Can't run unoconv as www-data user in Ubuntu 14.04LTS

[thepurpleblob]

Basically...

$ sudo -H -u www-data bash -c "./unoconv -f pdf ~/pomo\ essay.doc"
Error: Unable to connect or start own listener. Aborting.

Running the same (unoconv) command as myself works perfectly. Running sudo as another normal user works fine.

The is Ubuntu 14.04 which ships with 0.6 but I am testing with 0.7 straight from Github. The only thing I changed is the top line to use python3. It seems peculiar to www-data and this kills it when called using exec() in PHP (output from that is the same listener error)

-vvv version:
Verbosity set to level 3
Using office base path: /usr/lib/libreoffice
Using office binary path: /usr/lib/libreoffice/program
DEBUG: Connection type: socket,host=127.0.0.1,port=2002,tcpNoDelay=1;urp;StarOffice.ComponentContext
DEBUG: Existing listener not found.
DEBUG: Launching our own listener using /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice.bin.
LibreOffice listener successfully started. (pid=7166)
DEBUG: Process /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice.bin (pid=7166) exited with 77.
Error: Unable to connect or start own listener. Aborting.

[rrusso]

Running into the same problem here on 14.04LTS.

I'm also running .7 from the master branch here on github as well as the latest (5.1) LibreOffice.

The only change to unoconv is specifying python3 in the top line.

[rrusso]

Adding the $pythonhome and setting it to /usr/bin/python3 seems to solve this for me. I'll dig deeper.

[thepurpleblob]

Sorry for my ignorance, but my Python skills are basic. Where did you add $pythonhome? I see a lot of code in the script working with a variable 'pythonhome'

[thepurpleblob]

Ahh.... the problem was that, on Ubuntu at least, the running user's home directory has to be writable (by them) to create a couple of hidden directories. Unfortunately, www-data's home directory is /var/www and that is only writeable by root. Sorting the permissions to enable www-data to write sorts it out.

I assume it was libreoffice trying to create the directories, but a more helpful message wouldn't have hurt.

[dagwieers]

It helps to read the documentation, as people have run into the same issue before: https://github.com/dagwieers/unoconv#problems-running-unoconv-from-nginxapachephp

[thepurpleblob]

Yes, yes - I don't know how many times I read that and still missed it :) :)

[thepurpleblob]

Working fine now.. thanks