[oclug]getting openoffice off your redhat system

[Chris H]

On January 28, 2003 11:22 pm, Brenda J. Butler wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 10:14:46PM -0500, Chris H wrote:
> > On January 28, 2003 09:53 pm, Brenda J. Butler wrote:
> > > Ok, I'm trying to uninstall openoffice from my box, so that
> > > it will install cleanly again.
> >
> > 1. First thing to do is remove the following file manually from your home
> > dir <. sversionrc > file notice the (.) and no < > of course..:)
>
> That was on my list.

Good...:)

>
> > 2. Next if you installed it correctly remove the OpenOffice.org1.0.X
> > directory in your home directory.
>
> There was the 1.0.1 and the 1.0.2
>
> Ok, they get covered with the *OpenOffice* filespec.  I really did do
> \rm -rf `find / -name "\*OpenOff\*" -print` you know.
> Oops no, it was
> \rm -rf `locate OpenOff`
> and I was doing updatedb every once in a while to make sure
> it was up to date.

Ok you are using an RPM hence you are entirely dependant on the packager. Pls 
referr to RH and the packager for removal instructions...:)

Seriously, this is happening far too often and the variouse dsitros are 
rebuilding the product to meet their specifications. Its the main reason that 
I volunteer to build and maintain "official CDROM/ISO images" for dl'ing as 
the variouse distro's are entitled to make modifications but they generally 
do not post what they are doing. Then again reading and rpm package for file 
contents and location is not that difficult. 

Its one of the strength and/or weeknesses of OSS, pending on where you sit

> You should try doing ls -laR on your system with those file descriptors I
> gave, you'll see rather a lot of files in all kinds of weird places.
> Did I miss any?  OOo should have an option to the install script to list
> all the files it's going to install (and I'm not talking about the f0099
> files either) and where it's going to install them (like rpm and debian
> pkgs have).

no need, its all in two directories on my system

> > 3. Finally depending on where you installed OOo.org in /usr/local/ or
> > /opt which is preferred (me thinks LSB compliant also but not really sure
> > on that one) remove the complete /OpenOffice.org1.0.X directory
>
> (yes, opt is LSB compliant, but might be deprecated? included for
> backwards compatibility?)  It was /usr/local...  Not sure I saw an
> OpenOffice directory there but maybe did... if so must have removed
> it early.  I did remove a bunch of "program/*", "help/*", etc from
> /usr/local directly either in addition or instead.
>
> > 4. Thats all there is.
> >
> > You can of course use the uninstall script but me thinks you never
> > installed it correctly so this will probably not work.
>
> (It would also be nice if the uninstall script would work even with
> half-uninstalled systems, in order to clean up problem installs
> and be able to start fresh.  It just has to check its list of files
> it was going to install, and make sure they're all gone.)

Yes this is true, but the script only assumes a correctly installed version 
and there are two ways to do that. Do have a look at the docs.

> There were scads of other files eg in ~/.gnome, ~/.kde, ~/.kde2.
> Probably not that significant, but as I don't know .gnome, .kde
> etc that well I thought I'd remove them too.

I cannot comment on that but on my SuSE system this is not necessary. Those 
are directories that contain variouse configuration setting for the 
respective products.

> There were also /etc/openoffice of some sort.

Redhat...what can I say

> Currently when I try to reinstall after having deleted all these
> files, it wants to do the "setup" thing in root's home directory
> and copy all the executables there, as if it is doing a single-
> user install into root's directory.  Why?!?  I have indeed removed
> the .sversionrc from both ~root and ~butlerb (indeed from every
> directory on the hard disk).

Man...why would you set anythin up in root.???

> Are you sure there isn't some kind of config file that
> openoffice checks before deciding what kind of install to do?
> Maybe it checks those gnome menus and uses presence of
> oo entries to decide whether OOo has been installed?
> I really want to remove OOo from those menus too.  Maybe
> I'll have to grep for swriter or whatever in every file in
> .gnome, .gconf, etc and see which files have those strings.
> But if someone knows the right way to deal with gnome
> menus I'm all ears.  I didn't see any menu-editing options
> on my gnome menu.

You are getting way to deep into this. If its an rpm, then check your redhat 
manual on how to properly remove rpms. On my system rpm -e <product> 
typically does the trick, but then again we use different systems.

> > Finally to reinstall
> >
> > # tar zxvf OpenOffice.org1.0.X.tar.gz (typically in user account)
> > #cd OpenOffice.org1.0.X
> > #sux (or whatever)
> > #password: xxxxxxx
> > #./setup /net <--------use the net switch
> > when prompted where to install pick your favorite place
> > #exit upon completion
>
> I did "install" instead, with options --prefix=/usr/local and --interactive
> (also tried with no options at all, same results).  I didn't use the /net,
> it was only an install to that one machine.

NO.....sorry for getting frustrated here but perhaps I have not explained it 
clearly enough. 

Do a network install from tarball on a single machine, Performance and 
recovery are much faster. Also when you log on to a different account on the 
same machine OOo.org is always available. This will not be the case if you 
install the puppy completely into a single user account.

> > Then as you
> > user#
> > user# cd /to where OOo.org lives/
> > user# ./setup   <----no switch this time
> >
> > Now when prompted indicate a workstation install and make sure that you
> > have JVM installed ie: 1.3.1 or greater to get the full function of
> > OOo.org
>
> No java.  That's ok with me, unless lack of it completely breaks OOo?

Man...you need Java..end of story...its in the docs

> Maybe I'll stick to the package manager of the distro in question from
> now on.  At least those packages have uninstall options.

That is rather silly comment. The darn thing was not installed properly from 
an rpm no?  

> > Thats about it. Best of luck
>
> Thanks for the comments and feedback.
>
> Random comments:
>
> What distro do you run by the way?

SuSE 8.1

> The windows version of openoffice installed ok and seems to
> run ok (I managed to convert a .doc to .sxw, .pdf and .ps
> with it, no hassles).

thanks for the feedback

> One problem I had after installing an openoffice onto linux
> machine was, couldn't run swriter (or others) from just
> any directory, I had to cd into ~/OpenOffice1.0.1.../program
> and then I could do
> swriter /path/to/file/i/wanted/to/edit
> and it would work.

Thats cause you did not install it properly. Use the network intall setup and 
you can access it from any account once you install a workstation install 
into that account as described above. 

Honestly, everyone, for now stick with the tar balls. 3 min or less to install 
it and even less to remove it. Just read the docs.

> Kinda frustrating.

I bet...:)

> One last comment, that splash screen that prevents you from
> doing other stuff (even prevents you from working on another
> desktop) on OOo startup has got to go.  These are supposed to
> be multi-tasking machines, putting large unmanaged windows on
> top of everything else and that follow you around when you
> switch desktops is a bit of a step backwards in user interfaces.

There is a setting in one of the xml config files...that turns it on and off. 
Let me track that one down again. 

Best

/ch