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I installed the ownCloud 7 app (Git URL: https://github.com/openshift/owncloud-openshift-quickstart.git) via we OpenShift Online web-console and it is running fine. I even managed to get the URL-forwarding working so that users can get to this cloudified app with a familiar URL. Only after successful redirect the browsers reverts back to .rhcloud.com URL, but that's just a minotr annoyance ;)

The problem is that after using ownCloud 7 for awhile, I realized that the Openshift installation does not support .odf creation or the (collaborative) editing of them in server. Normally .ODF files are in ownCloud handled with LibreOffice or OpenOffice, and either of those binaries need to be accessable by ownCloud. In Openshift both of these are sadly missing resulting in inability to work with .odf-documents.

Now, is it possible to get support for ODF-document creation and collaborative writing by: 1) waiting for future update of OPenshift / OwnCloud 7 quickstart image, or 2) installing libre/openoffice directly to ownCloud application space, and modifying the 'owncloud-config.php' accordingly (i.e. adding the path to installed binary in 'preview_libreoffice_path' variable)?

The community that is going to use our cloudified ownCloud app really needs this collaborative document writing enabled, and ODF-format would be perfect for us.

Cheers..

experimancer
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  • Theoretically, you could compile the libre-office and OwnCloud7 into a custom cartridge and then run it on Openshift. If you're up to the task, here's the cartridge developer guide http://openshift.github.io/documentation/oo_cartridge_developers_guide.html – niharvey Aug 19 '14 at 20:44
  • Thanks for the info. Seems that it could be possible then to add e.g. LibreOffice as dependency to a custom cartridge (in the `manifest.yaml`) and point the `libreoffice_preview_path` to that executable. Also there is a config var to add CLI-params, so `--headless` could be added to that. This way, IMO, the ODF-previews, atleast, could be achievable. I still have to investigate whether the ODF-creation and group wrtiting of them is possible when LibreOffice is run and used in 'headless' environment. – experimancer Aug 26 '14 at 02:17

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If LibreOffice and OpenOffice require x windows to run, then it will not be possible to do what you want done on OpenShift, as those binaries are not installed on the servers, since this is a headless server environment and there is no need for them.

  • Well, at least libreoffice does *not* require X windowing to be usable in this context (as a plugin for ownCloud Document app for conversions and browser based writitng support), because it is easy enough to run stock-build libreoffice like this: 'liberoffice --headless' or even build it without linking to X, cairo, GUI toolkits etc.. https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/HeadlessBuild – experimancer Aug 26 '14 at 02:04
  • Ofc OpenShift is a server environment, but it doesn't mean that binaries (from LibreOffice) for ownCloud Document app functionalities wouldn't be needed. – experimancer Aug 26 '14 at 02:55