  StarOffice 3.1 Mini-HOWTO
  Matthew Borowski (mkb@poboxes.com )
  v1.1, 28 November 1999

  Information on installing the StarOffice 3.1 Office Suite by StarDivi­
  sion.
  ______________________________________________________________________

  Table of Contents


  1. Introduction

     1.1 Motif info
     1.2 History of this document

  2. Obtaining the StarOffice Office Suite

  3. Installation of

     3.1 Libc Issues and Fixes
     3.2 Installing the tar Files
     3.3 Setup und Configuration
     3.4 COL (Caldera OpenLinux) setup bug
     3.5 Fixing the LANG variable problem

  4. Running StarOffice

  5. StarOffice Tips

  6. More Information

  7. Contributions

  8. Disclaimer and Copyright



  ______________________________________________________________________

  1.  Introduction

  This document deals with installing StarOffice 3.1. The current
  version of StarOffice is 5.1. Version 5.1 is considerably easier to
  install and less buggy than version 3.1. In fact, in my opinion there
  is no need for a HOWTO for version 5.1, since StarDivision has written
  a fairly complete installation guide. The StarOffice mini-HOWTO was
  useful while it lasted, but it is now being archived only for the few
  who still wish to install StarOffice 3.1. For information about
  StarOffice 5.1, check StarDivision's site at
  http://www.stardivision.com.



  The StarOffice Office Suite is a collection of office tools for Linux,
  written in C using the Motif toolkit.

  StarOffice includes:

  ·  StarWriter, a word processor

  ·  StarCalc, a spreadsheet

  ·  StarImage, an image editor


  ·  StarDraw, a draw program similar to Corel DRAW

  ·  StarChart, a chart-making program

  ·  StarMath, a math editor

  The StarOffice Office Suite for Linux is free for non-commercial use.
  Commercial use requires a license. The cost for a commercial license
  seperate from Caldera's OpenLinux system is currently undecided.


  1.1.  Motif info

  StarOffice is written using the commercial Motif 2.0 GUI toolkit. The
  dynamically linked version will *not* work with Motif 1.2/LessTif.

  The static version (with Motif 2.0 linked in) will work regardless of
  whether or not you have Motif. However, performance drops.

  I run StarOffice on a Pentium 100 with 48 megs RAM, running Redhat 4.1
  and Motif 2.0. Dynamically linked StarOffice takes about a minute to
  load. However, it is noticable that, once it loads up, StarOffice
  dynamically linked takes up much less resources than the static
  version.


  1.2.  History of this document


  ·  Version 1.1 991128 - updated URLs and changed references to
     StarOffice 4.0 to the new 5.1

  ·  Version 1.0 980602 - added information on StarOffice 4.0 and about
     how this document is now outdated

  ·  Version 0.8 971109 - added tips, installation w/o libc upgrade,
     etc.

  ·  Version 0.7 970707 - changed section 3.1.1, changed license

  ·  Version 0.6 970609 - added fix for the LANG variable problem

  ·  Version 0.5 970608 - updated info to StarOffice 3.1 final

  ·  Version 0.1 970505 - the initial release.


  2.  Obtaining the StarOffice Office Suite

  The release of StarOffice 3.1 for Linux is available for FTP at

       ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/staroffice


  The file README.StarOffice contains information on downloading
  StarOffice 3.1 final. You will need to get three files:


  ·  StarOffice31-english.tar.gz (english) templates/demo docs or

  ·  StarOffice31-german.tar.gz (german) templates/demo docs

  ·  StarOffice31-dynbin.tar.tgz (dynamically linked) or

  ·  StarOffice31-statbin.tar.gz (statically linked) binaries

  ·  StarOffice31-common.tar.gz

  There is also version of StarOffice, available from Caldera. Check
  their website at

       http://www.caldera.com

  for details on this. Caldera also makes a StarOffice CD-ROM available
  for $ 7.99 US.


  3.  Installation of StarOffice

  Installation of StarOffice consists of:

  ·  Untarring the distribution files as root in /usr/local

  ·  running the setup program as a user

  ·  sourcing the .sd.sh or .sd.csh

  ·  reading section 3.5!!! (do this)


  3.1.  Libc Issues and Fixes

  StarOffice is linked with libc 5.4.4.

  StarOffice 3.1 *will* work on Libc 5.3.x. Unfortunately, the setup
  program requires 5.4.4 or higher. If you have libc 5.3.x, you might be
  able to get around this by acquiring a copy of libc 5.4.4+ and adding
  it to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable before executing the
  setup script. I haven't tried this, however, so you're on your own.

  If you attempt to run the setup script on a libc older than 5.4.4, you
  will get the following error message:


       line 1: Syntax error at token 'I' expected declarator; i.e. File ...



  To upgrade your libc, FTP to sunsite.unc.edu and look in the directory
  /pub/Linux/GCC for the file libc-5.4.33.bin.tar.gz (or whatever the
  latest libc is). Extract the contents of this file in a temporary
  directory. A new lib/ directory will be created. Su to root and copy
  the file libc.so.5.4.33 from this directory to your /lib directory.
  Now, make the symlink from libc.so.5 to libc.5.4.33 with the command:


       ln -sf /lib/libc.so.5.4.33 /lib/libc.so.5

  then run the ldconfig command.


  Dr. Romano Giannetti (romano@iet.unipi.it ) says:



       ...I want only to add that I could install (like you
       suggested) StarWriter in a redhat 4.2 system which has a
       libc5.3, without doing the upgrade.


       The exact steps are:

  1. get a libc.so.5.4.x. If you have a redhat rpm package (as
  the one you find in the contrib directory), you can extract
  the library by going in a scratch directory and doing:
  rpm2cpio libc.so.5.4.x-y.rpm | cpio --extract --make-
  directories The library will appear in ./lib subdirectory


  2. move libc.so.5.4.x in your home directory. Then (assuming
  a sh-like shell): ln -s libc.so.5.4.x libc.so.5 export
  LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME:/lib:/usr/lib


  3. Now you can run setup.



  3.2.  Installing the tar Files

  After downloading StarOffice, su or login as root and place the
  archives in /usr/local/. Change directory to /usr/local/ and extract
  the files. An example command to decompress a gzipped tar file would
  be:


       tar -xzvf filename.tar


  Older systems may require you first use the gzip -d command to unzip
  the file, then use the tar -xvf command to untar it.

  The files will extract to their locations within the newly created
  usr/local/StarOffice-3.1 tree.


  3.3.  Setup und Configuration

  After you have extracted the StarOffice files as root, you will need
  to login with your userid. Change directory to
  /usr/local/StarOffice-3.1 and execute the setup program. This program
  will install non-shared files and symlinks needed for each individual
  user. The standard installation is recommended. There *could* be
  problems if you do not accept the default installation path.

  StarOffice makes use of environment variables. The files .sd.sh
  (formatted for the Bourne Shell) and .sd.csh (formatted for the C
  Shell) provide the environment variable settings for StarOffice. These
  files are located in your home directory.

  If you use bash, edit your .bashrc and add the line:

       source  /.sd.sh


  After doing this, restart bash to bring the environment variables into
  effect.

  If you use a different shell, consult that shell's man page for
  information on sourcing a file.


  3.4.  COL (Caldera OpenLinux) setup bug

  Phil Reardon (pcr@busprod.com ) says:

       " I found a bug in the setup script for StarOffice that came
       with my Caldera COL standard release. It produces // in a
  path where there should only be one /. To fix it, remove the
  first slash from this line:

       exec ${pfad:='.'}/linux-x86/bin/$name;;


  There should be no / before linux-x86."


  3.5.  Fixing the LANG variable problem

  The .sd.sh and .sd.csh files set the LANG variable. This causes
  problems with perl and man. Man will give the error message


       " Failed to open the message catalog man on the path
       NLSPATH="

  Perl will give the error message

       " warning: setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "")..."


  The .sd.sh file contains a line that sets LANG=us and another that
  exports a bunch of variables, including LANG. Remove the LANG=us line
  and remove LANG from the list of variables, and this will be fixed.

  In the .sd.csh file (which is formatted for the c shell), you need to
  remove the line that says "setenv LANG us".

  Thanks to Adam L. Klein (alklein@adelphia.net) for informing me of
  this fix.


  4.  Running StarOffice

  The StarOffice binaries are located in the directory:
  /usr/local/StarOffice-3.1/linux-x86/bin/

  The applications are: sdraw3, swriter3, scalc3, smath3, schart3,
  simage3

  The program svdaemon must be executed in order to use online help.
  The program svportmap must be executed to enable application
  communication features between StarWriter, StarCalc and StarDraw.


  5.  StarOffice Tips

  Contributed by Patrick D'Cruze (pdcruze@netpal.com.au)


  1.  Instead of sourcing the .sd.sh (or .sd.csh) file in my
  .bash_profile script, I instead copied the .sd.sh script,  renamed it
  to swriter and copied it to /usr/local/bin.  I then modified it by
  adding a:

       #! /bin/bash


  at the start of the script and a:

       exec swriter3 $*



  at the end of the script.  Now all I have to do is run swriter and it
  automatically sets up the appropriate environment variables and then
  runs StarWriter. Saves having those environment variables pollute
  other applications/environments.


  2.  I noticed that for a lot of people, StarOffice takes quite a while
  to load (upwards of 60 seconds).  The consensus on usenet was that a
  large chunk of this time was due to the symbol relocations that the
  dynamic linker has to do. ie, for each new symbol the dynamic linker
  has to locate the appropriate library.  StarOffice dynamically links
  against quite a few libraries so the dynamic linker spends quite a bit
  of time searching through lots of libraries.


  There is a solution to this. I run StarOffice in a chroot'd jail.  In
  the jail, I just put the binaries and libraries that StarOffice uses
  (all the libs out of /usr/X11R6/lib, libc/libm and libg++/libstdc++).
  StarWriter takes approximately 15 seconds to come up on my P133/32MB.
  This is due to the fact that the only libraries present are the ones
  needed by StarOffice and hence the dynamic linker spends
  proportionately less time searching through all the libraries on the
  system (ie, it doesn't search through all the useless libs in /usr/lib
  etc looking to resolve symbols).


  6.  More Information

  More information on StarOffice for Linux is available directly from
  StarDivision. StarDivision maintains a website at
  http://www.stardivision.com

  StarDivision runs a news server with support and user groups related
  to StarOffice for linux. These newsgroups are the best place to find
  up-to-date information on StarOffice and to ask for help. Using a
  newsreader, connect to news://starnews.stardivision.com or follow the
  support link on the StarDivision homepage.


  7.  Contributions

  Thank you to Werner Klaus (wklaus@metronet.de ) for translating this
  document to sgml.

  If you can contribute any additional information for this mini-HOWTO,
  please contact me via internet e-mail. My address is located at the
  top of this document. You may also wish to take a look at my web page,
  located at http://tarp.worldserve.net/ or http://tarp.linuxos.org/


  8.  Disclaimer and Copyright

  This document is (C) 1999 by Matthew Borowski.

  Redistribution of this document in electronic form is permitted under
  the condition that the document remains unchanged. If you wish to
  include this document in a CD-ROM or book, please obtain permission
  from me beforehand (I prefer requests to be sent via e-mail).


  The author claims no responsibility in anything that may occur
  directly or indirectly as a result of using this document. The author
  is not an employee of StarDivision, GmbH or Caldera, Inc.

  Comments and questions may be directed to the author at
  mkb@poboxes.com.
