How to configure OOo for networked use?

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tn@BeWo
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How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by tn@BeWo »

Has anybody of this bord ever configured a fairly completely working network installation of OOo?

My task is probably very similar to Madamska's Network Installation: User profile on a server (not local), but that thread seems to be stuck without result and I'd like to ask in some more detail:

I've read the tutorial, containing the post Changing the user profile location and the linked article by Schönheit/Grobler Bootstrapping the Configuration., which is over 5 years old (thanks for putting a date underneath, often lacking in OOo related documentation) and contains a number of notions I can't interpret or use (e.g. "Sun ONE Webtop").

I can't imagine that only a handfull of users have similar demands, so I hope for answers of someone who's completed the task successfully:

The users I want to equip with OOo work mostly with WIntel clients (a pretty motley MSW XP installation), so far very few with Linux (Ubuntu 8.1) in a Windows network with a Samba server (a thing which I don't really know - I've never been a dedicated network admin).
I experimently installed OOo directly on the server, but got response times which rendered it useless.

The network shares are to be used for ...
... providing partially common and partially work group specific templates, dictionaries, text blocks up to boilerplates, galleries, database excerpts, OOo-extensions, etc.
... sharing documents for subsequent processing by different members of the workgroup, consolidating & archiving the documents as documentation of processed projects, etc.

So I deem it neccessary to have a common administration for the user profiles (esp. path settings, colors to be used, database connections, dictionaries, ...). This is one reason for the wish to have them server based. The other one is to enable the users to work with their personal profile from a workmates computer by logging in from there to their personal account (or even to access it from a remote location (own notebook from customer site, home) over the web).

The installation should, of course, include the correct file associations for OOo, therefor the approach to launch it via personalized links doesn't do the trick.
Some of the users fill multiple roles in the work flow with different requirements for the OOo profile - so my approach is to have according profiles for them to choose from. Since the users, who've created and who've edited the document (as roles), have to be stored with the document anyway, I'd like to use these variables for selecting the correct OOo profile, when launching OOo by opening (commonly referred to as "double clicking") the document.

If anybody is successfully working with OOo and server based user profiles, please tell me how you configured it.

I hope not to need much scripting for that purpose, because it might endanger (at least severely hamper) future maintenance.
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by r4zoli »

I can not answer to your questions, but I suggest to read the Admin Guide, you can find some answers.
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by tn@BeWo »

Thanks for bothering, but the site doesn't work: 0% progress for half an hour of trying to download.
And yes the site worked as late as ~ 1 week ago, no idea what's broken it.
 Edit: Oh well:
The OpenOffice.org Wiki software was upgraded on Thursday, 22 July 2009.
Known issues: Variables and Collections are not working correctly. They will be fixed as soon as possible.
If there are any other problems with the Wiki, please send an email to the dev@website.openoffice.org mailing list.
email's been sent 
Last edited by tn@BeWo on Sun Jul 26, 2009 12:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by Villeroy »

Try again. r4zoli's link works for me.
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by tn@BeWo »

Tried again - no progress.

But anyway, the content is far beyond what I'm looking for.
It cannot be such a hassle to just make OOo grab a user profile in a specified path, can it?
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by r4zoli »

My link point to a wiki page, you don't need to download, you can browse on. Pdf version not downloadable for me, too.
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by tn@BeWo »

Well, I've seen and browsed through it, as I thought my comment above would make clear.
If it's really that tedious :roll:, I'll have to tackle it this way... so...
Can someone please point me to a fairly convenient (syntax sensitive) (and free) XML editor?
And - just to re-confirm:
There're indeed only 2 (in words: two) hierarchy levels? All and single? Nothing like workgroup or similar?
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by TheGurkha »

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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by tn@BeWo »

Thanks, TheGurkha
Looks good, but I don't find an msWindose version.
Not that I don't search for myself in the meantime, but the majority of projetcs I found have been stopped 5-10 years ago and the widely differing features, screen shots and the like make it difficult to impossible for me to judge, which one might be most suitable for OOo. (Although I have some dusty experience in various MLs, XML is fairly new for me.)
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by r4zoli »

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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by tn@BeWo »

Thanks for the recommendation, the editor looks good.
I've dug through those configuration files, but either the editor doesn't help me enough with regard to OOo, or the whole approach to use those stored configurations isn't viable, anyway. Currently scripting the settings looks more suitable to me than relying on OOo's storing mechanisms.
But I can hardly believe that I haven't overlooked the "normal" way - the demands I described above cannot be so unique and having to script the application for a solution cannot really be neccessay, or am I overestimating OOo so heavily?
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by tn@BeWo »

Since this topic seems to go beyond the scope of the forum and a week long research on my own didn't get me anywhere closer to a solution...
... and having read the lines "no developers here..." hundreds of times now...

I've tried to subscribe to the "user" use group but cannot read anything:
While the subscription itself was no problem, clicking it in Thunderbird results in a virtual freeze of the reader while the computer load is constantly at 100% (probably because of the size - other newsgroups work) ...
So the only effect to get from that newsgroup is to burn the machine down before getting a single line to read (at least in summer). :crazy:

Looks like the obstacles for getting my users to OOo and a productive environment are just not negotiable or even basically not compatible.
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by Hagar Delest »

Have you subscribed the mailing list? You just have to send a mail and click the confirmation mail. Else, there is the Gmane service: http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.comp.openoffice.questions.
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by tn@BeWo »

Sure, and that's the part which worked - but useless unless there's something to read.
Probably it's the size. (Which doesn't encourage expectations for finding anything relevant in that huge heap, anyway)
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by Hagar Delest »

I don't understand. I'm subscribed also (even if I rarely post in the list) and it's just mail that you receive as long as other users send messages. There shouldn't be any size issue, you don't load the whole archive, you just receive the mail from the moment you've subscribed. It's not in a newsgroup setting in Thunderbird for me.
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by tn@BeWo »

oh yes there was a mix up - the gmane service is what makes Tb choke

edit - after deleting it from tb I don't get it re-installed currently. should be solvable, but right at this moment the frustration has built up too high and there're other things to do than continuing the months long struggle to integrate OOo into a productive environment. while i personally like the suite and get complicated single jobs done meanwhile, working on different jobs which require different settings in parallel seems just impossible - or perhaps at a price an order of magnitude higher than for comercial SW.
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Re: How to update OOo quietly?

Post by tn@BeWo »

Startling how much time has elapsed since I began trying to sort this out - and it's still not yet complete...

In that last couple of weeks I've learned ...
- msi syntax, tweaked OOo's .msi to my needs,
- something about bootstrapping ...
- and that I have to (and how to) deal with non-alphanumeric and non-ASCII characters in user names => profile paths,
- that many of the issues I have to deal with come from the poor network setup at the site I want to support (not OOo specific, but something I have to live with),
- a good deal of the tedious details of administrative scripting ...

and can now install a fresh OOo tailored to maximized efficiency for its future users (with the possibillity to switch profiles for different "roles").

The scripts will also perform updates from versions that they have installed (and logged) to newer ones.

What I still haven't managed:
How can I uninstall previous "wildly" installed OOo versions?
The missing information is where to find the .msi with which they have been installed (or perhaps "only" the CLSID).
Fortunately this will (for the time being) only be necessary for the so far three OOo3.x versions (but perhaps with different localizations) on Windows from 2000 to XP - but on otherwise in a hardly predictable manner, manually configured PCs.

... and how to exit a possibly (or probably?) running quickstarter?
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by RoryOF »

C:\Documents and Settings\Rory\Desktop\OpenOffice.org 3.1 (en-US) Installation Files\openofficeorg.msi for 3.1 m19 build
on Win2K SP4.
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by tn@BeWo »

Thanks Rory - that was fast! But...
there's absolute no guarantee that these files are still there - actually rather unlikely.
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by TheGurkha »

tn@BeWo wrote:Looks good, but I don't find an msWindose version.
There's a Download Windows link onthe top left of the screen on that site I linked to.

Also, for the problem downloads you could try this: Windows Installer Clean-Up Utlity.
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by RoryOF »

Also hiding in c:\WINNT\Installer\f2da1e.msi

I append a .tif of the properties of this file. I am sure there are search utilities which will identify the programs to which the .msi files belong.
OO Install.tif
OO Install.tif (21.39 KiB) Viewed 12927 times
Edit: I'm not sure that this is uploading. Have to leave computer to start cooking the meal.
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by tn@BeWo »

Hm - reads (at first sight) a bit dangerous (in respect to other msi-installs) and thus perhaps hard to be run silently, but I'll look certainly deeper into it as a fallback for those, where I don't find the original "openofficeorg3*.msi".
 Edit: 
RoryOF wrote:Also hiding in c:\WINNT\Installer\f2da1e.msi ...
Edit: I'm not sure that this is uploading...
Is this code for the file name always the same? (But I'll probably find that now - I could look into these files after all). That place would be much safer from user manipulations.
And no, that picture didn't load (but I'll probably see something similar, after having installed the tool).
More important: Enjoy your meal! :super: 
Anyone any ideas re the quickstarter exit?
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by tn@BeWo »

Currently I'd prefer to use the .msi files, backed up in %SystemRoot%\Installer. The names of the files (I've some 30 of them in that directory on the current PC) seem to be arbtrarily encoded, but manual identification via file properties/theme is quite easy.
Does anybody know how to access this info from a script without having to dive a further level deper into the win32 API?
And a tip how to close the quickstarter silently would still be highly appreciated.
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by RoryOF »

I am sure there are utilities which search the installed .msi files for the application string. I'd suggest looking at http://www.sysinternals.com, now bought over by and redirected to a microsoft site. They have some very useful stuff for D/L. Also search some of the application developers sites and discussion groups.
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Re: How to configure OOo for networked use?

Post by TheGurkha »

System Information for Windows (SIW) might help. It is freeware, get it from here: SIW Homepage.

it has an Installed Applications view, which lists the uninstall command line that is required to remove the application. Right-click and copy and you can copy the entire line into an editor, edit out the first few bits of information and you have the uninstall command on its own.
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