Libreoffice --headless refuses to convert unless r

Question

Running headless Ubuntu server 12.something.

root@server: chown www-data /my/path/ -R

root@server: chgrp www-data /my/path/ -R

root@server: chmod 755 /my/path/ -R

root@server: libreoffice --headless --convert-to pdf:writer_pdf_Export /my/path/foo.ppt --outdir /my/path

convert /my/path/foo.ppt -> /my/path/foo.pdf

Works like a charm.

---

root@server: sudo -i -u www-data

$libreoffice --headless --convert-to pdf:writer_pdf_Export /my/path/foo.ppt --outdir /my/path

convert /my/path/foo.ppt -> /my/path/foo.pdf
Error: Please reverify input parameters...

Damn.

---

root@server: sudo -i -u someotheruser

$libreoffice --headless --convert-to pdf:writer_pdf_Export /my/path/foo.ppt --outdir /my/path

convert /my/path/foo.ppt -> /my/path/foo.pdf
Error: Please reverify input parameters...

Damn.

Anyone have any idea? Trying to research this just confused me more. Is this probably a bug or some dependency quirk?

Answer 1

Much as Jacek stated in his comment, make the user you are trying to execute the command as a sudoer with no password required. Then change your libreoffice command to be

sudo libreoffice <rest of command>

Worked for me. I had the same issue.

Answer 2

All what you need to do - create folder "/var/www/.config". When you try to convert some file under www-data user libreoffice require ".config" dir in user's home directory. But libreoffice has no permissions to create such folder. User www-data default home directory is "/var/www". So just run commands:

sudo mkdir /var/www/.config
sudo chmod 700 /var/www/.config
sudo chown www-data /var/www/.config

Answer 3

We faced the same issue when running the soffice binary headless (LibreOffice 5.0.5.2) in a CloudFoundry (Diego) container as part of a NodeJS app.

It seems newer versions of libreoffice do not expect a writeable HOME, but try to write to TMPDIR.

strace showed: 8349 mkdir("app/tmp", 0777) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) 8349 open("app/tmp/lu8349pzgegi.tmp", O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_EXCL, 0600) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

with TMPDIR=app/tmp

We fixed it by setting TMPDIR to a directory that is writeable by the App process' user, i.e. TMPDIR=/tmp on CloudFoundry:

process.env.TMPDIR = "/tmp";

Answer 4

I would take a look on

http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/unoconv/

This tool should be more suited to convert your files properly. It is available on the ubuntu repos, so there should be no problem with installation.

Answer 5

You can not run libreoffice soffice binary with www-data user. Use a user with sudo privilege instead. Check my Gist https://gist.github.com/nathanielvarona/423bda9e4a8a4f0f9bbf#file-soffice-listener-sh

And since you are going to use this in PHP. Just give a try also to PHP-FPM. Install it and then modify the /etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/www.conf file.

From

user = www-data 
group = www-data

To:

user = ubuntu
group = ubuntu

I've successfully run this in AWS EC2 and also with my VBox VMs.

Answer 6

I finally found an answer to this... Add:

export HOME=/tmp &&

to the beginning, so:

export HOME=/tmp && libreoffice --headless --convert-to pdf:writer_pdf_Export /my/path/foo.ppt --outdir /my/path

That worked for me on CentOS 6.5, and as shell_exec() in PHP.