Help with Linux installing Open Office
 

I really don't understand Linux at all, and am hoping someone can shed some light on this.

I am trying "desperately" to install OpenOffice.org on Debian. So far not much luck.

I tried to install Open Office but then i got this message.


Error: Failed to extract the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) files. (exit code 7)


So i looked up on the net and found out I need to download JRE 6 - which is fine, i don't understand why i need to download it, but i did it. I followed the instructions and installed it - all fine.

The Guide on the Sun website told me to use the following line in the terminal to change permissions:

chmod +x 6<version>-linux-i586.bin

i don't really understand that command, well it didn't work anyway.even when in place of it after chmod +x, i used the name of the file which was "jre-6u11-linux-i586.bin" - didn't work either. in the end i right-clicked on file, went to properties, permissions tab and enabled permissions from there and that worked. and JRE installed fine.

on the open office webite it says the following:

"Install a jre and then point setup to it." BUT I don't know what that line means let alone how to do it

it then states this line: sudo apt-get install sun-java6-bin - i'm assuming this is in relation to the staement above, but it doesn't work anyway.

basically i just want OpenOffice to install properly. that's it. so can someone please shed some light on this make this easy to understand for me, because this task is pretty trivial in Windows - you just double-click an exe and follow the instructions. i thought it would be straightforward regardless of the OS??

thanks,

John

Become root (or use sudo if you set it up). Then do aptitude install openoffice.org. That should be it. Or if you have a graphical package manager (like Synaptic), just browse through it and select openoffice.org.

As previous comment, it looks like you are trying to make life hard for yourself by not using the package manager. This may or may not be deliberate, but if it is deliberate, please give me a clue why you are doing this.

If you have a gui and synaptic, using synaptic is the easiest way; otherwise aptitude and the command line isn't a bad approach at all.

Something like Open Office ought to be in the basic repositories that are already configured, but maybe not the very latest version. If that is what you need, you may have to find out what repository to add (& I don't know for Debian, I'm afraid) but a quick Google search on 'OpenOffice', 'Debian' & 'Repository' ought to sort that out.

I tried this and it worked (came up and asked if I wanted to use 49.1 megabytes additional space on my disk? (y/n)
try this; (in ubuntu which is like debian i guess)?

sudo apt-get install openoffice.org

How did you install Debian? If you used a netinstall CD, then chose the Desktop option, Open Office should be installed by default.

thanks guys for your help, i appreciate i probably am making it more difficult for myself, but then i'm pretty good at that. i have tried with linux in the past, but for some reason i have always managed to ruin the setup, lose windows, or ruin the boot configuration, so i thought it was best to try a "safer" alternative

i have debian running in VMware. I am testing out different distros. at least it actually works perfectly unlike fedora which is apparently not supported. i was using opensuse 11.1 for a while but had problems with display/resolution kept reverting to 1024x768, even with vmware tools installed. which i thought was a bit odd.

anyway, i wanted to install the updated version of OO.o which is 3.01 i believe, if i'm not mistaken, and for some reason that updated version is not on the package manager, i guess because it is a moderately new release. i'm not sure, if i have to add another repo then so be it, i'll have a look.

on another note, sudo does not work.

whenever i use sudo and type in my password i get "john is not in the sudoers file. this incident will be reported."

so how do i fix this? when i installed Debian it never asked me to input a root password, is that what this is about? if so how do i create one?

So did you say this was a virtual machine/server?
seems like th root account hasnt been completely set up?!
You can do either set password for root if you havent already or you can close the virtual machine then mount it then chroot in its folder then change the root password (I have done those both things and I used Ubunut and Xen VM and both worked).

Debian aims for stability and dependability to a level that is good for business computers and servers but not so good for your average desktop. The long-and-short of this is that they won't upgrade packages until the next Debian release, in 1.5 to 2 years time (they will however keep up with security and bugfix updates during that time).

Distros like Ubuntu, Mandriva, Opensuse and Fedora have shorter release cycles (6 months or so) so will have more recent versions of software in their package managers, they're also more focused on the desktop user so you'd do better with one of them.

If you've already got into the package manager you don't need to worry about using sudo to do the same thing from the command line.

moving on to mandriva
 

okay, fair enough i'm trying mandriva now. although i get a really strange error. during the setup it says "Fatal error during initialization", i checked out the log and i have attached the screenshot. any idea what this means? i am mounting the iso in vmware and installing from that. do you think i need to download the iso again and/or burn to disc?

That's an easy one.
1. Open your favourite editor as root.
2. Open the /etc/sudoers file with that editor.
3. Add the line
just below the in sudoers.
If you don't have an /etc/sudoers file then you need to install sudo.
As root
that's it.
jdk

Check the md5 sum of the ISO (there should be instructions on the download page), you don't need to burn the disc to use it in VMware.

Better to use visudo as that will check for syntax errors.

for some reason the iso downloaded via internet explorer was capped at ~350mb when it should have been ~4.4gb so i managed to get it going perfectly with the 64-bit version of Mandriva.

i was trying to edit the sudoers file but oddly enough visudo does not exist on mandriva. i would have thought it was a pretty compulsory piece of kit. is there any other editor i can use?

cheers for all your help so far, thanks for being patient with me.

It comes installed by default I think (it's part of the sudo package so you can't have sudo without it). To use it you need to become root with 'su -' so that the locations of the system administrator tools (/usr/sbin and /sbin) are added to your path. Or you can run it with the full path /usr/sbin/visudo

ksjyothi
 

you need rpm to install .sh installers this will solve the problem. do reply when it works

Type sudo apt-get install rpm