Error while connecting / starting the office server

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1

My xwiki is failing to connect to my newly installed LibreOffice server.

In “Global Administration:Office Server” I see “Server State” is “not connected” When I select (*) Connect under Actions and click [Update], after some time I get this error: “Error while connecting / starting the office server.”

My office server is running, with these parameters:

/usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice.bin --headless --nologo --nofirststartwizard --accept=“socket,host=127.0.0.1,port=8100;tcpnodelay=1;urp”

My xwiki.properties file has these office parameters set:

openoffice.serverType = 1

openoffice.serverPorts = 8100,8101

openoffice.autoStart = true

I was following advice from this xwiki.org page: https://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/documentation/xs/admin/exports/connect-external-office-server/”

Is there a way to diagnose what is going wrong? ie. a log with details on the error?

2

Hello Dave,

This is an error in the XWiki interface that doesn’t provide details, the detailed information about the error and its cause is displayed in the server logs.

Yes, you need to check the log either from the XWiki console or from the server log file at the path of your Jetty or Tomcat servlet.

3

Thanks, nikpetrenko, for the advice. Being new to XWiki, I’m not sure how to look into the ‘XWiki console’. I did look directly at my /var/log/syslog and found the below set of related tomcat massages. Which basically say it is refusing the connection on port 8100 (??)

Is there a way to determine why connection is refused?

2026-05-01T12:12:57.591612-04:00 xwiki-prod tomcat10[15067]: 2026-05-01 12:12:57,588 [jodconverter-extlcxnmng-1] ERROR xternalOfficeConnectionManager - Could not establish connection to external process.
2026-05-01T12:12:57.592595-04:00 xwiki-prod tomcat10[15067]: org.jodconverter.core.office.OfficeException: Could not establish connection to external process.
2026-05-01T12:12:57.592699-04:00 xwiki-prod tomcat10[15067]: #011at org.jodconverter.local.office.ExternalOfficeConnectionManager.connect0(ExternalOfficeConnectionManager.java:228)
2026-05-01T12:12:57.592788-04:00 xwiki-prod tomcat10[15067]: #011at org.jodconverter.local.office.ExternalOfficeConnectionManager.lambda$connect$0(ExternalOfficeConnectionManager.java:111)
2026-05-01T12:12:57.592866-04:00 xwiki-prod tomcat10[15067]: #011at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1144)
2026-05-01T12:12:57.592932-04:00 xwiki-prod tomcat10[15067]: #011at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:642)
2026-05-01T12:12:57.593013-04:00 xwiki-prod tomcat10[15067]: #011at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:1583)
2026-05-01T12:12:57.593097-04:00 xwiki-prod tomcat10[15067]: Caused by: org.jodconverter.core.office.RetryTimeoutException: org.jodconverter.local.office.OfficeConnectionException: Connection failed: ‘socket,host=127.0.0.1,port=8100,tcpNoDelay=1’; java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused
2026-05-01T12:12:57.593172-04:00 xwiki-prod tomcat10[15067]: #011at org.jodconverter.core.office.AbstractRetryable.execute(AbstractRetryable.java:101)
2026-05-01T12:12:57.593235-04:00 xwiki-prod tomcat10[15067]: #011at org.jodconverter.core.office.AbstractRetryable.execute(AbstractRetryable.java:60)
2026-05-01T12:12:57.593450-04:00 xwiki-prod tomcat10[15067]: #011at org.jodconverter.local.office.ExternalOfficeConnectionManager.connect0(ExternalOfficeConnectionManager.java:226)
2026-05-01T12:12:57.593545-04:00 xwiki-prod tomcat10[15067]: #011… 4 common frames omitted
2026-05-01T12:12:57.593633-04:00 xwiki-prod tomcat10[15067]: Caused by: org.jodconverter.local.office.OfficeConnectionException: Connection failed: ‘socket,host=127.0.0.1,port=8100,tcpNoDelay=1’; java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused
2026-05-01T12:12:57.593700-04:00 xwiki-prod tomcat10[15067]: #011at org.jodconverter.local.office.OfficeConnection.connect(OfficeConnection.java:130)
2026-05-01T12:12:57.593763-04:00 xwiki-prod tomcat10[15067]: #011at org.jodconverter.local.office.ConnectRetryable.attempt(ConnectRetryable.java:49)
2026-05-01T12:12:57.593824-04:00 xwiki-prod tomcat10[15067]: #011at org.jodconverter.core.office.AbstractRetryable.execute(AbstractRetryable.java:86)
2026-05-01T12:12:57.593886-04:00 xwiki-prod tomcat10[15067]: #011… 6 common frames omitted
2026-05-01T12:12:57.593974-04:00 xwiki-prod tomcat10[15067]: Caused by: com.sun.star.connection.NoConnectException: java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused

5

Seems, you’re hitting old issue. But this not that something can be fixed on XWiki side. Rather issue with jobconverter, LibreOffice not starting when run from Systemd / tomcat user · Issue #240 · jodconverter/jodconverter.

I’d say it’s worth to check whether you’ll have issue after checking permission on your end.

additionally, there’s old forum discussion regarding it XWiki 12.9 LibreOffice not starting