Re: No such file or directory, and other folly

["Robert G. Brown" <bob@xxxxxxx>]

>The glibc solution seems to be on the right track....
OK, having heard of these symptoms before, and seen similar effects on
other unices, I can only be credited with making a good guess here, but let's 
assume it's right (odd effects like this, or worse can be observed)....

>export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path_to_lib_files:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
Like /usr/lib ?? OK, I think Star is dynamically loading from the library on
that path, but then (more later).

>upon issuing this command two things happened. 1) The office setup
>script started to run (good), but being a presumed x application,
>could not since XWindows wasn't loaded.
Yes, this is why you must start X first (see below).

2) startx will, after entering the above line, no longer execute....
And I'll just bet that your version of X relies on whatever lib that star 
office does NOT use. I can't tell which is bound to which, and compiling
X-windows (even if it's just to switch libraries) can be a bit of a project
(makes a kernel rebuild look like a picnic).  If we need to go that route, 
I think Adam Williams (awilliams@whitemice.org) has performed this feat.

Or, even better, someone needs to 'splain to the Star Office folk that it's
may to be nessesary to make binaries available for glibc as well as libc
platforms. The alternatives is having thousands of people run smack into 
this problem, over and over (and won't THAT make Linux look just great?!?).

>I thought this whole thing a bit odd, though, as in the instructions, it is
>quite explicit that the setup executable is executed from the command line. 
>To a DOS/Windows guy, this seems odd because you just can't run a windows-app
>from dos.
Ah, this is because the WIN 3.1 API is not available from real mode, you need 
a DPMI (DOS Protected Mode Interface) to run Windows apps. Windoes does lots
of stuff for you (not just paint pretty [or ugly, but that's opinion] windows),
like memory management, printer abstraction, limited task control, etc. All
of this is not available for a DOS command shell, which is a fairly isolated
enviroment.

Here's a critical difference; an application running from an Xterm has FULL
ACCESS to the X-server, and the X API (actually, there are multiple APIs, but
that another story). There is nothing really "special" about an xterm, either,
it's merely  another task presented via the X-server to the user. When the star
folks are talking about a command line, they mean a command line in an xterm,
since they have somewhere made it clear that all of this runs under X (and if
they haven't, they've failed to write clearly, IMO).

OK. start X, and start an xterm. Type in the environment variable setting,
and THEN run the setup util, from the command line in the xterm. Then
tell me what happens. If it works, I'll explain. If it doesn't work, I'll
explain anyway, but the explanation will be different! :)

                                                        Regards,
                                                          ---> RGB <---