Free Software – Homepage von Andreas Mantke

Further Research on Online – Modul Draw

I already got some issues with my version of an Online version based on LibreOffice technology. The code it had some issues with the edit mode of Draw module in connection with LibreOffice core master, but not with the fork/branch of CO-25.04. This made me curious and I build two versions of CODE (the Collabora Online Development Edition). I build the first one against the fork/branch of CO-25.04. If I run this version with ‚make run‘ the example Draw document showed up as expected (see screenshot below).

Then I tried, if the edit mode also worked. And this was the case (see screenshot below).

Because I’m curious, if CODE also works with the LibreOffice core master, the source code of the Open Source project, I build CODE also using the LibreOffice master. I did a ‚make run‘ and opened the Draw example document again. You could see what happened in the screenshot below.

The Online version didn’t show any content of the document yet. Because I clicked into the document (where the text box should be displayed) you see some boundary of a box.

This showed that CODE and the developer from the eco system company, which created this fork of LibreOffice Online didn’t use LibreOffice technology anymore, at least not fully. They created some changes in their Online version and in addition in their fork of the LibreOffice core and didn’t commit them back to the upstream project. This shows that they don’t really take care of the LibreOffice project and it’s community but only of their own commercial interests. They have no issue to use the resources of The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice community, but are reluctant about contributing back to the project and the community.

I think it’s not appropriate to use donation funded resources (like those from The Document Foundation and LibreOffice) and resources of a world wide community (e.g. the marketing, localization, documentation work etc.) to develop, test and build a product of a commercial company. It’s also not appropriate, if such company uses donation funded resouces of another Open Source project for their developer marketing.

Research On Issues With Online – Module Draw

I got some issues with running the Draw Module of the LibreOffice Online / Free Online Office. I run my Free Online Office version (master) using the latest master version of the LibreOffice core (build on the same machine by myself). I can start Draw with an odg-document. This odg-document contains besides graphics also text boxes. Once I load the example document in online it shows the boxes with the text inside (see screenshot below).

Free Online Office with LibreOffice core master

But once I clicked into the text box to edit the text, the textbox disappeared and I got a big grey area instead (see screenshot below).

Free Online Office with LibreOffice core master in edit mode

I first thought this might be an issue with the code of my Free Online Office code. But that wasn’t the case. I made an experiment. I run my online version using the LibreOffice core branch for Collabora 25.04 and opened the same example odg-document with it. The document loaded and I could view it’s content (see screenshot below).

Free Online Office with Collabora core 25.04

Then I clicked into the text box to edit the text and it happens that I could do this without any issues (see screenshot below).

Free Online Office with Collabora core 25.04 in edit mode

Thus there is no issue in my Free Online Office but in the core module of LibreOffice. There are commits / patches inside the Collabora 25.04 branch of core which didn’t made it’s master. Thus you can’t create a fully working online office using the LibreOffice core master. You have to use its fork from the branch Collabora 25.04.

This shows that the eco system companies didn’t submit all their code changes to the upstream project, in this case the LibreOffice core master branch. This is contrary to their promise that they fully support the LibreOffice project. If that would be the case they would contribute / commit their patches to the LibreOffice core master first and then adapt them to their product releases.

They have no issue to use the resources of the LibreOffice project (funded by donations) for their development work, patch review, localization, marketing etc. but apart from that cook their own soup. It’s also disturbing that they use for their developer marketing the public resources of another Open Source project (Jitsi) (funded by donations) instead of running their own videoconference server.

Brother MFC-7320 And OpenSUSE Leap 15.4

I used this combined printer, scanner and fax machine with openSUSE for some years now. But it is always a lot of effort to get it working with a fresh Linux environment, e.g. after a hardware change. There are the packages and tools from Brother, which you could download from their website, but trat doesn’t make the complete and successful setup of the printer and scanner functionality. It is necessary that you install also some 32-bit packages:

zypper in -f glibc-32bit libusb-0_1-4-32bit libusb-1_0-0-32bit

Solved Vulnerabilities

I worked on the project Free Online Office, a collaborative online office based on LibreOffice technology, to solve vulnerabilities of the used JavaScript packages. I updated all used JavaScript packages to new versions. The command ’npm audit‘ reports no vulnerabilities now.

This is a big difference to the starting point, where there was and is the following report:

57 vulnerabilities (1 low, 20 moderate, 34 high, 2 critical)

I’ll create a new Docker image from the updated source code and publish it on the Docker hub during the next days. You can get it from there with:

docker pull freeonlineoffice/online:nightly

Free Online Office Nightly On ProxMox

I created a Linux Container on my ProxMox server using Debian 11 and installed and run Docker inside of it. Then I pulled the current Free Online Office (nightly build) from hub.docker.io:

docker pull freeonlineoffice/online:nightly

I started this Docker container with:

docker run -t -d -p 192.168.10.15:9980:9980 -e "username=admin" -e "password=S3cRet" freeonlineoffice/online:nightly

The IP in the docker command depends on the IP address of the Linux Container on your ProxMox server. You should give the container a fixed IP address. I used the IP address (double escaped) for the aliasgroup entry for my first run too.

Once I started the container I run ‚docker ps‘ to see, if the container is running. Then I checked with curl from my remote machine, if everything works.

curl -k https://192.168.10.15:9980

If you don’t get an error message in return everything seemed to work. I could open a browser on my remote machine and type call the URL:

https://192.168.10.15:9980/browser/dist/admin/admin.html

This shows the admin console of Free Online Office build on LibreOffice technology.

Worked Further On LibreOffice Online Code And Docker Image

The Javascript packages in the former git repository of LibreOffice Online and ist fork were not up to date. Thus I hat to work on update them. This and the code update took a bunch of my spare time.

I had also to work on the configuration of the shrinkwrap/shrinkpack tooling. The former configuration and especially the shrinkwrap.json.in file blocked the build process of the docker file. The naming of the shrinkpacked files changed.

Once this was fixed the browser part of LibreOffice was build sucessfully. And finally I was able to build a first lool docker container and start it.

I made a first test and could copy the loolwsd.xml from the container and also view the container log.

Updated The LibreOffice Online Code And JavaScript Modules

I worked further on the update of the LibreOffice Online source code during the last days. I brought it on par with its fork first. In parallel I worked on the JavaScript modules and were able to move them to newer versions. This fixes also some vulnerabilities, from critical to mid category. The npm tool doesn’t complain about vulnerabillities in the JavaScript area of the source code anymore yet.

Update JavaScript Modules Of LOOL

I had a look at the ‚zoo‘ of JavaScript modules which are living in the browser part of LibreOffice Online and found a lot of outdated versions there. This modules need an update to newer versions. I’m working currently on this task step by step.

I also got the message in the shell about vulnarabilities in the modules, some of them classified high and one critical. I fixed a bunch of them with an npm command, thus there is no critical vulnarability left. The high classified dimished from 15 to five.

Next Step: Work On Docker File

I worked on the changes in the source code to create an up to day docker file of LibreOffice Online today. I had to adapt scripts to build the online version from source to LibreOffice Online for that and run it. Because the naming and the variable names of former scripts were changed with the fork I had to rework them.

I’m currently running the build process a second time and hope it will create a first version of a new LibreOffice Online docker container from source. Keep your fingers cross 😉

Work On Revival Of LibreOffice Online

I worked during the last two weeks on a revival of the LibreOffice Online project. This project / branch is a version of LibreOffice which runs in a browser and supports collaborative editing.

I fetched the commits, which has been commited to a fork of the LibreOffice Online (LOOL) branch since October 2020. But there had been some renamings of file names and strings, which increases the effort. I had to adapt those commits to the original file names and strings. There were also changes in the license header of some files. I had to revert the commit, which inserted those changes.

And then I got another issue with an hardware defect and I had to migrate my environment to another hardware. And yet I got everything up and running. The first screenshot shows LibreOffice Online Writer with a text document.

LibreOffice Online Writer Document in the Browser

And the next screenshot shows the Admin console of LibreOffice Online with some statistics. It shows also that there is currently one user working with one document.