separate process list for different openoffice products

[mbaste2]

hi anyone,

i am new to ubuntu 7.04.

i need to list processes daily showing dates and times (durations) when openoffice software were used.

i opened openoffice (draw) and
tried ps -ef (and variants) which gave me

1000 10680 1 0 13:03 ? 00:00:00 /bin/sh /usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice -draw -splash-pipe=5
1000 10697 10680 0 13:04 ? 00:00:02 /usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice.bin -draw -splash-pipe=5

then i opened other openoffice products and issued another ps -ef. the subsequent openoffice products i opened like calc and writer are not reflected in the second ps -ef. only the first (draw) was listed. i am not sure, but it seems openoffice has just one process for all of its products?

is there a way to issue a command to list processes that will include all the openoffice products like calc, writer, etc. when they are all open and not just the first one opened?

thanks for any help or lead (even not in u7.04, or not in ubuntu)

[Rubberman]

You are correct in that there is only one executable for OOo. Each application is a window(s) managed by the single executable soffice.bin. If you want to see which applications/files are opened with OOo, go to the Window menu in any OpenOffice window and it will list them all.

[mbaste2]

thanks rubberman,

1. so using ps -ef is a dead-end for openoffice? any other linux, ubuntu command i can use?

i was hoping i can filter and parse the output of ps -ef to determine the times, durations, user and process ids so i can program a report on the usage of these openoffice products. i planned to execute cron every 30 minutes and compare both outputs on process and user ids. if same process id is still active after 30 minutes, then i can tally that process (software) as being used for 30 minutes. i cron again after 30 min. and if still active, i then add another 30 minutes to that software's tally. if it is not active anymore, then i just add 15 min (average of 30 minutes).

a crude way, but i guess it can more or less give the administrators of the high school internet lab/cafe which executables are being used by students/users. it is workable for firefox and other executables, until i found out that openoffice products have only one executable. and sad to say, usage of the openoffice products was what the administrators wanted to know foremost.

2. i am open to any other suggestion on how i can accomplish this.

thanks again

[Rubberman]

You can use that approach to determine how long people are running (or have open, anyway) OpenOffice as a whole, but not the component parts. You could get the source code and add some usage logging yourself... In any case, you should look at OO as an integrated package instead of a bunch of separate parts.

[mbaste2]

thanks again rubberman,

yes, by active process i meant the window just being open, not necessarily being actively used. i am aware it is crude (user can just open OO, leave it open without doing anything on it, do something else in, say firefox and both processes (OO and FF) will be logged accordingly as active), but that was the closest i can think of without going through and putting stubs in the OO source code (beyond my capability).

i have googled internet/cafe management software but i was hoping there was a way to do it using just linux commands and logs.

[Rubberman]

You might want to post your question to the OpenOffice.org user forums. There might be some way to enable usage logging that I'm not aware of.