Getting a newer OpenOffice.org on RHEL 5 or CentOS 5
From NCSUTechstaffDocs
Red Hat Enterprise Linux client 5 and CentOS client 5 are great Linux desktop distros. One really nice feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is that it is supported for 5 years after the release date with security patches. One tradeoff you make with that is that some desktop apps tend to age. This seems especially noticeable with the application OpenOffice.org. With RHEL 5 or CentOS 5 you get OpenOffice.org v2.3. While this version does get security patches from Red Hat it tends to lag far behind the version available for download from OpenOffice.org. ITECS at NC State University have created a pair of RPM packages that give a RHEL 5 or CentOS 5 desktop the newest version of OpenOffice.org. Anyone is welcome to hook into our yum repository to install and or upgrade the packages. New versions should appear a short time after new versions are available from OpenOffice.org.
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Prerequisites
A Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 client or a CentOS 5 client x86 or x86_64 machine. You need about 450 MB free in /opt to complete the install for OpenOffice.org v3.1.1. This package does not replace the Red Hat / CentOS provided OpenOffice.org rpms. Rather, it installs along side the Red Hat / CentOS provided rpms. We overide calling the Red Hat / CentOS provided install by running this openoffice-local version from wrapper scripts that live in the /usr/local/bin/ directory. This works because /usr/local/bin/ comes first in any user's search path.
Setting up the NCSUopenoffice repo
Download this rpm: NCSUopenoffice-release-1.1-1.noarch.rpm
Now that you have downloaded the NCSUopenoffice-release rpm type this command as root:
rpm -ivh NCSUopenoffice-release-1.1-1.noarch.rpm
Installing the openoffice-local packages
Now that you have the repo rpm installed, use yum to install the two packages as follows:
yum install openoffice-local openoffice-local-bin
Thats all there is to it. You can now click on any of the desktop launchers for OpenOffice.org applications or you can double click on any OpenOffice.org data icons and you should get the newest OpenOffice.org.
If you wish to start any of the OpenOffice.org apps via the command line the commands are:
oobase oocalc oodraw ooimpress oomath oowriter or openoffice.org
For Systems Administrators
If you wish to have these packages at install time its pretty easy to do in your kickstart or web-kickstart file. Add the following lines to your kickstart or web-kickstart %post scripts to install:
rpm -ivh http://install.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/yum/itecs/desktops/NCSUopenoffice/RHEL5/i386/NCSUopenoffice-release-1.1-1.noarch.rpm /usr/bin/yum -e 0 -d 2 -y install openoffice-local /usr/bin/yum -e 0 -d 2 -y install openoffice-local-bin
ITECS has these lines in our web-kickstart files for Eos lab machines, Remote Access Servers, and VCL 24x7 workstations.
For NCSU Systems Administrators
Why you might want this rpm...
At NC State University, we provide OpenOffice.org on *nix from within an AFS locker. A user just has to type "add openoffice" without quotes and the software becomes available on a network AFS volume. But because OpenOffice.org 3.X.X has grown so large, it does not run well out of AFS. When launching from AFS the OpenOffice.org "writer" app can take 1-2 minutes to load on a typical workstation. But with the software installed locally it launches in under 3 seconds. So the locker has been set up in such a way that if a local version is detected that matches the locker version, it uses that version rather than the AFS locker version. ITECS keeps the yum repo and the default version in AFS in sync for this reason. We upgrade the repo the day before we upgrade the default locker version. (Realm Linux machines yum update every night) Users can still get older versions of OpenOffice.org on Realm Linux by "adding" older versions which should then run out of AFS.
For best performance with the default version of the OpenOffice locker, it is recommended that NCSU systems administrators install the openoffice-local rpm on RHEL 5 desktop type systems if there is enough free space. If you install openoffice-local-bin as well, your users will always get the newer version even when clicking on the desktop launchers. ITECS installs both packages on the Eos lab Realm Linux workstations. A similar open Package format rpm is installed on ITECS Solaris 10 desktop systems for the same reason. We want OpenOffice.org to have faster launches and better usability on Solaris 10.
Future plans
Right now ITECS is only building these packages for RHEL 5 / CentOS 5. (And Solaris 10 for internal NCSU use) When RHEL 6 / CentOS 6 is released ITECS will look into doing a version for that distro once the OpenOffice.org they ship starts looking dated or is older than what is being offered for download at OpenOffice.org .
Why did we make these rpms?
We wanted to make the newest OpenOffice.org version available in our University computer labs for students to be able to use. However the two packages were designed so that they will work on a stock RHEL 5 or CentOS 5 system. This was done so that they might be more useful to other individuals or groups outside of NCSU who happen to run RHEL 5 or CentOS 5 on the desktop.
