Steps for reproduction: 1. Open LibreOffice. 2. Open Extension Manager (Tools, Extension Manager). 3. Click on "Check for updates ...". 4. In the Extension Update window, check the "show all updates" checkbox. The error will appear in the "Description" textarea, and an inactive checkbox with no caption will appear in the "Available extension updates". Error message: An error occurred: Start tag expected, '<' not found Line: 1 Column: 1 System info: Mint 14 (Linux / Ubuntu based) on x86_64.
Hello A. Fakhouri, *, I can confirm your bug w/ LO Version: 4.1.0.1 Build ID: 1b3956717a60d6ac35b133d7b0a0f5eb55e9155 and installed Germanophone lang- as well as helppack under Debian Testing AMD64 ... :( Interestingly there seems to be an extension, but without any symbol and/or text ... :( And this is reproducible with LO Version 4.0.4.2 (Build ID: 9e9821abd0ffdbc09cd8c52eaa574fa09eb08f2) as well ... :(
Hello A. Fakhouri, *, thanks for reporting this issue :) As I can confirm it with LO Version 4.0.4.2 (Build ID: 9e9821abd0ffdbc09cd8c52eaa574fa09eb08f2) as well, I changed the version field to it. Thanks again Thomas.
I also see this in 4.1.x and 4.2.x I wonder if it is an issue with some extension or an issue with LibO itself
This smells like one of your installed extensions contains a description.xml with a <update-information><src xlink:href="..."/> URL pointing at a document that is not valid XML.
I have tried to uninstall all the extensions that I am using, namely TeXMaths, Zotero and Languagetool. I now see the issue with any of them installed.
Looks like you need to have at least one non-bundled (i.e., shared or per-user) extension installed to be able to check "Show all updates" in the "Extension Update" dialog and see the problem described in comment 0.
The reason is that <http://updateexte.libreoffice.org/ExtensionUpdateService/check.Update> references a completely empty file. That URL is the value of the ExtensionUpdateURL property in the version ini file. It is used by getDefaultUpdateInfos (desktop/source/deployment/misc/dp_update.cxx) to try and obtain "backup" update information from one central place for all those extensions that fail to provide their own update information. The current <http://updateexte.libreoffice.org/ExtensionUpdateService/check.Update> URL is used since <http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=52456c0acaaebe1c85d07c90a94a82c9efa4850f> "Switch all urls from TDF to LibreOffice." The prior, OOo-specific URL <http://updateexte.services.openoffice.org/ExtensionUpdateService/check.Update> still delivers a file starting with > <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> > <feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xml:lang="en-US"> > <title>Extension Update Feed</title> > <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://extensions.openoffice.org"/> > <updated>2013-03-18T12:03:22+00:00</updated> I have no idea who is responsible for the empty file at <http://updateexte.libreoffice.org/ExtensionUpdateService/check.Update>. I see three options to fix this: 1 Fix the file at <http://updateexte.libreoffice.org/ExtensionUpdateService/check.Update> to conform to the expected syntax (even if it would not contain any true payload yet, but could do so in the future). That would fix this issue even for already released versions of LO. 2 Give the ExtensionUpdateURL property in the version ini file an empty value. That would not fix this issue for already released versions of LO, and for future versions of LO would disable the (currently unused) feature of providing such central "backup" extension update information (until we change the value back in a later release). 3 Remove the (currently unused) feature of providing such central "backup" extension update information completely from the code. That would not fix this issue for already released versions of LO. I favour option 1 and will see to get hold of somebody to fix the file at <http://updateexte.libreoffice.org/ExtensionUpdateService/check.Update>.
Fixed with <http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2014-March/060081.html> "Bad empty file at <http://updateexte.libreoffice.org/ExtensionUpdateService/check.Update>" by cloph: "putting a static xml file into the webroot is not the issue. "I put a minimalist atom-rss with no elements in there... "Not sure whether that is enough to make the check happy or not.."