Doing a WordPerfect 8.0 install on Linux

This is a brief description of how I installed WordPerfect version 8.0 on my Linux machine. I initially had some problems with the installation, so I posted a request for help on the DC-area Linux user's group listserver. Quite a few people offered suggestions, and some people told me of similar problems, so I decided to tabulate my experiences:

History: The targeted Linux machine is currently a stand-alone (non-networked) desktop (actually, a Toshiba 435CDS laptop) 120 Mhz Pentium, with 48 MB of RAM, running Redhat 5.2 and a 2.0.36 kernel. I had some old Wordperfect 5.0 graphics files which I wanted to examine, so I installed the non-licensed version of Wordperfect 8.0. Worked fine, but I knew that the non-licensed version was time limited, so I decided to get a licensed version. When I saw the licensed version for sale for 20 bucks, I bought it. I un-installed the non-licensed version, and this is where the fun began.

The "official" version would not install. No matter how I tried, I wound up with a whole bunch of error messages, most of which said something like

chmod: /wplib/xyz: No such file or directory

So, what to do? I posted a help request to the DC area linux user's group, and various individuals suggested the following websites:
http://search.corel.com/kbsearch/linux/index.html
http://linux.corel.com/wp8_linuxfix.htm
http://linux.corel.com/products/linux_os/techsupport/html/9203.htm
They offered some help, but only the last one was really applicable.

But, even this last site was not an acceptable solution; it recommended that I create a tar file on my hard drive which was a duplicate of the info on the CDROM, then untar the tar file, and then do the install from the hard drive. It stated that 750 MB of free space would be required on the hard drive to pull this off. I only had about 434 MB available, but I decided to try it anyway. I got as far as creating the tar file, but the tar file wound up being about 372 MB in size. I then realized that the "recommended" 750 MB of space was probably legitimate, as I would probably generate some 370+ MB of files on the hard drive if I was to attempt to untar the tar file (in addition to the already-created 372 MB tar file). So, I deleted the tar file (getting my 434 MB back), and decided to dig a little bit deeper.

What I discovered was that the bulk of the info on the CDROM was graphics files and "extra" stuff. I then worked out the following scheme to do a successful install. To pull this off, you will have to have root priveliges:

Login on the Linux box as root; create the following directory where the necessary CDROM files will be temporarily stored with the following command:
```
mkdir /WP8
```
And create the directory for the "permanent" WordPerfect binaries with
```
mkdir /wp
```
Then do the following commands:
```
chmod 0777 /WP8
chmod 0777 /wp
```
Next, mount the WordPerfect CDROM, and issue the following commands (on my system, the CDROM is available at /mnt/cdrom; you'll have to revise the commands accordingly):
```
cd /mnt/cdrom
tar -cvf /WP8/f.tar fonts
tar -cvf /WP8/l.tar linux
tar -cvf /WP8/s.tar shared
cp install.wp /WP8
cp remove.wp /WP8
chmod 0666 /WP8/*.tar
chmod 0777 /WP8/*.wp
```
This creates two script files on /WP8, along with three tar files (one at 12 MB for fonts, one at 3 MB for "shared", and one at 60 MB for WordPerfect), and makes everything writable/removable at a later date by a non-root user.
Next, umount the CDROM, logout as root, and login as a non-root user. Now, do the following:
```
cd /WP8
tar -xvf f.tar
tar -xvf l.tar
tar -xvf s.tar
```
Now, you're setup for install. Continue by starting the X server (if you have not already done so); the remaining commands have to be performed from a xterm window (with X running):
```
cd /WP8
/bin/bash install.wp
```
At this point, you should be up and running with the install process. If you wish to get back some disk space, you can erase the /WP8/*.tar files. (As root, I erased the entire WP8 directory contents on my computer; when done, the resulting "live" WordPerfect installation [in /wp] wound up taking up about 72 MB.) To run WordPerfect, you need to run the xwp binary (in this example, it's /wp/wpbin/xwp).

The only remaining issue is security; some of the mentioned websites provide some info on this. Apparently, the standard WordPerfect installation has some security holes. These were not a concern for me, since I'm working in a standalone (non-networked) environment, but I recommend you review the security issues. One individual, in particular, provided some additional insight into security issues, and sent me a suggested script file, you can view his suggested implementation, described below, or contact him directly by emailing to peterw ["at" sign] usa ["dot"] net [the preceding garbage inserted to foil some of the dumber spambots.]:

******** begin quoted message ***********
WordPerfect does have tmp dir problems, in general (*not* just at installation time!) -- it likes to make wpc-$HOSTNAME dirs every time it starts. But it respects the TMPDIR environment variable. I recommend adding the following to /etc/profile to help avoid such problems (because other apps have similar problems that are solved with a good $TMPDIR):

# TMPDIR for safety
if [ -z "${TMPDIR}" ]; then
        # TMPDIR not set
        TMPDIR=${HOME}/tmp
        if [ $TMPDIR = //tmp ]; then
                # holy smokes! This user's home dir is "/"? SysV-root?
                TMPDIR=/tmp-root
        fi
        if [ \! -d ${TMPDIR} ]; then
                mkdir -m 0700 ${TMPDIR} 2>/dev/null && export TMPDIR \
                        || echo "Warning: unable to create safe TMPDIR"
        else 
                export TMPDIR
        fi
fi

And here's an old shell script I use to launch wp8, which refuses to run the app if there's an obvious problem with TMPDIR:


#!/bin/sh
if [ -z "${TMPDIR}" ]; then
        TMPDIR=${HOME}/tmp
fi
if [ ! -d "${TMPDIR}" ]; then
   TMPDIR_TEST="error"
   /bin/mkdir "${TMPDIR}" && TMPDIR_TEST="ok"
   if [ ${TMPDIR_TEST} != "ok" ]; then
        /bin/echo "Unable to create safe tmp directory ${TMPDIR}"
        exit 1
    fi
    /bin/chmod o= "${TMPDIR}"
fi
# Set $TMPDIR for the wpc-$HOSTNAME junk
export TMPDIR
# Clear LD_LIBRARY_PATH to prevent reported seg faults
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="" export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
# Set the PATH and exec the app, passing any command-line args
PATH=${PATH}:/path/to/wp8/wpbin export PATH
exec xwp "${@-}" &

Since I've recently installed the boxed WP 8 and don't have any "wpc" dirs in /tmp, I assume that the install also respects TMPDIR.

*********** end quoted message (from peterw) **************

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