problems with office suite programs
 

first, let me say that i'm green to linux. i have managed to create a dual boot Mandrake 9.0/win xp pro machine. i have the os's separated on two hard drives (i wanted to retain ntfs on win and partitioning one disk correctly was a pain). so, the install went smoothly (except that my soundblaster live 5.1 card wasn't recognized). however, after exploring all the software, which is overwhelming, i found that when opening any openoffice.org or staroffice programs that the programs load box (the little graphic rectangle) comes up but nothing else happens. and, when the box comes up it is on top of all the other GUI's and cannot be removed. i have to log out and log in to fix this problem. any ideas?

my comp config:
p4 2.53GHz (533Mhz)
2 HD's - win xp pro 40gig, mandrake 9.0 60gig (both 7200rpm)
256mb ddr ram
nVidia GeForce 4 vid card
intel mobo

so, i shouldn't have problems with loading programs slow. i think it is definitely something in linux.

thanks in advance for your help. also, please be easy on the linuxspeak. i'll give you all the info you need if you can tell me how get it. thanks again

Path

check your memory using top

also you might find some error in /var/log/messages

for the program that won't start the best way to figure it out is to run it from an xterm. the program will show errors in the xterm

thanks david, but i don't really know how to launch top or even where it is. i also don't know how to start star office or openoffice from a command line. also, when i installed mandrake i installed everything that came with it(a lot of servers and stuff). probably not a good idea, huh? do you think i should reinstall with a greatly reduced barrage of softs? if so, what should i avoid installing? i plan on learning linux to do windows office-like tasks, graphic design (the Gimp looks pretty good i might add), web design, internet, email, etc. any comments/suggestions are appreciated. although, i would like to attempt to fix the current problem with openoffice and star office just to learn more. is there a linux equivalent to the windows task manager that shows the applications that are running in the background? i read in my material that if you install the server packages that the some server apps will automatically load on startup. sorry for all the questions, but i've spent a lot of time looking at manuals with no success. there's just so much to learn.

Path

after trying a couple of things, i found the top command and used it (106 things running). feel like a moron for not typing top in the terminal. i can post the results if necessary. also, the commands for the office programs are soffice and ooffice. both have the same result that the Mandrake Menu gives. however, after waiting about 8 minutes, staroffice loads but is in a Spanish form. everythings in spanish, menu bar and all. weird.

That is wierd

you should be able to change the language, not sure where

check your /etc/hosts file

maybe it has something to do with things opening slow

/etc/hosts gives:

192.168.1.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost

do you have another hostname for the machine, or is it localhost

not really sure what a hostname is. :(

my wife has a 500 mhz with 512 ram (suse 8.0) - she switched to openbox from kde because of the speed issue.

you might want to check out other desktop environments/window managers.

gnome
kde
windowmaker
blackbox
fluxbox
openbox
afterstep

the problem is the same in all desktops that i have, which are most of the ones you listed. the box is a 2.53 GHz p4 with 256mb or ram. office progs shouldn't take 10 minutes to load, should they?

path

I know its probably totally useless to you but...

I am running RH7.3 on a 1.7Ghz 512DDR SDram laptop (don't know harddrive RPM, it is ATA100 but) and OpenOffice1.0,

it works fine for me, when logged in as root, but when opening OpenOffice as another user it invariably crashes.

my only thoughts on the slow loading are perhaps the harddrive isn't configured to take advantage of udma 5.. stuffed if I can remember where/how you configure that tho...

my 3.4cents worth (US$ conversion to AU$) :)

the thing is most other apps are working, like the Gimp, konqueror, and all the other ones i've tried except for soffice and oofice. i'm at work now, but i think i have tried logging in as root and the problem was the same, but when i get home i'll try it to make sure.

any other ideas?

I had the same thing happen too. The splash screen would only stick every once and awhile. What I found is that open office only really wanted to run while I was root. I ran oosetup as root, closed ooffice when it was done with the setup stuff, then went and changed all the scripts like ooffice, oocalc, oowrite, etc. that were in /usr/bin to have a sticky bit.
I then logged out of root, and back in as a regular user, and open office set it self up nicely for that user.

thanks,
Tinesthai

10 minutes to load? no. on my wife's computer 500/512 is takes about 11 seconds to load. seems sloooow. but not as slow as you're discription. on mine 900/512 it takes about 5 seconds.

she's suse 8
i'm debian 3

i reinstalled mandrake 9.0 without the server packages. now both the programs run fine, although i haven't used them extensively. the only problem i have now is my soundblaster live 5.1 card is not recognized. since this is the software forum, i'll end this thread. if you want to help with the sound card prob see my post in the hardware forum.

thanks to all who posted

path

tinesthai

you have lost me on the sticky bit.. what do you mean?

Hi,

I have a similar problem too.
Reinstallation of an entire system is not an option because it will cost a lot of time.

Hope there is another way out...

When I try to start a, say, StarOffice writer, a splash screen shows for 10-20 minutes.

xterm:

SIOCGIFADDR got '00:00:00:00:00:00'

OpenOffice has the same effect.

Does anyone knows what's up with this and how do you fix it?
Best regards.

N.B. Recently I started a new thread dedicated to the above issue at : http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=47588

N.B. I asked at Sun StarOffice support - no reply whatsoever. I asked at MandrakeExpert - same result, although they advertise 60-90 days of free support included with purchased packages - call it the way you like - no one will ever hear your screams.
If LQ did not exist, I would not know what to do... :)

Well, OO tends to get nasty when people
haven't got a loop-back/network interface :)

Check your ifconfig, and within Office, check
your network settings ... a wrong setup can
cause OO to behave like swimming in a tar pit.


Cheers,
Tink

It appears that installing everything for the office program can result in an incorrect language, I saw this recently with Mandrake 9 and I was able to fix it by uninstalling the other languages. It worked fine after that.

Really?
I need to write sometimes in Italian or Spanish. I installed support for both, and StarOffice interface turned all in Spanish! Since Spanish isn't my prefered language anyway, I removed both Spansh and Italian support and the English interface came back. Sun ignored my questions.

Dear Tink,
Thanks for your advise, but, ifconfig is an executable binary. How do I check it? And what network settngs within Office do you mean? As far as I can see, I do not need and I did not setup any networking from within Office.
Any further hint, please?

if you just type ifconfig it will tell you whether you
have a loopback interface or not... if there's no
openoffice can act very strangely...

As for the network options:
oo can be (ab-)used as a browser, and has
a Internet Setting... if you setup proxy or dns
and have wrong values it can slow the startup
down incredibly.

Cheers,
Tink

I could not understand the language to try and select it either, so I uninstalled all except english. There must be a way to set the default.

Dear Tink,
Thanks for your down to the point explanation.

[root@localhost dmitry]# ifconfig
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:32 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:32 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:2240 (2.1 Kb) TX bytes:2240 (2.1 Kb)

ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
inet addr:97.108.40.239 P-t-P:217.136.25.1 Mask:255.255.255.255
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:276 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:274 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:3
RX bytes:90353 (88.2 Kb) TX bytes:26094 (25.4 Kb)

So, it seems, there is a loopack and (resulting?) errors. However, I don't understand what to do with that. Any further hint? Thanks.

I did not setup proxy neither in OO nor in SO.

:confused:

As far as I can see, the problems started after I tried to compile qt-3.1.1 needed by another application.
I wonder if that might have caused the problem.
I uninstalled both the qt-3.1.1 and that another program, but the problem persists.