OpenOffice Transforms Fail, Return 0-length Files

[jpnoehre]

I noticed on our new Alfresco installation that the document previews of anything besides PDFs were not working correctly. The document preview would try to load and return the error "The preview could not be loaded form the server". Previews of PDFs work correctly so I don't think there is an issue with pdf2swf or Flash.

I checked the tomcat temp folder and noticed that OpenOffice was creating 0-length PDFs as the output from the document transformations. For example:

-rw-r–r– 1 root root    29184 2009-03-25 16:40 OpenOfficeContentTransformer-source-37518.doc
-rw-r–r– 1 root root    29184 2009-03-25 16:40 OpenOfficeContentTransformer-source-37521.doc
-rw-r–r– 1 root root    29184 2009-03-25 16:40 OpenOfficeContentTransformer-source-37525.doc
-rw-r–r– 1 root root    29184 2009-03-25 16:40 OpenOfficeContentTransformer-source-37528.doc
-rw-r–r– 1 root root    29184 2009-03-25 16:40 OpenOfficeContentTransformer-source-37531.doc
-rw-r–r– 1 root root        0 2009-03-25 16:40 OpenOfficeContentTransformer-target-37519.pdf
-rw-r–r– 1 root root        0 2009-03-25 16:40 OpenOfficeContentTransformer-target-37522.pdf
-rw-r–r– 1 root root        0 2009-03-25 16:40 OpenOfficeContentTransformer-target-37526.pdf
-rw-r–r– 1 root root        0 2009-03-25 16:40 OpenOfficeContentTransformer-target-37529.pdf
-rw-r–r– 1 root root        0 2009-03-25 16:40 OpenOfficeContentTransformer-target-37532.pdf

The soffice process is running whenever I upload a file, so I assume that there is some OpenOffice issue that is causing the transformations to fail. Does anybody have any idea what the issue is?

I'm running Ubuntu 8.10 Minimal Server with Alfresco 3 Stable, the latest development version of swftools, and the latest alpha of Flash 10 64-bit.

I've tried two fresh installations, one using OpenOffice 2 from the official repository and one using OpenOffice 3 from a 3rd party repository. Both have the same issue.

[piper]

I am having the same problem with the same versions; except I have tried compiling multiple SWFtools, changed flash versions (In the .xml file and on my browsers) from 9 to 10 and back again. I've been working for 3 days to find a solution without any luck. Has anyone found a fix for this?

[lordxx]

I have the same problem..  preview could not be loaded from the server..

Is there any Alfresco engineer aware of this isue and want to help community ??

L:

[unknown-user]

I have the same problem too!,  i try to covert odp to swf,  Fail, Return 0-length Files
any idea? 
Alfresco 3.4 community.

[mpeters]

We experienced same problems when transforming AutoCAD files (dwg) with some 3rd party commandline tools to pdf.

We use the 64bit win version of Alfresco 3.4. Is this problem related to 64bit or can someone attest this problem also on a 32bit version of Alfresco?

Kind regards
Markus