manual roll back to an old version of libreoffice?

[jyoung]

I just did a world update, and the new version of libreoffice has some really serious problems with copy/paste (details provided upon request). I'd like to roll back to an earlier version, but it's no longer in portage, and unfortunately I did a thorough cleaning after the update. However, I do have another machine with a very similar install which didn't get the update. Is there any safe way to pull the package info from that system?

A few side notes: This problem hasn't manifested in other applications, and it seems to be a problem with libreoffice, but I technically can't rule out the possibility that some other part of my desktop is broken. I've started a thread on the libreoffice forum about this, but copy/paste is really critical, and if I could I'd roll back now. I've also done some searching to see if anyone else has had this problem, and the answer seems to be yes: The problems discussed on the thread below seem to mostly overlap with mine, although it's not even a linux thread and many of the solutions don't apply here

https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/copy-paste-clipboard-issues-libreoffice-calc/45811/38

[bstaletic]

You're going to need the old ebuild. Simplest way is to take it from the other machine and put it into your local overlay.
If the two machines have the same architecture and USE flags, then you can also make a binary package on one and install it on the other.

[logrusx]

In the light of recent Gnome updates, I would support this claim in the referenced thread:

[jyoung]

logrusx, I'm actually running xfce. I do have some gnome applications installed. As far as I can tell, it's just the secondary clipboard that's the problem, and just with libreoffice.

bstaletic, thanks for the tip, the old version of libreoffice is compiling now. With luck, we'll find out if it is libreoffice or another issue like the compositor that's causing the problem.

[jyoung]

The older version (24.2.6.2) is suffering from the same problem. That seems to support the idea that it's something else, perhaps with the compositor.

However, I don't actually use libreoffice that much on the other machine, so I suppose it's possible that it's actually broken there too. I'll check and report back. The earliest version that I can roll back to is 24.2.4.2-r1, and I'll try that as well.

[jyoung]

I just rolled back to 24.2.4.2-r1, and the problem persists.


With 24.2.7.2 and 24.2.6.2 I was also seeing another problem, when I copy or cut an object (like a text box), it turns it into an image. That problem seems to have gone away with 24.2.4.2-r1.

[jyoung]

Any further thoughts here? Some updates: I found an old hard drive from a few years ago with ebuilds 7.3.2.2-r1 and 7.2.6.2-r1, and tried to emerge those as overlays. I'm getting the error

[logrusx]

[jyoung]

logrusx, that worked, I was able to get emerge to start at least. Now, I'm hitting this message

[logrusx]

It wants 2.0. try changing that to 2.1 in the ebuild, let's hope it'll work. If not, mdds is slotted, you might be able to get an older ebuild, but that's already opening a can of worms of old ebuilds...

You might be better of taking old snapshot of the tree and old basefiles image and performing a new installation with it.

Best Regards,
Georgi

[jyoung]

Weird, I modified the ebuild file to read

[logrusx]

[jyoung]

Darn, it looks like an easy fix might not be realistic.

Building from a snapshot of the old tree might be the best plan. The old hard drive actually has the entire OS, so in theory we have the old code.

I still think that this is probably not an issue with libreoffice specifically, but rather some component of my system interacting with it badly. I double that they would have let this kind of bug go unfixed for a year, especially given the number of new releases, so it must be a minority of users that experience it.

I did try one other experiment, installing the binary version of the package, libreoffice-bin. It had the same issue.

[jyoung]

There might be another thing to try: the old hard drive has an ebuild for libreoffice-bin-7.2.5.2. That doesn't seem to depend on mdds, and probably has far fewer dependencies in general. Maybe that's worth a try?

[logrusx]

It would be easier to setup a completely new installation aided by the binhost and see if it behaves. If it doesn't, then the problem is in your current system.

Best Regards,
Georgi

[jyoung]

Would binhost allow me to pull in old versions of software that aren't still in portage? I have tried the libreoffice-bin that's used through portage, and it suffered the same issue as the regular libreoffice.

Also, I think I was incorrect in saying that the old hard drive had the files for an old version of libreoffice-bin. It does have a directory in /usr/portage/, but not /var/db (or anything in /var).

If it were a probably with the system other than libreoffice, are there any likely suspects?

[logrusx]

I suggest setting up a clean, current install and see how it behaves. This would be an easier way of verifying if it's a bug in libreoffice or a problem somewhere in your system.

As to how old the packages are on the binhost, I don't know. I guess it only contains packages currently in tree.

Best Regards,
Georgi

[jyoung]

You mean an entirely new install of gentoo? I was thinking along similar lines, using a liveusb, that way I wouldn't have to rebuild everything.

[NeddySeagoon]

jyoung,

As I write, the /23.0/ profile BINHOST/ contains libreoffice-24.2.7.2
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[logrusx]

[NeddySeagoon]

logrusx,

Agreed about going forward rather than backward.
You can't stay in the past very long.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.