richdocumentscode

Collabora Online - Built-in CODE Server (for Nextcloud)

Created by Collabora Productivity Ltd.

Features

• This app provides a built-in server with all of the document editing features of Collabora Online.
• Easy to install, for personal use or for small teams.
• A bit slower than a standalone server and without the advanced scalability features.

Collabora Online is a powerful LibreOffice-based online office suite with collaborative editing, which supports all major documents, spreadsheet and presentation file formats and works together with all modern browsers.

Implementation

The included CODE Server app is provided as an AppImage. When running under Docker/LXC the AppImage will be unpacked and run, else the host is required to be able to run AppImages which adds a requirement on FUSE.

Notes:

• On slower systems, the first time the CODE Server is started there may be a noticeable delay (also applies on subsequent runs if /tmp whenever cleared)

System requirements

• Linux x86-64 or ARM64 (aarch64) platform
• 2 CPU cores
• 1 GB RAM + 100 MB RAM / user
• 100 kbit/s network bandwidth / user
• 300 MB space on disk (800 MB in /tmp if not using FUSE)
• Nextcloud 19 with the Nextcloud Office app 3.7.0 or higher
• A glibc based distribution/container (AppImage does not support musl libc)
• Fontconfig (libfontconfig.so.1 - required by Collabora_Online.AppImage)

Optional

• Kernel supporting the FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace)
• FUSE 2 (libfuse.so.2)

Note: If FUSE support is not present, a warning (dlopen(): error loading libfuse.so.2) will be generated, but then the AppImage will be started with the --appimage-extract-and-run parameter automatically as a fallback.

Installation

The download is rather big (~300 MB) so it is possible you will experience a time-out if using the web interface to install from the AppStore. Using the OCC command line tool is suggested for reliability:

sudo -u wwwrun php -d memory_limit=512M ./occ app:install richdocumentscode

Where wwwrun is the user of your web server. This is www-data on Debian, Ubuntu and derivatives, wwwrun on SUSE based distributions, apache on Red Hat/Fedora and http on Arch linux and derivatives.

richdocumentscode is only for architecture x86_64. If you want to install the app for ARM64, install richdocumentscode_arm64:

sudo -u wwwrun php -d memory_limit=512M ./occ app:install richdocumentscode_arm64

Updates can be done like this:

sudo -u wwwrun php -d memory_limit=512M ./occ app:update --all

Of course, alternatively you could increase memory usage and PHP time-outs by default, see the Nextcloud documentation.

Troubleshooting

• Make sure you have enough disk space
• Check the logs:
  • nextcloud.log
  • container logs (if applicable)
  • /tmp/coolwsd.*/coolwsd.log (on your host or in the container's /tmp if applicable)

Testing with a local Collabora Online build

These instructions explain how to test this app with a local development build of Collabora Online. This is useful for testing patches and new features in Collabora Online before they are released.

Prerequisites

• A local Nextcloud development instance running on http. Using http simplifies the setup by avoiding the need for SSL certificates.
• A local clone of the Collabora Online repository.

1. Build Collabora Online

First, you need to build Collabora Online from source.

1. Navigate to your local Collabora Online repository:

   cd /path/to/your/collabora/online/repo

2. Build Collabora Online. Using the -j flag with the number of your CPU cores will speed up the process significantly.

   make -j$(nproc)

2. Run local Collabora Online server

Once the build is complete, run the following command from the root of your Collabora Online repository to start the development server:

./coolwsd --o:sys_template_path="$PWD/systemplate" \
          --o:child_root_path="$PWD/master/jails" \
          --o:cache_files.path="$PWD/cache" \
          --o:admin_console.username=admin \
          --o:admin_console.password=admin \
          --o:ssl.enable=false \
          --port=9983 \
          --o:net.proxy_prefix=true

This command starts the Collabora Online server (coolwsd) without SSL, listening on port 9983.

3. Configure richdocumentscode app

To make the richdocumentscode app work with your local Collabora Online server, you need to make a few modifications.

1. Clone the app: If you haven't already, clone the richdocumentscode repository into your Nextcloud apps directory.

2. Modify proxy.php: You need to edit proxy.php in the richdocumentscode app directory.

   Open proxy.php and apply the following changes:

   • Update Server IP Address: If you are running nextcloud-docker-dev, you must replace the localhost with your host machine's local network IP address. Find all occurrences of localhost and replace them with your IP.

   • Bypass Server Checks: To connect to your local coolwsd instance, you need to bypass the standard server checks.

     • In the isCoolwsdRunning() function, add return true; at the beginning.

       function isCoolwsdRunning()
       {
           return true;
           // ... original code
       }

     • In the checkCoolwsdSetup() function, add return ''; at the beginning.

       function checkCoolwsdSetup()
       {
           return '';
           // ... original code
       }

   Note: These changes are for development purposes only and should not be used in a production environment.

3. Configure Nextcloud Office: In your Nextcloud instance, go to Settings > Office.

   • Select Use the built-in CODE.

Important Considerations

• Bypassing Localhost Restrictions in Collabora Online: For some testing scenarios, you might need to modify the Collabora Online source code to remove restrictions on local connections. Search for and comment out any lines containing socket->isLocal() in the Collabora Online source code if you encounter connection issues.