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Task #1025

closed

Setup a client LibreOffice instance for officeshots.org

Added by Thorsten Behrens over 9 years ago. Updated over 9 years ago.

Status:
Closed
Priority:
Normal
Category:
-
Target version:
-
Start date:
Due date:
% Done:

0%

Tags:

Description

We'd need a VM with a vanilla LibO running (going forward probably
latest versions of still and fresh, if that can be automated), and
connected to the main officeshots instance like so:

http://code.officeshots.org/trac/officeshots/wiki/FactoryManual and
http://code.officeshots.org/trac/officeshots/wiki/FactoryManual/StandardFactory/LOServer

Do I understand correctly that we'd have to run a headless instance of
LibreOffice somewhere and communicate with your service via RPC, and
that the host that runs the instance needs to have an SSL certificate
corresponding to the email address the account on officeshots.org was
setup with? Anything else to know? How to proceed exactly?

Plus the above, so you'd need an SSL cert (e.g. from startssl), and
poke Michiel Leenaars with it (contact info via PM).

Actions #1

Updated by Robinson Tryon over 9 years ago

  • Status changed from New to In Progress

Thorsten Behrens wrote:

We'd need a VM with a vanilla LibO running (going forward probably
latest versions of still and fresh, if that can be automated),

I'll talk with cloph about the best way to handle updating to the latest versions. Based on what I understand of OfficeShots, it might not be bad for us to have a daily build of master available as well.

and
connected to the main officeshots instance like so:

http://code.officeshots.org/trac/officeshots/wiki/FactoryManual and
http://code.officeshots.org/trac/officeshots/wiki/FactoryManual/StandardFactory/LOServer

Do I understand correctly that we'd have to run a headless instance of
LibreOffice somewhere and communicate with your service via RPC, and
that the host that runs the instance needs to have an SSL certificate
corresponding to the email address the account on officeshots.org was
setup with?

I think a generic address like 'officeshots@libo' will work well.

Plus the above, so you'd need an SSL cert (e.g. from startssl), and
poke Michiel Leenaars with it (contact info via PM).

Ok

Actions #2

Updated by Florian Effenberger over 9 years ago

@Robinson:

For the VM + the SSL cert, poke Alex
For the e-mail address, poke Sophie

Only thing is that "SSL cert corresponding to e-mail address" is nothing
I can offer from StartSSL - we do have X.509 certificates, but not
S/MIME. For S/MIME, we might a separate verification of a human being,
which costs and takes time, so it might be worth investigating if those
certs can simply be self-signed

Actions #3

Updated by Thorsten Behrens over 9 years ago

No need for email certs, what they want is an auth cert for xmlrpc communication.

Actions #4

Updated by Florian Effenberger over 9 years ago

Ah, ok, I was confused by "to have an SSL certificate
corresponding to the email address" ;-) For SSL cert, Alex can help, we
have one with StartSSL

Actions #5

Updated by Sophie Gautier over 9 years ago

Generic mail account set, added it to the spreadsheet.

Actions #6

Updated by Robinson Tryon over 9 years ago

Emailed: alex

Actions #7

Updated by Alexander Werner over 9 years ago

So AFAIU: You need an X.509 client cert with the CN ?
I need some more details for the VM: OS/Ram/HDD etc

Actions #8

Updated by Robinson Tryon over 9 years ago

Alexander Werner wrote:

So AFAIU: You need an X.509 client cert with the CN ?

Yes, that'd be great.

I need some more details for the VM: OS/Ram/HDD etc

I'm not sure what kind of load this machine will get. It's going to serve as a glorified, headless PDF printer, and make at least 2 separate builds of LibreOffice available for on-demand rendering, so off the top of my head, I'd say:

  • Ubuntu 14.04
  • 4GB RAM
  • 40GB hdd

Does that sound reasonable?

Actions #9

Updated by Florian Effenberger over 9 years ago

Just shot StartSSL an email whether that's doable :-)

Actions #10

Updated by Florian Effenberger over 9 years ago

That'll do - if someone forwards the officeshots@ address temporarily to
me, I'll setup the certificate and send it crypte to Robinson and Alex

Poke me when the forward is up :)

Actions #11

Updated by Robinson Tryon over 9 years ago

Florian Effenberger wrote:

That'll do - if someone forwards the officeshots@ address temporarily to
me, I'll setup the certificate and send it crypte to Robinson and Alex

Poke me when the forward is up :)

done

Actions #12

Updated by Florian Effenberger over 9 years ago

Seems that StartSSL is a bit problematic for this - is a valid, known CA required? If not, how about just creating a self-signed certificate?
xca is a GUI tool for that, see http://sourceforge.net/projects/xca/
Otherwise, something like that looks sensible: https://gist.github.com/richieforeman/3166387

Using -sha512 and rsa:4096 sounds like good parameters.

If that doesn't work out for you, we could also use CAcert with our organization account if you create a CSR:
Actions #13

Updated by Robinson Tryon over 9 years ago

Alex: Were you able to set up a VM to run the officeshots factory? Thanks.

Actions #14

Updated by Florian Effenberger over 9 years ago

Infra tries to provide a VM this week, but it depends on a couple of parameters

Actions #15

Updated by Christian Lohmaier over 9 years ago

a vm has been created with the above mentioned specs (40GB HDD, 4GB RAM) (vm164.documentfoundation.org - minimal setup via salt)

Actions #16

Updated by Florian Effenberger over 9 years ago

VM has been setup, now we wait getting credentials for the service, Robinson will ping them again later this week if we have no credentials by then

Actions #17

Updated by Robinson Tryon over 9 years ago

Another quick update:

Officeshots factory is running on our VM; LibreOffice install is running locally and producing correct output.

I'm currently waiting to hear back from the Officeshots sysadmins to understand what behavior I should expect from the factories in general. Documents submitted to any factory appear to remain in 'queued' state indefinitely.

Notes on implementation:

  1. According to the docs, there is supposedly a 'LOServer' backend, however it doesn't appear to exist outside of the config file. The 'OOOServer' does not work with LibreOffice. For now, I'm using the CLI backend.
  2. Running the factory.py script with a '-d' switch will give a lot of useful debugging info about the connection
Actions #18

Updated by Robinson Tryon over 9 years ago

Just heard back from the Officeshots admins today. It looks like there were some issues with antivirus software on their end, and they said that things should be running again smoothly. I'll test our Officeshots install and the primary website again this week.

Actions #19

Updated by Robinson Tryon over 9 years ago

Robinson Tryon wrote:

Just heard back from the Officeshots admins today. It looks like there were some issues with antivirus software on their end, and they said that things should be running again smoothly. I'll test our Officeshots install and the primary website again this week.

Ran a test, but still experiencing timeouts. I've gotten the setup working using the CLI backend with some tweaking, but I really would like to use the LOServer backend as I believe it will be more reliable in the long term. I'll ping them again this week and ask for more information about the updated config.

Actions #20

Updated by Robinson Tryon over 9 years ago

  • Status changed from In Progress to Resolved

Robinson Tryon wrote:

Ran a test, but still experiencing timeouts. I've gotten the setup working using the CLI backend with some tweaking, but I really would like to use the LOServer backend as I believe it will be more reliable in the long term. I'll ping them again this week and ask for more information about the updated config.

Officeshots maintainers suggest that we use the CLI backend, so I'm considering this one done.

Actions #21

Updated by Florian Effenberger over 9 years ago

  • Status changed from Resolved to Closed
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