Openoffice Writer crashes after inactivity

[Steve McGrath]

Binary package hint: openoffice.org

On Lucid, I can reliably crash OpenOffice Writer 1:3.2.0~rc4-1ubuntu1 with the following steps:

1) Create a new document
2) Enter some text
3) Leave oowriter alone for a while, either minimized, on a different virtual desktop, or simply walk away from the computer.
4) After about an hour, go back to oowriter and start typing.

On my system, oowriter will crash every time I do this. It seems to take anywhere from 5-60 minutes of being idle, and it will crash as soon as I start using it again.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Feb 14 00:04:20 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
Package: openoffice.org-writer 1:3.2.0~rc4-1ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-13.18-generic
SourcePackage: openoffice.org
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-13-generic i686

[Bryan Quigley (bryanquigley)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and help make Ubuntu and OpenOffice better. Is this still an issue for you? If it is please do a memory test, (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MemoryTest). In lucid it may have changed that you need to hold shift at startup.

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

We're closing this bug since it is has been some time with no response from the original reporter. However, if the issue still exists please feel free to reopen with the requested information. Also, if you could, please test against the latest development version of Ubuntu, since this confirms the bug is one we may be able to pass upstream for help.

[John Poole (jtphoenixga)]

This bug still affects me and regardless of what distro of Ubuntu I am using, from version 9.04 through 10.10, this issue happens with OOO.

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

I can confirm this exact same problem. Going back to OOo after some inactivity and inputing text in a cell in a spreadsheet reliably crashes the program for me in lucid. Resetting to confirmed, this bug is marked as affecting five people.

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

Other "crashes after inactivity" bug tickets (likely dupes):

bug 652074
bug 643874

[ses (sessterling)]

This bug also affects me under a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.10 (no problem on the old, multi updated 10.10)

[mxyzptlk (mxyzptlk)]

It's affecting me too -- can anyone confirm if the same behavior occurs on Libre Office?

[Timshan (tim3581)]

It's affecting me too

[ses (sessterling)]

After removing openoffice for testing purpose: I've got exactly the same bug with Libre Office 1:3.3.0~rc2-3maverick1

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Steve McGrath, thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. However, your crash report is either missing or challenging to deal with as a ".crash" file. Please follow these instructions to have apport report a new bug about your crash that can be dealt with by the automatic retracer.

If you are running the Ubuntu Stable Release you might need to enable apport in /etc/default/apport and restart.

Now open your file manager, navigate to your /var/crash directory and open the crash report you wish to submit.
If this fails you will have to open a terminal and file your report with 'ubuntu-bug /var/crash/_my_crash_report.crash' where _my_crash_report.crash is the crash you would like to report. If you get an error that you aren't allowed to access this report you will have to file it with 'sudo ubuntu-bug /var/crash/_my_crash_report.crash'.

I'm closing this bug report since the process outlined above will automatically open a new bug report which can then dealt with more efficiently. Thanks in advance for your cooperation and understanding.

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

I've made the change to /etc/default/apport as well as starting apport explicitly from the command line as instructed in that file. OpenOffice still crashes as originally reported but there is never any crasher file in /var/crash/. I am therefore reopening the ticket, it hasn't been dealt with yet and the suggestions in the last comment did not pan out.

openoffice.org 1:3.2.0-7ubuntu4.2 in lucid

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Rolf Leggewie, another way to get apport started is from the Terminal:

sudo service apport start force_start=1

Please do not reopen this bug. If you do, it will not be triaged or looked at by the developers because it is missing the required crash information. Thank you for your understanding.

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

Christopher, tried to contact you in IRC but apparenty you weren't around. I understand your point. But simply choosing to ignore a problem because it does not produce the files you'd like it to produce is not an option. I already told you that I already DID explicitly start apport. The files just are not produced, despite the crash.

Please advise on how to proceed. I vote for continuing triage and reopening. The problem is there, the files aren't -> open issue.

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

The given instructions were not sufficient to get apport to create the files in /var/crash. The dbg packages have to be installed as well - ure-dbg and uno-libs3-dbg - as Christopher kindly pointed out in IRC chat.

Marking this ticket as dupe to bug 793075