can be the result of a number of things such as bad code, 
overclocked processors, and it may even be intentional.  (Because I 
doubt you want to become a developer right now, I'll skip the debugging 
hoopla, although ideally that would be a Good Thing.)  One reason it 
may be intentional is that one cannot install staroffice as root--any 
attempt to do so will intentionally dump core.  The reason is that like 
some other programs which are intended to be networked, it is 
considered insecure to give superuser status to apps which could be 
heisted by a hacker.  There are several ways this can occur, I believe 
one such type of attack is called buffer flow overrun, which is 
essentially what it sounds like.  Anyway, make sure you're NOT root and 
see if that helps.

> This time I ran the script, and it crashed the X-Server again with the same
> error, but the script didn't give any error messages.
>
> Any ideas?
> Thanks!
> Timothy

Remember that while I do have a functional staroffice3.1 installation, 
I haven't used the .deb myself.  Before you criticize me for 
recommending that, let me explain: I spent FIVE MONTHS (no joke) trying 
to get staroffice to install using manual tarball and rpm methods, and 
finally I got a working installation.  Then I installed Debian, and at 
about the same time I started hearing reports that the .deb script 
worked very well.  Since that time (several months) I've not heard a 
single report of any difficulty, thus my recommendation. Meanwhile, my 
StarOffice installation is on /opt which I merely set in /etc/fstab to 
be booted automatically, so I just copied some user configuration files 
with filerunner from my old installation, and I was ready to go.

Also remember that any large application with static motif libraries 
will likely have a performance impediment--it's not terrible with 
staroffice, but is noticeable. Version 4.0 is not linked against motif, 
and the performance is much improved.  Also, the 4.0 installation is 
wizardly simple, fast, smooth, and flexible.  Also, version 4.0 has 
nicer appearing fonts.  In my opinion, version 4.0 is worth waiting 
three weeks for.

I suspect that any further questions regarding this particular case 
will exceed by ability to knowledgably respond, so my recommendation 
would be to accomplish what you can with what I've given you and then 
post the list for soem more qualified help.  But if I can be of any 
real help, don't hesitate to ask.

-- 
David Stern

kotsya@u.washington.edu
http://weber.u.washington.edu/~kotsya/



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