Jeff,
Maybe you are looking at the problem from the wrong direction -- if
your firewall did not block the update site, you would have made one
connection downloaded the updates and been done. I am sure (or at
least I hope) that your comapny does not block MS Windows, MS office
updates or virus updates, I am equaly sure that if Open Office.org is
an application that you are allowed to run on your network, your
network support folks would be willing to make the changes needed to
allow you to update as needed.
You also might want to check your machine, as I would have thought
that an issue this serious would have made this list before today --
there may be something in your config that is magnifying the problem.
Thanks
Andy
Spitfire Computer Services
441 Beaver Street
Suite 202
Sewickley, PA 15143
Phone (412) 749-0162
Fax: (412) 749-0203
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.spitcomp.com
On Mar 2, 2007, at Friday, March 2, 20072:40 PM, O'Reilly, Jeff wrote:
Jeff O'Reilly
End-User Support
Denver Water
I have had OpenOffice installed to my work computer for some time with
no problems. Then I upgraded to OO2.1
The 1st time I launched it, the wizard asked me if I wanted it to
automatically check for updates. I said "yes".
For some odd reason, both our firewall and our web-blocker block
much of
the OpenOffice links. I can get to the main website and nearly all
pages, but I'm not allowed to download it. Apparently the automatic
update is also blocked.
What happened was a virtual Denial Of Service attack as the OpenOffice
automatic update service fired off persistent queries a gazillion
times
per second, each blocked by our firewall. Without my knowledge, my
computer was pretty much destroying all Internet use at my company
for a
few hours - until they tracked the culprit down. I brought up Task
Manager and killed "soffice.exe" and "soffice.bin" while on the phone
with the Systems group. The DOS attack immediately stopped.
Maybe stuff like this is why OpenOffice is blocked from being
downloaded?
The OpenOffice automatic update check needs to be re-thought. It
should
not send out perpetual packets the way a running service does. It
should
be one-time queries when an OpenOffice application is launched.
This is
how Mozilla FireFox does automatic updates and it works great.
If OpenOffice ever hopes to compete, things like this must be solved.
Jeff O'Reilly
