Q: I just upgraded from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 AS to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. Why did Open Office stop working?

Answer

Originally the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 4 AS product was considered the "It contains everything" product,
rather than the "For servers, not desktops" product as was originally intended. With RHEL 5, the server focus was made sharper.

RHEL 4 WS, with Open Office installed, when upgraded to RHEL 5 Client, will automatically upgrade from Open Office 1.1.5 to Open Office 2.x.

RHEL 4 systems upgrading to RHEL Server ordinarily do not touch Open Office packages at all. This means that if Open Office 1.1.5 was installed, it is left in a broken state. Red Hat generally recommends re-installing rather than upgrading because there are many situations like this.

If you have upgraded to RHEL 5 Server and want to clean out the broken legacy version of OpenOffice 1.1.5 do the following:

1. Become root
2. rpm -e `rpm -qa | grep openoffice.org
   Result: All installed OpenOffice packages will be found and removed.

If you plan to use Open Office, we strongly recommend RHEL 5 Client.