Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 3899
Enable new installation when previous installation no longer exists
Last modified: 2003-10-17 06:20:46 UTC
When I tried to install 641d german, I got an error message stating that such a version is already installed and that I should first use the setup program of the installed version to deinstall that version. Unfortunately I had already deleted the complete installation folder manually so that I could not do that and was not able to install the new version. In the end after I found that I had to delete an entry in /home/'user'/.sversionrc, but this took me a while. Since I believe that it is likely that other users have the same problem and might even be unable to find the solution themself I would like to request that the installation program handles this situation better. There are several options that I can think of: 1. The install checks if the old version really exists and if not continues with the installation. 2. The install asks the user if he wants to overwrite the previous installation. 3. The current error message is extended with a hint to delete the entry in "/home/'user'/.sversionrc" in case the deinstallation is not possible. Thanks, Manfred
I reported a similar problem as issue 1299.
I don't see this as a usefull featuer because OOo has an uninstall component. Falko, what do you think?
Personally I don't need this, but there are users who do. They delete the OOo folder instead of uninstalling and after that they can neither uninstall it nor can they reinstall it or install a newer version. Somebody from discuss even formatted his hardisk... Again, personally I find editing .sversionrc (or ini on windows I heared) is not a big deal, but to a lot of people it is. If we want to make OOo usable for them we should take this into consideration. Gruß, Timon
*** Issue 4381 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
I can attest that this is a "real" real-world problem. I have seen users deleting "that funny OpenOffice.org1.0" folder that magically appeared in their home directory. Later they thought OOo was broken b/c it no longer worked... even when they tried to reinstall.
It happens not only by deleting. I installed OpenOffice 1.0. During "Registrating Components", it hang for whatever reason, so I had to abort the installation. Now I can't run the installation program again ("Program already installed, use installed setup program!"), and when I run the setup program, it says, that it cannot do anything because a setup.inf file is missing. Stefan
I found the problem in my case: The <instDir>/program/instdb.inf file was missing (due to aborted installation), and I got a wrong error message (i.e. not the setup.inf file was missing, but the instdb.inf file). See bug#4489 Bug here remains, that an aborted installation is not handled properly. Stefan
I fully agree with Timon Schroeter, Jon Lapham and Stefan Probst because I did the mistake deleting manually "that funny OpenOffice.org1.0". Moreover, I'm looking for hours after the uninstall script, and I don't find it.
We cannot help if one de-install OO.o manually without cleaning up registry and/or home directories. Please use the proper deinstallation routine or re-install the former version and then update it by 1.1
closed