StarOffice 3.1 Mini-HOWTO
 Matthew Borowski ([email protected] )
 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 ([email protected] ) 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 ([email protected] ) 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 ([email protected]) 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 ([email protected])


 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 ([email protected] ) 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
 [email protected].

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