Comment 37 for bug 450569

As of 1:3.1.1-5ubuntu1.1 openoffice.org should always be giving an error message telling you to kill any running instances of openoffice.org before upgrading.

"
OpenOffice.org running!

OpenOffice.org is running right now with pid $PID. This can cause problems
with (de-)registration of components and extensions
Thus this package will fail to install
You should close all running instances of OpenOffice.org (including
any currently running Quickstarter) before proceeding with the package
upgrade.
"

The $PID will be substituted by the process id of the running OOo. If you see this message, as at least some users have said they have, you need to close any running instances of OOo. If you don't see any running instances you can try killing the process using the terminal and kill (PID Number from above). That should kill the running instance of OOo. If the above for some reason did not report a PID number there may be a stale lockfile in the OOo configuration directory that needs to be removed. You can determine the path by running:

echo `grep UserInstallation /usr/lib/openoffice/program/bootstraprc | cut -d= -f2 | sed -e 's,SYSUSERCONFIG,HOME,'`/.lock

for me this is:

$HOME/.openoffice.org/3/.lock

which means you need to remove eg /home/(username)/.openoffice.org/3/.lock

If you are not seeing the above error message but it still fails to install please follow up to this bug report letting me know.

Thanks,

Chris