Not able to launch soffice within an application on the iis server

BinoyCherian · February 6, 2019, 1:52pm

Hi Team,

I have an c# application which calls the soffice. The code works perfectly on the IISExpress server on my local machine but it’s the test server that fails and I couldn’t identify the problem. But there is a similar question on stackoverflow as shared below

As peer the analysis by an another developer, libreoffice accesses the folder location C:\Windows\SysWOW64\config\systemprofile\AppData\Roaming\LibreOffice and he proceeds to provide access to this folder for his profile on the server.

I wanted to check with you guys if this is really the issue and if there was a method possible to run the application programmatically on the iis test server without folder permissions. As per a team member, folder permissions on the server has to be avoided.

Please let me know if you need any other information.

Regards,
Binoy

mikekaganski · February 6, 2019, 2:15pm

LibreOffice reads and writes to its user profile (not the same that Windows user profile!); by default, it’s under %appdata%\LibreOffice\4.

But this is configurable, e.g., at launch using -env command line parameter.

BinoyCherian · February 11, 2019, 12:53pm

Hello @Mike2, I tried your suggestion with the string “-env:UserInstallation=C:\test\NPP\ --headless --convert-to pdf “C:\Conversion\_DEV_DCHI\17\20190204-110617-402-XFEVJ3Z9BG\Lorem Ipsum.docx” --outdir C:\Conversion\_DEV_DCHI\17\20190204-110617-402-XFEVJ3Z9BG\PDF” and i see the soffice gets launched but it doesn’t convert and runs continously in the background. Am I doing something wrong.

mikekaganski · February 11, 2019, 1:07pm

-env:UserInstallation only accepts file: URLs, as shown in the help.
What are those escaped quotes in the Lorem Ipsum.docx?

BinoyCherian · February 11, 2019, 1:25pm

@Mike2, Those quotes are to handle spaces in the filename or directory. I tried passing a file this time -env:UserInstallation=C:\test\NPP\test --headless --convert-to pdf C:\Conversion\_DEV_DCHI\17\20190204-110617-402-XFEVJ3Z9BG\Lorem Ipsum.docx --outdir C:\Conversion\_DEV_DCHI\17\20190204-110617-402-XFEVJ3Z9BG\PDF. Still the same, the control jumps out of the loop and keeps running in the background when I debug, I am manually killing the process from the task manager.

mikekaganski · February 11, 2019, 1:28pm

I seem to be not listened… I told you that you need to pass URLs, not paths to -env:UserInstallation - I got ignored.
I asked why those quotes are escaped - I got ignored…

And btw, writing @ Mike unnecessarily pings not me, but completely other person. My nick is @mikekaganski.

BinoyCherian · February 11, 2019, 1:38pm

@Mike2, I didn’t ignore you at all, you have been helping me a lot :). I need to escape those quotes, I might have written my previous comment wrongly. I need to escape the quotes to allow spaces in the file and directory name. As for the second, question. I don’t understand the concept of URL’s to pass it to libreoffice(an http url?), I checked a similar question on stackoverflow and this is the link below, but didn’t help me, I don’t mean any offense, but could you help me with an example easy to understand than the one in the help

mikekaganski · February 11, 2019, 1:47pm

I suppose that you should have started with a command line like

soffice -env:UserInstallation=file:///C:/test/NPP --headless --convert-to pdf "C:\Conversion\_DEV_DCHI\17\20190204-110617-402-XFEVJ3Z9BG\Lorem Ipsum.docx" --outdir C:\Conversion\_DEV_DCHI\17\20190204-110617-402-XFEVJ3Z9BG\PDF

where the profile directory is given as file:///C:/test/NPP file: URL, and Lorem Ipsum.docx uses unescaped quotes.

Also you could try current daily 6.3 builds in case it doesn’t work, to have proper console output - in case the program actually tries to inform you about a problem, but tdf#112536 prevents it. Using that daily temporarily in the debugging stage could help you nail down the problem, and then return to a stable version.

BinoyCherian · February 11, 2019, 2:30pm

@Mike2, Thanks, it worked like a charm on my test server. I see what I was doing wrong, I saw the word “file” and imagined it wrongly that libreoffice stocks all settings in the file we specify. But all is good now. Thanks again