topic Re: 3.4c Community OpenOffice not previewing in Alfresco Archive

3.4c Community OpenOffice not previewing

martin_main — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 05:57:38 GMT

I have just loaded up Alfresco 3.4c community and openoffice previewing no longer works. I had noted that this was disabled in the config file and enabled this, but it still does not allow previewing stating that 'The preview could not be loaded from the server'. No errors are evident in the log fil

Re: 3.4c Community OpenOffice not previewing

mboyd — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 15:41:49 GMT

I'm assuming you are running windows with default installation path…

Rename C:\Alfresco\OpenOffice\Scripts\OpenOffice_serviceinstall.bat to serviceinstall.bat

Run C:\Alfresco\serviceinstall.bat INSTALL

Make sure you have 3 Alfresco services running on server.

Re: 3.4c Community OpenOffice not previewing

martin_main — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 17:12:38 GMT

Sorry, I should have mentioned that I am runnning on Centos 5.5

Re: 3.4c Community OpenOffice not previewing

heiko_robert — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 18:58:57 GMT

I manually installed 3.4.c on Ubuntu and this works fine (not using the installer).
What is configured in your tomcat/shared/classes/alfresco-global.properties for # External locations?
e.g.
ooo.exe=soffice
ooo.enabled=true

In my example soffice has to be in the path to work. If not, try to configure the full path to your soffice binary.
could you see an soffice process after starting alfresco? Do a 'ps aux|grep soffice'

Alfresco tries to start a command line process defined in: tomcat/webapps/alfresco/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/subsystems/OOoDirect/default/openoffice-transform-context.xml
You could try to start the process manually on the command as alfresco user e.g.:
<full-path-to>/soffice.bin -accept=socket,host=127.0.0.1,port=8100;urp;StarOffice.ServiceManager -env:UserInstallation=file:///opt/alfresco/alf_data/oouser -nologo -headless -nofirststartwizard -nocrashrep -norestore

Re: 3.4c Community OpenOffice not previewing

martin_main — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 04:22:33 GMT

I have the following configuration and soffice is a running process

### External executable locations ###
ooo.exe=/opt/alfresco-3.4.c/openoffice/program/soffice.bin
ooo.enabled=true
ooo.port=8100

Re: 3.4c Community OpenOffice not previewing

heiko_robert — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 08:34:57 GMT

please try to start the open office process manually executing the following command as OS user starting alfresco

/opt/alfresco-3.4.c/openoffice/program/soffice.bin -accept=socket,host=127.0.0.1,port=8100;urp;StarOffice.ServiceManager -env:UserInstallation=file:///opt/alfresco-3.4.c/oouser -nologo -headless -nofirststartwizard -nocrashrep -norestore‍

If everything is ok you should be able to see the process using 'ps aux|grep soffice'
If not try to install open office in the latest version (3.2.0) http://download.openoffice.org/other.html#tested-full and change the variable ooo.exe= to reflect your installation.

Re: 3.4c Community OpenOffice not previewing

marcozanella — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 13:08:48 GMT

Hi, I have a similar problem: I can upload a .doc file (Word 2010 - compatibility mode) and I can see the thumbnail image in the Document Library, but then, when I click on it and expect to see a bigger Flash preview, I get a message that says: "Impossible to create the preview in teh server" [Translation from the italian] [How can I say Share I would like to run in English, although I have an IT setting somwhere?]

I have followed this thread and ended installing openoffice -headless from the net. I, then, changed the path in alfreasco-global.properties and restarted alfresco. All went fine.

I renamed the alfresco.log and restarted.
All is known or fine but this:
13:27:48,694 WARN [org.alfresco.util.OpenOfficeConnectionTester] An initial OpenOffice connection could not be established.
13:27:48,745 INFO [org.alfresco.repo.management.subsystems.ChildApplicationContextFactory] Startup of 'OOoDirect' subsystem, ID: [OOoDirect, default] complete

FYI my port 8100 doesn't seems toi be open when the concole becomes available (I use nmap)
So the problem may also be that there is not an openoffice listening on that port

Any help would be highly appreciated.
Thanks
Marco

Re: 3.4c Community OpenOffice not previewing

heiko_robert — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 13:32:56 GMT

Hi Marco,
unfortunately in share you can't set the language manually. You have change the browser config to accept e.g en, en_US instead of it, it_IT and to delete the cookies from alfresco to take affect.
Do you run Alfresco on Linux? Could you start soffice on the command line as descibed before?
If you have a thumbnail in the list mode soffice should have run at least once, because alfresco first converts from office to pdf and then from pdf to png (in detail alfresco converts the office to pdf twice - once to get the thumbnail and second to get the flash).
In most cases there is an error in the soffice launch command or you try to start the wrong binaries on your platform.
I like to resolve these issues to use the OpenOffice version from the package manager of your OS-distribution or to install from OO downloads (3.2. version would be best), because this works and allows to choose a version which supports also your primary language. If you installed OO this way you can try to run soffice as described above and if this works change the ooo.exe=soffice
If you still get a preview for new office documents an no flash works, the error seems to be related to pdf2swf. Install SWFTOOLS from your package manager and correct the path in alfresco-global.properties (e.g. swf.exe=/usr/bin/pdf2swf). You have to restart alfresco after these changes.

Re: 3.4c Community OpenOffice not previewing

marcozanella — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 14:37:07 GMT

Hi Robert,
I have a Linux machine with no GUI, just command line. I could change it, but rather stay like that.
When I said that I installed OO I made sudo yum install openoffice.org-headless
That brought a bunch of dependancies and firxed the thumbnail problem. Before doing this even the thumbnail were not working.
Of course I changed the alfresco-global.properties file to the new install. So nnow ooo.exe is pointing in /usr/lib….. and not anymor ein /opt/alfresco-3.4.c/openoffice…
I will have a try soon to pdf2swf, that may help.
I will keep you posted
Marco

Re: 3.4c Community OpenOffice not previewing

heiko_robert — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 14:57:10 GMT

Hi Marco,
there is no need for any GUI. All the systems we take care of just have a terminal / command line.
Heiko

Re: 3.4c Community OpenOffice not previewing

martin_main — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 15:42:53 GMT

Heiko,

Thanks for the advice, SWFTOOLS appears to have been my problem also. Once the package version was installed and configured, the preview feature started working again, confirming that there was no problem with OpenOffice. Something must have changed between 3.4b and 3.4c as this feature worked previously.

Best Regards,

Martin

Re: 3.4c Community OpenOffice not previewing

heiko_robert — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 15:58:57 GMT

Martin,
maybe your previous version added the imagemagick convert command to the path?
Anyway - if it works everything is fine …

Re: 3.4c Community OpenOffice not previewing

ghernando — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 00:59:02 GMT

I am also seeing this problem in the 3.4c release on Linux.
Transformations for PDF and Text are working well for me. I am able to view the SWF of both of these in the web preview window.
But Word documents are not converting. I don't see any errors in the log.

In the log I also see this:
13:27:48,694 WARN [org.alfresco.util.OpenOfficeConnectionTester] An initial OpenOffice connection could not be established.
13:27:48,745 INFO [org.alfresco.repo.management.subsystems.ChildApplicationContextFactory] Startup of 'OOoDirect' subsystem, ID: [OOoDirect, default] complete

Re: 3.4c Community OpenOffice not previewing

louise — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 14:24:18 GMT

Hmm, looks like a buggy symlink of "common/lib/libstdc++.so.5", let see the solution: http://louise.hu/poet/?p=4873

Re: 3.4c Community OpenOffice not previewing

jjk_saji — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 13:56:45 GMT

Hi Lousie
I am also facing the same problem, I cannot preview MS office file in IE in XP
My server OS is centos and I am using 3.4-c
I have checked the url
"http://forums.alfresco.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=37314"
"http://www.alfresco.com/help/34/community/all/"
and corrected the pdf2swf bug as in "http://louise.hu/poet/?p=4873"

my "alfresco-global.properties" is

[root@dm classes]# cat alfresco-global.properties

###############################
## Common Alfresco Properties #
###############################

dir.root=/opt/alfresco-3.4.c/alf_data

#web.application.context.url=http://127.0.0.1:8080/alfresco
web.application.context.url=http://192.168.20.34:8080/alfresco

### database connection properties ###
db.driver=org.gjt.mm.mysql.Driver
db.username=alfresco
db.password=welcome
db.name=alfresco
db.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/${db.name}?useUnicode=yes&characterEncoding=UTF-8

### FTP Server Configuration ###
ftp.enabled=true
ftp.port=21
ftp.ipv6.enabled=false

### RMI service ports ###
alfresco.rmi.services.port=50500
avm.rmi.service.port=0
avmsync.rmi.service.port=0
attribute.rmi.service.port=0
authentication.rmi.service.port=0
repo.rmi.service.port=0
action.rmi.service.port=0
deployment.rmi.service.port=0

### External executable locations ###
ooo.exe=/opt/alfresco-3.4.c/openoffice/program/soffice.bin
ooo.enabled=true
img.root=/opt/alfresco-3.4.c/common
img.dyn=${img.root}/lib
img.exe=${img.root}/bin/convert
swf.exe=/opt/alfresco-3.4.c/common/bin/pdf2swf
jodconverter.enabled=true
jodconverter.officeHome=/opt/alfresco-3.4.c/openoffice
jodconverter.portNumbers=8101

### Initial admin password ###
alfresco_user_store.adminpassword=674e48b68c5cd0efd8f7e5faa87b3d1e

I have troubleshooted a lot to find the reason , why inline view for MS office file not working

when i give

"/opt/alfresco-3.4.c/openoffice/program/soffice.bin -accept=socket,host=127.0.0.1,port=8100;urp;StarOffice.ServiceManager -env:UserInstallation=file:///opt/alfresco-3.4.c/oouser -nologo -headless -nofirststartwizard -nocrashrep -norestor
"

i get value of ps aux | grep soffice ie I have my open office running properly on the server

Stuck over here, Guidance requested
Thanks
Joseph John

Re: 3.4c Community OpenOffice not previewing

jtk — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 16:22:38 GMT

To fix most (if not all) of my problems with previewing docs and pdfs is to update/use:

OpenOffice 3.3 (installer comes with Open Office 3.2.0 portable)
pdf2swf

Change alfresco-global.properties to the new versions of the programs.

In ~/WEB-INF/lib/:

pdfbox.jar to 1.2.1
fontbox.jar

Using Ubuntu 10.04 desktop. Apt-get or google for downloads.