File recovery never ever gives up after failure

[Jane Silber]

I had some files lost in OpenOffice for whatever reason. Upon restarting OpenOffice it tries, and fails, to recover them. That's fine, I understand it can't always recover the files.

But it tries to recover them every single time I start OpenOffice, and there is no apparent way to tell it to stop trying. (I've come to grips with the fact that those files are gone - I simply don't want to go through the failed recovery process every time I start OpenOffice).

This happens in Dapper, as of 25 May 2006.

Note: the original reporter indicated the bug was in package 'openoffice'; however, that package was not published in Ubuntu.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

This is easily reproduced with the following procedure:

1. Create a new document, /tmp/test.odt
2. killall -9 soffice.bin
3. rm /tmp/test.odt
4. ooffice
5. ooffice

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

This is made even more irritating by bug #52902, which means that this happens even if you weren't actually editing the file. For example, this can easily happen when viewing a document from a browser, as the file ends up in /tmp and is lost in the case of a crash

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

I just discovered that clicking 'Cancel' at the recovery dialog seems to break the cycle. It only tries forever if you allow it to attempt recovery.

[Michael Broadbent (mikebro)]

Is it a bug that the document recovery keeps coming up every time until the document recovery is canceled? It seems like an intentional feature.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

I think there is a usability bug here, yes. It does not do as many users expect.

The most common case here, described in my earlier comment, is one where the user has clicked on a link in their web browser, opened the resulting document in OpenOffice.org, and then logged out and shut down with it still running. This results in a recovery dialog the next time they start openoffice (again, regardless of whether they even edited the document), which cannot possibly succeed.

The other issue is that the dialog itself is confusing. The user is given two options: "Start recovery" and "Cancel". If recovery fails, "Start recovery" becomes "Finish" (and is cancel disabled?).

It would be a great improvement to change the buttons to explain what action will be taken. For example:

before recovery attempt: "Recover" and "Discard"
then after recovery attempt: "Try again later" and "Discard"

or something along those lines.

[Bruce Kaufman (bjan11)]

I am unable to open any document as well. I am on Feisty using OO V2.2. Is there a workaround?

thanks in advance

[Bruce Kaufman (bjan11)]

I reloaded OO and restarted OO. I pressed cancel when it said it wanted to recover. Then OO hung my system. After reboot, i restarted OO and was able to create a new doc as well as open old docs and the so-called corrupt file.

I suspect that OO needs some work on closing files properly when the system shuts down. And the recovery mechanisms is not robust at all, as others have pointed out.

Hope this helps.

[Lizerazu (lizerazu-mailing-lists)]

I'd like to mention that this is not special to the Ubuntu OO. I'm at work using OO in the office (windowz) and was having the same problem (in OOo 2.3) and cancelling it stopped the cycle. Thanks for the help.

[Lloyd Dewolf (lloydde)]

Confirmed bug still present.

ENV: Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) / 1:2.3.0-1ubuntu5.3

Encountered after hard reboot, it continues to want to open what was a temporary file.

http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=75945 appears to be a duplicate http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=61610

[Tom Jampen (jampen)]

I've used the ppa OpenOffice.org 3.0 packages for intrepid as soon as they were available. I've had no problems until the latest update (version 3.0.0-6ubuntu0intrepid1). Since the moment I updated (one week ago or so), I was no longer able to start openoffice.
I always see the file recovery dialog. Whatever I choose, openoffice won't start up. Even after I deleted the entire ~/.openoffice.org directory!

Is there a second place where configuration information about openoffice is saved?

I can't use openoffice anymore as it does not start up after the recovery dialog (whatever option I choose). What can I do to make openoffice work again?

Thanks! Tom

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

Tom,

Are you using KDE? There is a bug currently with the openoffice.org-kde package in 1:3.0.0-6ubuntu0intrepid1, if you have that installed try removing the package and see if it starts working.

Thanks,

Chris Cheney

[Tom Jampen (jampen)]

Thanks, Chris.

You were right. It doesn't work when openoffice.org-kde is installed, but it works (but looks ugly), when -kde is not installed.

Thanks,

Tom

[Jack Wasey (jackwasey)]

this bug still exists post alpha-5 jaunty

[Chris Cheney (ccheney)]

Jack,

You don't need to note this on bugs that are already sent upstream and are still listed as open.

Thanks,

Chris

[Linda Spencer (turnagainwoman)]

This bug hasn't been fixed yet???? Lucid 10.04

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Jane Silber, this issue is unreproducible using LibreOffice via the Terminal:

cd /tmp && wget https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openoffice.org/+bug/46594/+attachment/2133190/+files/test.odt && lowriter -nologo test.odt

Perform at the Terminal:

killall -9 soffice.bin && rm /tmp/test.odt && lowriter -nologo

Cancel button -> Yes button

Close the file. Reopen LibreOffice and notice the Recovery window does not pop up. Does this work for you?

lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 11.04
Release: 11.04

apt-cache policy libreoffice-writer
libreoffice-writer:
  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

[sanmiguel9 (againsttcpa84)]

Everything works as expected for me on an up-to-date Natty system following the instructions in post #17

[Björn Michaelsen (bjoern-michaelsen)]

[This is an automated message.]
There are no new official OpenOffice.org releases in Ubuntu packaging anymore => Won't Fix

If the problem persists, please mark this bug as "also affects project Libreoffice" or "also affects distribution Libreoffice (Ubuntu)" if that has not happened already.

Please leave references to upstream OpenOffice.org bugs in place to allow cross pollination.

[Christopher Forster (christopherforster)]

@Christopher M. Penalver (penalvch) comment #17

Unreproducible using LibreOffice via the Terminal.

libreoffice --version
LibreOffice 3.4 340m1(Build:302)