Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 1872
installation, soffice application do not render any text
Last modified: 2003-05-24 18:52:26 UTC
Hey, I just downloaded and installed OpenOffice 638C. Upon running the setup program, I was presented with a full-screen grey image. No text whatsoever, no buttons, nothing. I noticed that the title of the window looked like what I would expect from an install program, so I went ahead and hit 'enter'. I was presented with several other blank screens. I hit 'enter' on each of these screens as well. After a little while, the grey screen went away. At this point, the blue OpenOffice splash screen was visible. Still, no text other than those in the graphics was rendered. A little progress bar showed up in the upper right corner of the screen. After a few minutes, this window was replaced with another blank window. I hit return again; the install exited. At this point, it seemed like the install had been successful. So I poked around until I fell across OpenOffice.org638 in my home directory. I executed ~/OpenOffice.org638/soffice. The writer loaded successfully, but all places that should have had text were empty, and very short. Dropdowns were a couple pixels high. Menus contained an image and a dash (presumably the underscore indicating the shortcut key). I will attach a screenshot of the initial writer window to this 'issue'. I am running a Debian (woody) GNU system. It is relatively up-to-date. -Patrick Linskey
Created attachment 581 [details] image of text-less writer
Reassigned to Ulf.
Hmm, it looks like for some reason your Xserver doesn't display any UI font. Please describe your system as close as you can. What version of XFree do you use (/usr/X11R6/bin/X -version)? Do you use any fontserver (xfs, xfstt,...), indicated with the following intray in your /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config: "unix:/7100". Version of your glibc /lib/libc.so.6 --version. Kernel version (uname -a). Thank you.
Here's the info that you were looking for. Note that /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config was a symlink to /etc/X11/XF86Config, which does not exist. I re-pointed it to /etc/X11/XF86Config-4, and the problem persisted. [pcl@tmonk pcl]$ uname -a Linux tmonk 2.4.8-xfs #2 SMP Mon Sep 3 01:48:41 EDT 2001 i686 unknown [pcl@tmonk pcl]$ /lib/libc.so.6 --version GNU C Library stable release version 2.2.4, by Roland McGrath et al. Copyright (C) 1992-1999, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Compiled by GNU CC version 2.95.4 20010721 (Debian prerelease). Compiled on a Linux 2.4.8 system on 2001-10-01. Available extensions: GNU libio by Per Bothner crypt add-on version 2.1 by Michael Glad and others linuxthreads-0.9 by Xavier Leroy BIND-8.2.3-T5B libthread_db work sponsored by Alpha Processor Inc NIS(YP)/NIS+ NSS modules 0.19 by Thorsten Kukuk Report bugs using the `glibcbug' script to <bugs@gnu.org>. [pcl@tmonk pcl]$ sudo /usr/X11R6/bin/X -version XFree86 Version 4.0.3 / X Window System (protocol Version 11, revision 0, vendor release 6400) Release Date: 16 March 2001 If the server is older than 6-12 months, or if your card is newer than the above date, look for a newer version before reporting problems. (See http://www.XFree86.Org/FAQ) Operating System: Linux 2.2.19 i686 [ELF] Module Loader present [pcl@tmonk pcl]$ grep unix /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config FontPath "unix/:7100" # local font server [pcl@tmonk pcl]$ ps -Af | grep xfs root 362 1 0 15:20 ? 00:00:03 /usr/bin/X11/xfs -daemon That FontPath element is in 'Section "Files"' at the top of my XF86Config file. I don't know anything in particular about xfs (how it processes requests etc.), but the 'unix/:7100' implies that it's listening on port 7100. Running an nmap scan indicates that 7100 is closed, but like I said, I don't know if this is significant. [pcl@tmonk pcl]$ nmap 127.0.0.1 -p 7100 Starting nmap V. 2.54BETA22 ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) The 1 scanned port on tmonk (127.0.0.1) is: closed Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0 seconds Additionally, 'xlsfonts' outputs 5060 lines of fonts. Finally, I emailed this message to issues@openoffice.org this afternoon at 4pm, but it was not added to the comments list. It looks like the user roles might not be set up correctly on your bugzilla install. -Patrick
Hard to judge from here what really causes the error at your side. There are two possabilities I see: 1. There is an incompatibility with your Debian Linux box. As there are a lot of problems reported with the glibc-2.2.4-2 as shipped with Debian GNU Linux. Not very likely to me as you can install and run OO. But if you can, I'll recommend to use glibc-2.2.4-3 and kernel 2.4.10. 2. A font problem. The installed fonts can't be found as OO currently isn't able to communicate with any fontserver. And a provided font from the Xserver can't be displayed by OO, because it is invalid, corrupt, empty or something else. Try to add a font that seems suitable for the UI by hand to your Xfontpath (xset fp+ /path/to/the/font) and restart OO. Try to find out which font causes the problems (Arial, Helvetica...) and maybe change the order in your fontserver configuration file. Of course I am curios, which font causes the problems (maybe we have to patch freetype). Thank you.
What's the state of this bug. Have you given up with OO? (Hopefully not) Have you tried to link or copy one/some TrueType fonts into OO's /share/fonts/truetype directory. Alternatively you can configure OO to use a specified font as UI font. Go to Tools->Options: OpenOffice->Font Replacement: mark the checkbox "Apply replacement table" and select or type "Andale Sans UI" and replace it with "my_font". Check the box "Always". Now "my_font" is used for the GUI.
*** Issue 2932 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Again: What's the state of this bug. 638 is by far outdated. I guess everything is all right, as I didn't get an answer since Nov.
This bug is still there. I've tried to install 641C, but have the same problems with the installer (no fonts) as I had with the 638 installer. I'm assuming that I'd see the same problems if I clicked through the default install options and ran the program. -Patrick
I have the same problem with 641d. The system is Debian Potato. Glibc is 2.1.3; X is 3.3.6; I'm using a remote font server but have all fonts which are on that server locally installed, too (the server is only there for workstations who would have happen to not have certain fonts installed). I'm not sure if it has anything to do with it, but the installer complained at startup that it couldn't find chkfontpath. That's a Redhat tool if I'm not mistaken; Debian doesn't have it.
I was having this problem when running the installation or the programs as a user. With root everything worked. The problem was that the truetype fonts installed in my system has permissions set to 600 (the KDE font installer did that), so the users could not read the font files, it seems, so OpenOffice goofed in the instalation (for some reason it did not fall back to Type 1 fonts as the rest of the system did). Setting the font files permissions to 644 fixed the problem for me.
If possible, try disabling xfs. I had an essentially identical problem report, and I tried disabling xfs, and suddenly my fonts were there again.
*** Issue 10614 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
This bug still exists on 1.0.2/STABLE_1. I think that Kevin & Dan found out why this is happening. Have a look at this thread: http://porting.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=499365&listName=dev
Being as I no longer use either Linux or OpenOffice, I really shouldn't be the owner of this bug.
ES->US: Since more than one user seem to face this problem, we may now get more valuable information. Reassigned to you Target to OOo 2.0
US: obviously some people have fonts at hand with no user privileges set. The bug is that OOo does not disregard these fonts and instead tries to display them. As they are not accessible for the user, the GUI is rendered without any glyphs. That's probably not what users want.
fixed in vcl07, but if someone does a chmod 0 (or something similar silly) on a file while it is in the cache while not changing the director, the problem can still occur. Unfortunately there is no way around that since issue 12889 tells me i must not check on startup while they are in the cache.
*** Issue 5884 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
fixed in vcl07
Fix verified.
verified.
Verified in OOo 1.1 Beta2.
Similar font problem appears to still exist in OOo 1.1 Beta2. (I couldn't find any better existing bug than this.) The UI font is a smallish courier font with very wide spacing. It first occurs in the installation, and can be fixed later with font replacement "Interface User" -> "Luxi Sans" (for example). I have Red Hat 9. The OO version shipped with RH9 works just fine without any font problems. I've had this same problem with earlier versions of OO in other RH and RH-based distros.
Created attachment 6384 [details] Initial screen of installation