Chris Schuld’s Blog

For a recent project I needed to perform document translations from DOC to PNG which requires an essential intermediate step to PDF. The transformations required us to go to from DOC to PDF which can easily be done very nicely using openoffice 2.3 in a headless configuration. The downside is you need a process running on a machine which you can connect to to make the transformation.

Here is the init.d script for starting up the soffice.bin (soffice) program in a headless mode:

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#!/bin/bash
# chkconfig: 345 20 80
# description: init.d script for headless openoffice.org (2.3+ for RHEL5 32bit)
#
# processname: soffice
#
# source function library
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions
 
RETVAL=0
SOFFICE_PATH='/usr/lib/openoffice.org/program'
SOFFICE_ARGS='-accept="socket,host=localhost,port=8100;urp" -headless'
SOFFICE_PIDFILE=/var/run/soffice.bin.pid
 
start_soffice() {
       echo -n $"Starting OpenOffice.org"
       $SOFFICE_PATH/soffice.bin $SOFFICE_ARGS >/dev/null 2>&1 &
       [ $? -eq 0 ] && echo_success || echo_failure
       pidof soffice.bin > $SOFFICE_PIDFILE
       echo
}
start() {
       start_soffice
}
stop() {
       echo -n $"Stopping OpenOffice"
       killproc soffice.bin
       echo
}
case "$1" in
       start)
               start
               ;;
       stop)
               stop
               ;;
       restart)
               stop
               start
               ;;
       *)
               echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"
esac

NOTE: in 64bit the lib path has a ‘64′ in it so

SOFFICE_PATH='/usr/lib/openoffice.org/program'

becomes

SOFFICE_PATH='/usr/lib64/openoffice.org/program'

By far the most messy thing on CentOS 5.2 is adding Sun’s Java.  I have never found great success from the different packages that are out there for installing java.  I prefer to simply use the packages from Sun.

Step (1) : Visit Sun’s web site and download the latest version of Java (the *.bin file not the *-rpm.bin) (http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp)(pay close attention if you want the 32bit or 64bit version)

Step (2) :

[user@www]# cd /opt/
[user@www]# wget "[GIANT_SUN_URL_TO_GET_THE_JAVA_BIN_FILE_x64_IN_THIS_CASE]"
[user@www]# /bin/sh jdk-6u7-linux-x64.bin

Step (3) : Setup the alternatives correctly

[user@www]# alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /opt/jdk1.6.0_07/bin/java 2
[user@www]# alternatives --config java
 
There are 2 programs which provide 'java'.
 
  Selection    Command
-----------------------------------------------
*+ 1           /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.4.2-gcj/bin/java
   2           /opt/jdk1.6.0_07/bin/java
 
Enter to keep the current selection[+], or type selection number: 2
[user@www]#

Step (4) : Check to make sure the install was a success

[user@www]# java -version
java version "1.6.0_07"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_07-b06)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 10.0-b23, mixed mode)
[user@www]#