LibreOffice/OpenOffice crash with high frequency with $HOME on ecryptfs

[Cameron Smith]

Binary package hint: openoffice.org

OpenOffice will crash at least once for every two hours of use. The chance of a crash is increased by, but NOT exclusively caused by, memory-intensive operations such as copy-pastes or saves of large amounts of info (ex. 10,000 lines in a spreadsheet).

After the crash, sometimes OpenOffice will work normally when you try to start it again.

Other times an soffice.bin process will appear in the process list and stay there, but nothing visual will appear. Only by forcibly killing that process and then trying AGAIN to start OpenOffice, can you get it to work again.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: openoffice.org (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-21.32-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-21-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu May 13 14:30:04 2010
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: openoffice.org

[Bryan Quigley (bryanquigley)]

We can only debug and fix crashes one at a time (there are at least two if not more in this report). This bug report is too vaque to be useful in it's current state. If a crash occurs, try doing the same thing again to see if it will occur again. If it is please post how you reproduced it here, in a step by step manner. Please also include files if possible. Thanks!

[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.

[Cameron Smith (cameron-smith)]

Dear Bryan, I am only providing feedback now as Launchpad did not notify me of your post.

Let me respond to your points one-by-one.

>We can only debug and fix crashes one at a time (there are at least two if not more in this report).
There is only one crash scenario mentioned here. "OpenOffice will crash at least once for every two hours of use. ". We are trialling a rollout of Ubuntu to replace WinXP desktops... until this issue is dealt with we will be using 9.10 for the trials as OpenOffice is just intolerable with this problem.

>This bug report is too vaque to be useful in it's current state.
The bug report is not vague, the problem itself is difficult to isolate. I asked a colleague using 10.04 on a Lenovo laptop (which had previously run 8.10 without a hitch) if he was suffering from the same problem since his clean install of 10.04 and he confirmed that he was. Unfortunately that laptop was stolen before we were able to try and identify any common factors.

>If a crash occurs, try doing the same thing again to see if it will occur again.
To cause a crash, I just have to USE OPENOFFICE NORMALLY. The factors I mentioned in the previous post will increase the chance of a crash, but they will not guarantee it. Nor will eliminating these factors guarantee that the bug will not happen.

>If it is please post how you reproduced it here, in a step by step manner.
As explained above, there is unfortunately no step by step manner that I can identify...

1. Every single day, I work with OpenOffice.
2. I tend to open/edit existing files more than I will create completely new files. I also open a significant number of files downloaded from Firefox to a temporary directory.
3. On average I have 2-6 files open at any one time. Mainly .doc, and .xls, but also .odt, .docx and .ppt.
4. At some point when I perform one of the following operations, the crash will occur:
 a. Open an existing file
 b. Return to editing an already-open file which had not been in the foreground for a while.
 c. Perform a "hefty" operation such as copying a lot of text from one document to another, or editing a large table.
5. Given the above I suspect that the problem may be memory-related. As the machine has 2Gb RAM and 4Gb swap, and does not tend to suffer memory-related crashes on any other apps, I further suspect that the problem may be to do with OpenOffice's internal memory management, perhaps its JVM.

> Please also include files if possible. Thanks!
I included the apport-generated bug report with the original bug report. What other specific files do you require? The problem occurs with ANY document files I edit, they can be small or large, I have never been able to identify one specific file or type of file which causes the crash.
I would be happy to activate debug logging in OpenOffice for a day so that I can "catch" the crash as it happens. If this is possible please point me to instructions on how to activate it, and subsequently access the log files so that I can attach them here.

[Simon Liebold (simon-liebold)]

I can confirm this bug report: I experience the exact same behavior. At least once every two hours it will crash. Sometimes it crashes when bringing a window back to focus or opening another file. In other times it will bring up the recovery dialog when opening a file. That is when you realize that it must have crashed again some time before. I know it is hard to reproduce reliably. "Use it normally" is probably the best advise to give.

My system parameters are almost the same as Camaron's. I also have an encryped fs in use. The only exceptions are:
2.6.32-22-generic #36-Ubuntu SMP
de_DE.utf8

I let it crash with gdb activated (see attachment).

[Cameron Smith (cameron-smith)]

Hi, I have now been able to reproduce this behaviour on another laptop, a brand new Acer Travelmate TM8517-944G32Mn. 4Gb of RAM, 9Gb of Swap, oodles of space on a 7200RPM disk. Filesystem ext4 with encrypted home directory - just like the first laptop.

I am ALMOST certain now that it only happens after a resume from hibernate. On the first laptop (on which I originally reported this bug), I tend to hibernate and resume many times - I may only perform a full restart once every two weeks.

Now, on the new laptop, because I have not switched all my workspaces over to it yet, I was not doing a lot of work so I just performed a full shutdown every time. Only once I started using hibernate, did this problem occur. Note: it did not occur the first few times I used hibernate, so it seems like hibernation is a necessary but not sufficient condition.

Simon, would you mind pointing me to instructions for running ooffice with gdb activated, so that I can produce a report similar to yours on each machine?

[Simon Liebold (simon-liebold)]

Hi, I have been trying to debug this with gdb or valgrind (following this recipe http://www.kegel.com/openoffice/valgrindingOOo.html) in the last couple of days. I am not sure if I am capturing lots of false positives but here what I just received after another crash:

(gdb) list
1 /build/buildd/openoffice.org-3.2.0/ooo-build-3-2-0-10/build/OOO320_m12/transex3/source/help/HelpLinker.cxx: No such file or directory.
 in /build/buildd/openoffice.org-3.2.0/ooo-build-3-2-0-10/build/OOO320_m12/transex3/source/help/HelpLinker.cxx

Googling for that bring up brings up a few hits mentioning that this file heed been moved to another location. Though, not sure if it is related.

[Cameron Smith (cameron-smith)]

On the new machine I have found that the first time I use OpenOffice after "resume from hibernate", it is guaranteed to crash in this way. Note that I always have some .doc documents open with Hibernation at the point of hibernation.

Meanwhile I have installed Valgrind and will try debugging OpenOffice in order to "catch" the crash as Simon did.

[Cameron Smith (cameron-smith)]

No joy using valgrind as installed via apt-get, the switches recommended by "Valgrinding OOo" aren't all recognized so I ended up using this:
 cd /usr/bin
 valgrind --trace-children=yes --db-attach=yes ./soffice

Unfortunately this doesn't always open OOo consistently and so I don't believe it will allow me to really simulate the problem.

I will try now with GDB.

IMHO the error message Simon detected above, really does not look like it is related to the problem, but perhaps the package maintainer could comment?

Meanwhile, on the new machine, I can now reproduce the problem with 100% certainty.
 1. Open (and work on) at least one OOo document (writer or calc). The document does not need to be large, for instance a 2-page writer document is sufficient.
 2. Leaving the document open, hibernate the laptop from the shutdown menu
 3. Resume the laptop from hibernate and then ALT-TAB to the OOo screen. Just as you start to try and do something on the document (even something as simple as scrolling down), OOo will bail.
 4. As a contra-experiment, I CANNOT reproduce this behaviour on the new machine yet UNLESS I have first hibernated. This may be because I have not yet doing any large copy-pastes - but I HAVE been opening some very large spreadsheets, without problem.

[Bryan Quigley (bryanquigley)]

I suggest you try debugging with the vanilla OpenOffice at OpenOffice.org, it should pop up letting you report a bug with more debugging info if it crashes.

[Cameron Smith (cameron-smith)]

Bryan, by "vanilla" OpenOffice, do you mean the .deb from this page: http://download.openoffice.org/other.html ?

[Bryan Quigley (bryanquigley)]

Yup, that's it.

[Simon Liebold (simon-liebold)]

I had been trying that the last few days.The Openoffice *.deb packages crashed just as often. Haven't found anything interesting during debugging yet.

[Brendan_P (brendan-p)]

Hi All,

Limited debugging experience here but will add my 2p worth in case it's relevant.

For me these crashes seem to happen more frequently during heavy disk activity. Just happened whilst saving a document and dropbox was starting up/scanning.

My system is running 10.04, ext4 and encrypted home too.

This bug is new to 10.04 (openoffice version), had ext4 and encrypted home on 9.10 too.

Cheers
B

[Simon Liebold (simon-liebold)]

No news here. Recently I installed OO Beta 3.3.0 packages directly from openoffice.org but the symptom remains the same:
1. Open any document in writer, calc, etc. (no matter if it is an MS office or open document)
2. Let it rest for a while. (30 mins ~ 4h)
3. Continue working (bring it back to focus and press a single key)
4. It will crash.

S

[Cameron Smith (cameron-smith)]

Brendan_P's experience is very similar to my original experience as reported at the top of this bug. Meanwhile we have several desktops and laptops running 9.10 and they never have this problem.

[Phil Ayres (ayres-phil)]

Maybe I have another data point, and not just a "me too"...

I have been struggling with OpenOffice crashes for a long time now on one PC running 10.04 (my little netbook on Ubuntu 9.10 is fine). I've tried both Ubuntu and vanilla version of OOo with the same effect - swapping applications back to OOo after a length of time causes the crash.

Yesterday I removed a slow Intel 5100 wifi card from my PC (this was an ill advised add-on). I had been struggling with the iwlagn wifi driver being unreliable for ages, and finally got round to rewiring to get a direct ethernet connection from my router. Anyway, for the first time in months I have run all day long without an OpenOffice crash. With multiple documents open, with all the activities I do still being done.

Really could this be related to a piece of network hardware? This might explain why people are seeing different results on different machines - a different wifi card, or different driver version perhaps. Maybe OOo or one of its components tries to chat to the network unnecessarily during certain events and it gets confused. Either way, I hope my luck holds out.

I don't know if just disabling the wifi would have the same effect, but that might be a worthwhile test for somebody out there.

[Brendan_P (brendan-p)]

Hello All,

I can add to the comment RE wifi/disable test. My wifi is mostly disabled
(laptop with ethernet connection) and have experienced crashes during this
time.

Cheers
B

On 2 September 2010 01:57, Phil Ayres <email address hidden> wrote:

> Maybe I have another data point, and not just a "me too"...
>
> I have been struggling with OpenOffice crashes for a long time now on
> one PC running 10.04 (my little netbook on Ubuntu 9.10 is fine). I've
> tried both Ubuntu and vanilla version of OOo with the same effect -
> swapping applications back to OOo after a length of time causes the
> crash.
>
> Yesterday I removed a slow Intel 5100 wifi card from my PC (this was an
> ill advised add-on). I had been struggling with the iwlagn wifi driver
> being unreliable for ages, and finally got round to rewiring to get a
> direct ethernet connection from my router. Anyway, for the first time in
> months I have run all day long without an OpenOffice crash. With
> multiple documents open, with all the activities I do still being done.
>
> Really could this be related to a piece of network hardware? This might
> explain why people are seeing different results on different machines -
> a different wifi card, or different driver version perhaps. Maybe OOo or
> one of its components tries to chat to the network unnecessarily during
> certain events and it gets confused. Either way, I hope my luck holds
> out.
>
> I don't know if just disabling the wifi would have the same effect, but
> that might be a worthwhile test for somebody out there.
>
> --
> OpenOffice crashes with high frequency
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/579966
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in “openoffice.org” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: openoffice.org
>
> OpenOffice will crash at least once for every two hours of use. The chance
> of a crash is increased by, but NOT exclusively caused by, memory-intensive
> operations such as copy-pastes or saves of large amounts of info (ex. 10,000
> lines in a spreadsheet).
>
> After the crash, sometimes OpenOffice will work normally when you try to
> start it again.
>
> Other times an soffice.bin process will appear in the process list and stay
> there, but nothing visual will appear. Only by forcibly killing that
> process and then trying AGAIN to start OpenOffice, can you get it to work
> again.
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
> Package: openoffice.org (not installed)
> ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-21.32-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
> Uname: Linux 2.6.32-21-generic i686
> Architecture: i386
> Date: Thu May 13 14:30:04 2010
> EcryptfsInUse: Yes
> InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429)
> ProcEnviron:
> PATH=(custom, user)
> LANG=en_US.UTF-8
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> SourcePackage: openoffice.org
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openoffice.org/+bug/579966/+subscribe
>

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[Cameron Smith (cameron-smith)]

wifi/disable also does NOT work for me.

Steps...
1. Use OOo for a while, no problems.
2. Disable wifi via the button on my laptop
3. Hibernate
4. Switch on and come out of hibernate
5. Try to use OOo again -> as soon as try to edit a document (even change one character or cell), it crashes.

[SK (skiani)]

Same problem, maddening. Lots of crashing with no real pattern that I can figure out. Did not have problem with 9.10 Ubuntu (or OOo 3.2 in windows). All my disks are ext3, System is a laptop that was upgrade from 8.10 to 9.04 to 9.10 to 10.04.

[Phil Ayres (ayres-phil)]

Brendan_P and Cameron, I wonder whether disabling through the hardware is sufficient? Have you also tried right clicking the Network Manager and unchecking the Enable Wireless option? Maybe a software "disable" is different?

Anyway, I'm still hopeful in my fix. I haven't crashed for several days now. I'm running 10.04 with ext4 and an ecryptfs encrypted home if that adds anything to it.

Phil

[Brendan_P (brendan-p)]

Phil,

With my hardware switch off for wireless, "wireless" is disabled by default
in network manager (greyed out).

Generally speaking, I upgraded to "OpenOffice.org 3.2.1 OOO320m19
(Build:9505) ooo-build 3.2.1.4, Ubuntu package 1:3.2.1-5ubuntu3~ppa1" and
have found it more stable. Only a few crashes per week (of the same nature)
rather than daily and frequent.

Cheers
Brendan

On 7 September 2010 16:41, Phil Ayres <email address hidden> wrote:

> Brendan_P and Cameron, I wonder whether disabling through the hardware
> is sufficient? Have you also tried right clicking the Network Manager
> and unchecking the Enable Wireless option? Maybe a software "disable"
> is different?
>
> Anyway, I'm still hopeful in my fix. I haven't crashed for several days
> now. I'm running 10.04 with ext4 and an ecryptfs encrypted home if that
> adds anything to it.
>
> Phil
>
> --
> OpenOffice crashes with high frequency
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/579966
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in “openoffice.org” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: openoffice.org
>
> OpenOffice will crash at least once for every two hours of use. The chance
> of a crash is increased by, but NOT exclusively caused by, memory-intensive
> operations such as copy-pastes or saves of large amounts of info (ex. 10,000
> lines in a spreadsheet).
>
> After the crash, sometimes OpenOffice will work normally when you try to
> start it again.
>
> Other times an soffice.bin process will appear in the process list and stay
> there, but nothing visual will appear. Only by forcibly killing that
> process and then trying AGAIN to start OpenOffice, can you get it to work
> again.
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
> Package: openoffice.org (not installed)
> ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-21.32-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
> Uname: Linux 2.6.32-21-generic i686
> Architecture: i386
> Date: Thu May 13 14:30:04 2010
> EcryptfsInUse: Yes
> InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429)
> ProcEnviron:
> PATH=(custom, user)
> LANG=en_US.UTF-8
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> SourcePackage: openoffice.org
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openoffice.org/+bug/579966/+subscribe
>

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[Phil Ayres (ayres-phil)]

I had a bad day yesterday. A bunch of crashes again. What was happening? Two things different from previous days: 1) I had plugged in a new USB CD-ROM drive, and it was filling dmesg with log messages, and 2) I was running imagemagick and forcing a bunch of applications to page as it consumed all the memory.

I will see if I can reproduce the problem today. This really feels like a problem that only affects some people due to the type of hardware or specific activity unrelated to OOo that the software is sensitive to.

I'm running an Intel Atom CPU, 2GB RAM, Ubuntu 10.04, ext4, ecryptfs encrypted home directory. I will try and run with the LiveCD to see if the problem persists.

Sorry for being so bullish previous. Spoke too soon on the wifi thing it seems.

[Brendan_P (brendan-p)]

Might be useful to mention the common factors in set-up for me:
10.04, ext4, encryptfs, encrypted home directory

On 8 September 2010 12:59, Phil Ayres <email address hidden> wrote:

> I had a bad day yesterday. A bunch of crashes again. What was happening?
> Two things different from previous days: 1) I had plugged in a new USB
> CD-ROM drive, and it was filling dmesg with log messages, and 2) I was
> running imagemagick and forcing a bunch of applications to page as it
> consumed all the memory.
>
> I will see if I can reproduce the problem today. This really feels like
> a problem that only affects some people due to the type of hardware or
> specific activity unrelated to OOo that the software is sensitive to.
>
> I'm running an Intel Atom CPU, 2GB RAM, Ubuntu 10.04, ext4, ecryptfs
> encrypted home directory. I will try and run with the LiveCD to see if
> the problem persists.
>
> Sorry for being so bullish previous. Spoke too soon on the wifi thing it
> seems.
>
> --
> OpenOffice crashes with high frequency
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/579966
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in “openoffice.org” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: openoffice.org
>
> OpenOffice will crash at least once for every two hours of use. The chance
> of a crash is increased by, but NOT exclusively caused by, memory-intensive
> operations such as copy-pastes or saves of large amounts of info (ex. 10,000
> lines in a spreadsheet).
>
> After the crash, sometimes OpenOffice will work normally when you try to
> start it again.
>
> Other times an soffice.bin process will appear in the process list and stay
> there, but nothing visual will appear. Only by forcibly killing that
> process and then trying AGAIN to start OpenOffice, can you get it to work
> again.
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
> Package: openoffice.org (not installed)
> ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-21.32-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
> Uname: Linux 2.6.32-21-generic i686
> Architecture: i386
> Date: Thu May 13 14:30:04 2010
> EcryptfsInUse: Yes
> InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429)
> ProcEnviron:
> PATH=(custom, user)
> LANG=en_US.UTF-8
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> SourcePackage: openoffice.org
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openoffice.org/+bug/579966/+subscribe
>

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[Phil Ayres (ayres-phil)]

I managed to get an apport dump, although I feel that it might be an unrelated issue, so created a bug at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openoffice.org/+bug/633423

I can consistently recreate that crash through forcing the system to page as described in the bug. That, at least is getting me a little more information to work with.

[Cameron Smith (cameron-smith)]

Phil, for my wireless test I (msg #18 above) I manually disabled wireless in NetworkManager, and also via Hardware. So really I think that the wireless hypothesis is a red herring.

Brendan_P, how did you upgrade as with normal repos I can't find that version? Is that a backport or did you download individual .debs and install via dpkg?

[Brendan_P (brendan-p)]

Cameron, I'm using the following PPA:
https://launchpad.net/~openoffice-pkgs/+archive/ppa

[Cameron Smith (cameron-smith)]

Brendan, following your train of thought, I read through the changelogs here: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/lucid/+source/openoffice.org/1:3.2.1-6ubuntu1~10.04.1
While there are several fixes mentioned for crashes, none of them exactly corresponds to our scenario. When you say "more stable" do you mean in general? What about the behaviour with hibernate that I note in my message #5 above?

[Cameron Smith (cameron-smith)]

Update... without waiting for Brendan's reply, I went ahead anyway and updated to: 1:3.2.1-6ubuntu1~10.04.1

Unfortunately the behaviour I reported in my message #5 continues. As for general stability, I will report back after a few days.

[Brendan_P (brendan-p)]

Cameron, apologies for the delayed feedback.

Definitely more stable in day to day use since the upgrade from the PPA. I'll test the hibernate scenario shortly.

Another note,but it may be a red herring, is that I no longer have dropbox running 24/7 on this box.

[Brendan_P (brendan-p)]

On #5, hibernating, I had the following experience:

1) Open text document, save document and leave open
2) Hibernate
3) Resume
4) Try edit document, on edit OO crashes

Hope this helps.

[Phil Ayres (ayres-phil)]

After my wifi red-herring (I think this was just a cover for the real problem that is when OOo will crash when it is forced to page due to low physical memory, which is 100% reproducible for me), I'm trying the new PPA Brendan and Cameron have been trying.

I forced the system to page, running an Imagemagick convert (convert 100page.tif new.pdf) on a large document. As soon as I killed that process (paging was excessive) I returned to OOo. I saw Writer attempt to start an autosave, then it crashed as before. This was a single, simple document saved in ODT format. I wonder if it was related to the autosave attempting to run when memory is paged, or if it is just a matter of OOo trying to access something that it expects to be available instantly but takes longer to pull back due to paging. This would explain why maybe I see this a lot, as I typically have a VirtualBox VM session chewing a bunch of memory, plus some other apps running.

Either way, this PPA doesn't fix it for me.

[Phil Ayres (ayres-phil)]

I have another data point for this bug, which hopefully isn't a red-herring.

I see that when I experience a crash, when running atop the SWP line is highlighted red. As I understand it, this means that I have tried to overcommit the virtual memory available. I have been experimenting with swap space to see if this helps, and so far I am doing OK.

The two things I have tried: adding an extra 1GB swap (I have 2GB real memory); reducing the swappiness setting. I used the procedures described in https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq

Who knows if swappiness does anything really, but I can see that having more swap space will prevent me hitting a fundamental memory limit when I'm running a bucket load of apps, VMs, etc. Perhaps the OOo error is just a failed memory allocation, which might explain why it always seems to happen under high load, especially when swapping between apps. Evolution seems to do the same thing sometimes, which makes me wonder if I was just over-extending the resources, and the errors just didn't bother to tell me this.

I'll keep you posted.

[Phil Ayres (ayres-phil)]

I have had some success. After failing to get any decent debug information despite following all the guides I could, I went for another approach. I've not solved the problem entirely, but I have shown that this is not a hardware related issue.

I followed the instructions for creating a chroot with a basic Ubuntu installation (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BasicChroot), installed a few basic packages (nano, ssh, sshfs), set up the en_US UTF-8 locale (http://blog.andrewbeacock.com/2007/01/how-to-change-your-default-locale-on.html), which was necessary to install the Java dependency of OOo. I also had to add some repositories for apt to pick up OpenOffice. Now I have a self contained, very clean Lucid chroot'd inside my standard Lucid. Finally I installed openoffice.org-ubuntu and openoffice.org-human-style. I used sshfs to allow me to link to my standard user's home directories (I didn't want to mess with mounting the ecryptfs homes inside my chroot'd environment, plus I don't really know what I'm doing and it sounded scary).

I have run for three days straight, heavy usage, with multiple apps and forcing the system to run out of memory and start swapping. No crash on the chroot'd OOo, and multiple crashes on the standard environment that I kept open just to observe the difference.

I've removed some variables to my investigations (OOo can run on my hardware without crashing), and added some more (is the issue ecryptfs on ext4, since now I'm running effectively against a different file system type). But at least I feel like there is an end in sight...

[Simon Liebold (simon-liebold)]

Nice work Phil,

just to add another side note: I am running Maverick for a couple of
days now and crash frequency is as high as before.

ext4 and ecryptfs here too.

Simon

[Phil Ayres (ayres-phil)]

Further progress on tracking down the cause -- I can demonstrate that it is related to an ecryptfs encrypted home directory. At least in my case...

To demonstrate it, I created two new users, one (testoooe) with an ecryptfs encrypted home directory and the other with no encryption (testooo).

I logged in as my standard user (phil) and ran each of the following in turn from a gnome panel launcher:

first with no home encryption
> gksu -w -u testooo ooffice
and I've been running fine for hours, forcing the system to run out of real memory, jumping between applications, no problem

then with home encryption
> gksu -w -u testoooe ooffice
and I stress the box and instantly kaboom it crashes.

So, OOo appears not to like home directory encryption with ecryptfs. I tried pointing all my standard paths in the options to the unencrypted user's .openoffice.org profile (after a chmod to allow me access), and it still crashes. So what on earth is different?

At least this seems to have ruled out a broken library on the system. But I still don't know what the error is. Since ecryptfs isn't quite as invisible to programs as it should be at times, maybe this is the problem.

I'm open to offers for other things to try.

[Phil Ayres (ayres-phil)]

Another step in the right direction...

With my unencrypted test home directory I created in the previous comment, I can now focus in on the problem a bit more. I'm running OOo under my standard username (phil), but changing the HOME environment variable before running the ooffice executable:

export HOME=/home/testooo
ooffice &

When I check OOo options, I see that all the paths are pointing to a subdirectory of /home/testooo. Just to double check, I moved the .openoffice.org directory out of the way on my home/phil directory, just to check its not recreated. It is not.

To focus on where the problem is, I've been editing a document stored on my encrypted home directory (/home/phil/...) and have not crashed once. As ever I've stressed the box hard, but that has not triggered a crash. So the error, in my opinion is only when reading or writing to the .openoffice.org directory on an encrypted home. If my actual documents are on the encrypted home, I have not (yet) seen a crash, so the location of the documents themselves is unimportant.

No surprise I suppose. OpenOffice probably hits its config directory a lot, especially when you switch back from another application and type some new text. Why it should matter that the box is stressed and the config files are on an encrypted home, I don't know yet. I am going to find a way to get some more information.

[Cameron Smith (cameron-smith)]

Phil, based on your comments I tried the following test, which suggests that an encrypted home dir is relevant but not quite in the same way as you.

1. I created a separate directory 'ootest' on the same real filesystem (an ext4 partition) as /home, but outside my encrypted homedir. Then I made my user the owner of this 'ootest'.

2. I copied a doc from my homedir to this directory, opened it with OOWriter, and edited it a wee bit. Then I closed all other OOo documents and finally hibernated.

3. When I resumed from hibernate I was able to immediately edit and save the doc in 'ootest', without any problems. I then opened a second document, this one under my encrypted homedir. Edit and save, no problems.

4. Next I hibernated with both docs (1 in normal dir, 1 in encrypted dir) still open.

5. When I resumed...
 5.1 First I tried to edit the unencrypted doc, and was able to do so, and save, without problems.
 5.2 BUT as soon as I switched to the encrypted doc, and started to edit it, I got the usual OOo crash... of ALL OOo processes.

[Phil Ayres (ayres-phil)]

Cameron,

Good work. A quick question to help me get things straight. Is your home
directory encrypted, or is it just the documents folder where your open
office documents are stored? I'm going to retest my previous scenario to
see if OOo crashes if I use my standard profile and an unencrypted
folder, since yours didn't seem to.

Also, do you use Evolution for email? If so, does that crash for you at
odd times?

[John Poole (jtphoenixga)]

Everyone,

I think my issue with OpenOffice.org crashing has been solved. I've been running the program for the last week, non-stop without any crashes. My solution was to create a new user with an unencrypted home directory. Since doing that task, I've had no problems with OpenOffice.org.

With this error being fixed for me, could it be said that the home folder encryption is the culprit here? Is there a work-a-round in the works for this or is there some requirement from Oracle that doesn't want the home folder encrypted?

John

[Phill Coxon (phill-getresults)]

I can confirm that I'm running KUbuntu 10.04.1, KDE 4.5.1, OpenOffice 3.2.1 with an encrypted home directory and I also get the same crashes every time I come back to edit an Open Office document of any type and any size after being away for a while.

The encrypted home directory is definitely looking like it could be a common factor.

[Brendan_P (brendan-p)]

@Phil Ayres

I can confirm that I get random crashes, about once a week, with Evolution too. Not as catastrophic as the OpenOffice crashes, as in does not close the whole application down, but tasks and calendar quit and I have to restart Evo to get them up and running again.

I cannot say if this is related, but Evolution is definitely not 100% stable for me, but no where near as problematic as the OpenOffice crashes.

[Cameron Smith (cameron-smith)]

Phil, responding to your msg #38, yes my entire home directory is encrypted.

I don't use Evolution for mail so I can't comment on that.

[Simon Liebold (simon-liebold)]

Crashing Evolution? Yes, I suspecting it to do so. It just disappears silently and restore questions only turn up when I had been editing a mail. One of my other "all time open"-tools is the "Jedit" editor. It also vanished a couple of times. Compared to OpenOffice the crash frequency may be 10:1.

I realized that from time to time OpenOffice imposes a big load on the system and the X server goes crazy. After closing OpenOffice the load drops instantly.

Maybe the application crashes have a common cause (sth. with the encrypted homedir) and OpenOffice only crashes more often as it utilizes more system ressources.

[Phil Ayres (ayres-phil)]

I just tried a quick test to remove encrypted swap (I had set ecryptfs to encrypt my original swap partition, and its now disabled at startup). Running OpenOffice with unencrypted swap and files on encrypted home and OOo still crashed as before.

I'll continue to investigate. Maybe I'll be brave and dig into ecryptfs in more depth. Maybe I have some real work to do before I get that brave...

[Simon Liebold (simon-liebold)]

I am running Maverick and crashes seem to have stopped since a few days (even with encrypted home fs). Maybe a recent update fixed it? Did anyone notice sings of improvement?

[Brendan_P (brendan-p)]

Hi All,

I moved to the latest LibreOffice release candidate and stability is much better now. Not had this crash since.

Details on PPA and installing here:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/01/new-ppa-makes-installing-libreoffice-on-ubuntu-easy/

Hope that helps.

Cheers
B

[antex (davidli)]

I used to get this bug in OpenOffice on my machine, with an encrypted home folder, several times a day. But it has stopped since a large update came through to Lucid about a week ago.

[Phil Ayres (ayres-phil)]

@antex, did you identify what fixed it for you? I have seen several kernel updates but no OpenOffice updates. I'm still getting regular crashes.

[antex (davidli)]

Sorry, I am getting the crashes again now. I think I had just been giving my machine less memory stress due to a change in usage.

[Thomas Majewski (thomasjmajewski)]

Subscribing. I have a similar problem with OOo 3.2 crashing after documents have been open for an extended period of time. Using Maverick on a laptop with an ecryptfs home directory. Noticed the problem after adding several OOo extensions but have not been able to verify that extensions are responsible for the behavior noted. I have experienced crash problems attempting to shut down OOo with no documents open and OOo running which brings up the "recovery" dialog with no documents shown to recover.

[John Poole (jtphoenixga)]

Hello to All,

I haven't had an issue with OpenOffice.org crashing in a very long time. I believe my problem was solved when I created a new user account that was not encrypted. On all of my computers that had the home folder encrypted, I had a problem with OOO crashing, but when the encryption was removed, the crashing stopped. I urge all of you that have this issue to just create a new user account without the home folder encrypted and hopefully that will solve the problem for you as well. Maybe one day Ubuntu and Oracle will come up with a work-a-round to this issue, but until then, I think you have to use OOO with an unencrypted home folder for it to operate without crashing.

John.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

In Ubuntu 10.10, encryptfs in use, it got to a point where OOo Calc would crash every 1 minute with SIGSEGV in cppu::throwException() in the /var/log crash log. Switched it with LibreOffice Calc, crashed significantly less, still same crash.

If one files a report with this crash type, be careful to enable & fully update with Proposed repository or Apport retracing service will arbitrarily invalidate the bug.

lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 10.10
Release: 10.10

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y upgrade && sudo apt-get -y install libreoffice-calc

apt-cache policy libreoffice-calc
libreoffice-calc:
  Installed: 1:3.3.0-1maverick1
  Candidate: 1:3.3.0-1maverick1
  Version table:
 *** 1:3.3.0-1maverick1 0
        500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/libreoffice/ppa/ubuntu/ maverick/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[SergeiS (sergei-redleafsoft)]

I second that. The behavior I am seeing is when physical memory gets full Calc would start crashing. It affects both OpenOffice 3 and LibreOffice 3. Sometimes crash takes a minute to happen and other times half an hour, but it seems like as soon it starts pushing against swapping, the Calc would crash. All non-Office applications work just fine.

Mem: 3090552k total, 2995864k used, 94688k free, 3652k buffers
Swap: 2097660k total, 87744k used, 2009916k free, 223588k cached

[Björn Michaelsen (bjoern-michaelsen)]

updating title (old was way to generic and would have needed to be closed as invalid as it was). Setting as "incomplete" in look for an reproducable scenario on Natty.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Björn Michaelsen, I recently upgraded from Maverick to Natty default GNOME shell with encrypted HOME folder and all the LibreOffice crashing due to:

SIGSEGV in cppu::throwException()

has ceased.

lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 11.04
Release: 11.04

apt-cache policy libreoffice-calc
libreoffice-calc:
  Installed: 1:3.3.2-1ubuntu5
  Candidate: 1:3.3.2-1ubuntu5
  Version table:
 *** 1:3.3.2-1ubuntu5 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty-proposed/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1:3.3.2-1ubuntu4 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/main i386 Packages

[SergeiS (sergei-redleafsoft)]

I am on Lucid and still having this problem. I have the latest 2.6.28 kernel and 3.3.2 LibreOffice installed from ubuntu PPAs.

message syslog from the syslog:

May 25 09:38:50 x-sams kernel: [782900.664247] soffice.bin[23056]: segfault at 100000 ip 00100000 sp bfc3e89c error 4 in libm-2.11.1.so[110000+24000]

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS
Release: 10.04

$ uname -r
2.6.38-8-generic

$ apt-cache policy libreoffice-calc
libreoffice-calc:
  Installed: 1:3.3.2-1ubuntu2~lucid1
  Candidate: 1:3.3.2-1ubuntu2~lucid1
  Version table:
 *** 1:3.3.2-1ubuntu2~lucid1 0
        500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/libreoffice/ppa/ubuntu/ lucid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

$ apt-cache policy linux-image-2.6.38-8-generic
linux-image-2.6.38-8-generic:
  Installed: 2.6.38-8.42~lucid1
  Candidate: 2.6.38-8.42~lucid1
  Version table:
 *** 2.6.38-8.42~lucid1 0
        500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/kernel-ppa/ppa/ubuntu/ lucid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[SergeiS (sergei-redleafsoft)]

Sorry for the typo: my kernel version is 2.6.38.

[SergeiS (sergei-redleafsoft)]

Just got one more:

May 27 17:21:23 x-sams kernel: [983452.801465] soffice.bin[12545]: segfault at 100000 ip 00100000 sp bf887c5c error 4 in libstlport_gcc.so.4.6[110000+c3000]

[SergeiS (sergei-redleafsoft)]

And another one today:

May 31 14:16:59 x-sams kernel: [1317988.840968] soffice.bin[2802]: segfault at 100000 ip 00100000 sp bfb9a53c error 4 in libgcc_s.so.1[110000+1d000]

I will be glad to provide additional information if you tell me what might help.

[SergeiS (sergei-redleafsoft)]

Bjorn, is this possibly related? https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libreoffice/+bug/742318

[Ryan (ubuntu-draziw)]

Hit this several times today. I'd hit a key in the odt formatted document, to edit, and the libreoffice window would no longer be there - nothing in process list - check syslog, and found segaults.
Tried launching via CLI to see if it would output any other information - but it didn't. No trail other than the segault in syslog.

Jun 21 13:18:22 rlap kernel: [11831.684234] soffice.bin[3383]: segfault at 100000 ip 00100000 sp bfdcae5c error 4 in libgcc_s.so.1[110000+1a000]
Jun 21 14:59:54 rlap kernel: [17923.460210] soffice.bin[5611]: segfault at 100000 ip 00100000 sp bfc4b6ec error 4 in libuno_sal.so.3[110000+1ac000]
Jun 21 16:16:12 rlap kernel: [22501.415247] soffice.bin[5841]: segfault at 100000 ip 00100000 sp bfc3e4ac error 4 in libsofficeapp.so[110000+72000]
Jun 21 17:43:34 rlap kernel: [27744.011971] soffice.bin[6389]: segfault at 100000 ip 00100000 sp bfd14bcc error 4 in libdl-2.13.so[110000+2000]
Jun 21 18:14:15 rlap kernel: [29584.534236] soffice.bin[6834]: segfault at 100000 ip 00100000 sp bff1274c error 4 in libgcc_s.so.1[110000+1a000]
Jun 21 18:18:13 rlap kernel: [29822.708312] soffice.bin[7128]: segfault at 100000 ip 00100000 sp bfc9685c error 4 in libuno_sal.so.3[110000+1ac000]
Jun 21 18:25:03 rlap kernel: [30232.540888] soffice.bin[7342]: segfault at 100000 ip 00100000 sp bff2091c error 4 in libsofficeapp.so[110000+72000]
Jun 21 18:39:09 rlap kernel: [31078.393785] soffice.bin[7501]: segfault at 100000 ip 00100000 sp bffe697c error 4 in libgcc_s.so.1[110000+1a000]

[Ryan (ubuntu-draziw)]

G_SLICE=always-malloc G_DEBUG=gc-friendly valgrind -v --tool=memcheck --leak-check=full --num-callers=40 --log-file=valgrind.log /usr/bin/libreoffice

It ended up crashing again (after some idle time, and FWIW I am on encrypted home dir)
Jun 21 19:13:56 rlap kernel: [33165.392270] soffice.bin[8034]: segfault at 100000 ip 00100000 sp bfe84d4c error 4 in libc-2.13.so[110000+15a000]

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 11.04
Release: 11.04
Codename: natty

$ uname -a
Linux rlap 2.6.38-8-generic #42-Ubuntu SMP Mon Apr 11 03:31:50 UTC 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

$ dpkg-query -S /usr/bin/libreoffice
libreoffice-common: /usr/bin/libreoffice

$ apt-cache policy libreoffice-common
libreoffice-common:
  Installed: 1:3.3.2-1ubuntu5
  Candidate: 1:3.3.2-1ubuntu5
  Version table:
 *** 1:3.3.2-1ubuntu5 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty-updates/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1:3.3.2-1ubuntu4 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/main i386 Packages

[SergeiS (sergei-redleafsoft)]

I have had a dozen of instances of this problem over the last few days. I would like to know what else is needed to move this bug into the next stage and get it resolved.

[SergeiS (sergei-redleafsoft)]

Since the issue is happening when memory is about full but hasn't swapped, it may be worth mentioning that I have runtime kernel configuration done to optimize Ubuntu for my SSD drive.

excerpt from the /etc/sysctl.conf:

vm.dirty_ratio = 40
vm.dirty_background_ratio = 1
vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs = 6000

vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50
vm.swappiness=1

[Phil Ayres (ayres-phil)]

SereiS

Interesting! I had changed swappiness from the default of 60 (I think) to 10, to make the desktop feel more responsive. I did this before eCrtypfs, so I don't think it is that. It is one area that should be a complete black-box to application though, shouldn't it? I mean, shouldn't OOo be able to handle swapping?

I can't even debug OOo, so there is not a hope my limited dev skills will allow me to dig in and fix the code. I will happily help somebody (anybody?!) with testing once a fix comes along.

[toobuntu (toobuntu)]

Just a useless "me, too," and confirming for libreoffice. Happens when physical memory is getting full:

$ apt-cache policy libreoffice
libreoffice:
  Installed: 1:3.3.2-1ubuntu2~lucid1
  Candidate: 1:3.3.2-1ubuntu2~lucid1
  Version table:
     1:3.3.2-1ubuntu5 0
        425 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty-updates/universe Packages
     1:3.3.2-1ubuntu4 0
        425 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/universe Packages
 *** 1:3.3.2-1ubuntu2~lucid1 0
        500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/libreoffice/ppa/ubuntu/ lucid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

$ lsb_release -dr
Description: Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS
Release: 10.04

$ uname -srvmo
Linux 2.6.32-32-generic #62-Ubuntu SMP Wed Apr 20 21:54:21 UTC 2011 i686 GNU/Linux

$ df -Thl | grep ecryptfs
          ecryptfs 53G 36G 15G 72% /home/toobuntu

[no changes made in /proc]:
$ for i in {dirty_ratio,dirty_background_ratio,dirty_writeback_centisecs,vfs_cache_pressure,swappiness} ; do printf "${i}... " && cat /proc/sys/vm/${i} ; done
dirty_ratio... 20
dirty_background_ratio... 10
dirty_writeback_centisecs... 1500
vfs_cache_pressure... 100
swappiness... 60

$ dmesg | grep office
[129684.627644] soffice.bin[5868]: segfault at 100000 ip 00100000 sp bf81dfdc error 4 in libsofficeapp.so[110000+72000]

[zmago (zmago-fluks)]

Please... will there ever exist any solution for this problem? Only thing i've done is to set auto save to 5 min instead of 15. But this doesn't solve anything because Libre office still crashes. Ubuntu is such a wunderful distro but this bug is not only nasty but is real deal breaker. I would like to help if i would have more knowledge but what i've read in this list is also what i know. Is this limited to Ubuntu only or is same with other distributions?

Thank you.

[Sebastian Schlegel (schlegel)]

Are you sure thatthis bug is a duplicate of #745836? I think that the encryptet $home is really the problem. In 745836 i didn't read anything about that...

[Simon Liebold (simon-liebold)]

Ootman, the encrypted $home is totally the problem. That is very obvious. I am not sure Bug #745836 is related. This bug report is much closer to the root cause.

Recently I installed 11.04 from scratch w/ encrypted $home and the crashes came again as I was used to it.

That fixed it for me (same recipe as Phil somewhere up there):

Create a directory that is not encrypted. For example, I have

/home/simon (encrypted)
/home/simon_otherme (not encrypted)

Chown the dir to give it the same ownership as your primary main user. That way you can access your files as usual.

Then start libreoffice by

simon@simpad:~$ export HOME=/home/simon_otherme
simon@simpad:/home/simon$ libreoffice

No more crashes since. I can keep LO running for hours, suspend my computer with Libreoffice running, wake it up, open additional files and it does not crash any more.