Libre Office doesn't start at all (wrong library version)

[Leo Cacciari]

I'm unable to start any of the libre office collection (writer, calc, etc). When trying to open a
file the system goes busy for a little while (as shown by the pointer) then nothing happens. If I try from the menu nothing happens at all. Finally, if I try starting the component from the command line I get the following error message:

hobbit:~ $ lowriter
/usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice.bin: error while loading shared libraries: libicui18n.so.63: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Now, the libicu is (obviously) installed, but the installed version is 66, not 63. Version 66, BTW, is the one listed as dependency for the libre office package.

I do not exactly know when libreoffice stopped working after the update to focal, as I do not use it extensively

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: libreoffice 1:6.4.3-0ubuntu0.20.04.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-33.37-generic 5.4.34
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-33-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.2
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: XFCE
Date: Fri Jun 5 12:49:19 2020
InstallationDate: Installed on 2019-02-09 (481 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 18.10 "Cosmic Cuttlefish" - Release amd64 (20181017.2)
SourcePackage: libreoffice
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to focal on 2020-05-08 (27 days ago)

[Heather Ellsworth (hellsworth)]

> Now, the libicu is (obviously) installed, but the installed version is 66, not 63. Version 66, BTW, is the one listed as dependency for the libre office package.

That is correct, libicu is v66 in ubuntu 20.04. Perhaps something funky happened in your update from 18.10 to 20.04. I would recommend removing libreoffice and reinstalling it

$ sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade
$ sudo apt-get remove --purge libreoffice*
$ sudo apt install libreoffice

Then lowriter should work.

[Leo Cacciari (leocacciari)]

@hellsworth I tried your suggestion, but it didn't solve the problem: it still complains that it can find the 63 version of libicui18n

[Leo Cacciari (leocacciari)]

Ok, I'm certified stupid and I'm sorry to have bothered people with better things to do. It turns out, using lddtree, that what actually depended on libicu version 63 was my personal copy of libboost-locale that I keep, together with other boost library, in /usr/local for development purposes. What I did was forgetting to re-compile the libraries after update.

Please, update the status of this report to PIBKAC

[Heather Ellsworth (hellsworth)]

Ah ok these things happen Leo. Thanks for the update :)