LibreOffice crashed but apport didn't log a crash file in /var/crash despite being enabled

Bug #1537566 reported by penalvch
14
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
apport (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned
libreoffice (Ubuntu)
Triaged
Medium
Unassigned

Bug Description

What is expected to happen is when LibreOffice crashes, a crash report is created in the /var/crash folder.

What happened instead is LibreOffice crashed but apport didn't create a crash file in the /var/crash folder, despite running and being enabled. Apport creating crash files in /var/crash used to happen in Xenial, and in prior releases. Other programs that crash are picked up by apport so appears LO+apport issue.

LibreOffice has reference to placing crash files as per:
cat /etc/libreoffice/sofficerc | grep crash
CrashDirectory=${$BRAND_BASE_DIR/program/bootstraprc:UserInstallation}/crash

I don't have any 3rd party LO plugins installed.

apt-show-versions -r libreoffice*
libreoffice-avmedia-backend-gstreamer:amd64/xenial 1:5.0.2-0ubuntu7 uptodate
libreoffice-avmedia-backend-gstreamer:i386 not installed
libreoffice-base-core:amd64/xenial 1:5.0.2-0ubuntu7 uptodate
libreoffice-base-core:i386 not installed
libreoffice-calc:amd64/xenial 1:5.0.2-0ubuntu7 uptodate
libreoffice-calc:i386 not installed
libreoffice-common:all/xenial 1:5.0.2-0ubuntu7 uptodate
libreoffice-core:amd64/xenial 1:5.0.2-0ubuntu7 uptodate
libreoffice-core:i386 not installed
libreoffice-dev:amd64/xenial 1:5.0.2-0ubuntu7 uptodate
libreoffice-dev:i386 not installed
libreoffice-draw:amd64/xenial 1:5.0.2-0ubuntu7 uptodate
libreoffice-draw:i386 not installed
libreoffice-gnome:amd64/xenial 1:5.0.2-0ubuntu7 uptodate
libreoffice-gnome:i386 not installed
libreoffice-gtk:amd64/xenial 1:5.0.2-0ubuntu7 uptodate
libreoffice-gtk:i386 not installed
libreoffice-help-en-us:all/xenial 1:5.0.2-0ubuntu4 uptodate
libreoffice-impress:amd64/xenial 1:5.0.2-0ubuntu7 uptodate
libreoffice-impress:i386 not installed
libreoffice-java-common:all/xenial 1:5.0.2-0ubuntu7 uptodate
libreoffice-math:amd64/xenial 1:5.0.2-0ubuntu7 uptodate
libreoffice-math:i386 not installed
libreoffice-ogltrans:amd64/xenial 1:5.0.2-0ubuntu7 uptodate
libreoffice-ogltrans:i386 not installed
libreoffice-pdfimport:amd64/xenial 1:5.0.2-0ubuntu7 uptodate
libreoffice-pdfimport:i386 not installed
libreoffice-style-breeze:all/xenial 1:5.0.2-0ubuntu7 uptodate
libreoffice-style-galaxy:all/xenial 1:5.0.2-0ubuntu7 uptodate
libreoffice-style-human:all/xenial 1:5.0.2-0ubuntu7 uptodate
libreoffice-writer:amd64/xenial 1:5.0.2-0ubuntu7 uptodate
libreoffice-writer:i386 not installed

cat /etc/default/apport
# set this to 0 to disable apport, or to 1 to enable it
# you can temporarily override this with
# sudo service apport start force_start=1
enabled=1

cat /etc/apport/crashdb.conf
# map crash database names to CrashDatabase implementations and URLs

default = 'ubuntu'

def get_oem_project():
    '''Determine OEM project name from Distribution Channel Descriptor

    Return None if it cannot be determined or does not exist.
    '''
    try:
        dcd = open('/var/lib/ubuntu_dist_channel').read()
        if dcd.startswith('canonical-oem-'):
            return dcd.split('-')[2]
    except IOError:
        return None

databases = {
    'ubuntu': {
        'impl': 'launchpad',
        'bug_pattern_url': 'http://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-archive/bugpatterns/bugpatterns.xml',
        'dupdb_url': 'http://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-archive/apport-duplicates',
        'distro': 'ubuntu',
        'problem_types': ['Bug', 'Package'],
        'escalation_tag': 'bugpattern-needed',
        'escalated_tag': 'bugpattern-written',
    },
    'canonical-oem': {
        'impl': 'launchpad',
        'bug_pattern_url': 'http://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-archive/bugpatterns/bugpatterns.xml',
        'project': get_oem_project(),
    },
    'debug': {
        # for debugging
        'impl': 'memory',
        'bug_pattern_url': '/tmp/bugpatterns.xml',
        'distro': 'debug'
    },
}
mo

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: libreoffice-calc 1:5.0.2-0ubuntu7
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.3.0-6.17-generic 4.3.3
Uname: Linux 4.3.0-6-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.19.3-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: GNOME-Flashback:Unity
Date: Sun Jan 24 17:03:37 2016
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-12-18 (37 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 15.10 "Wily Werewolf" - Release amd64 (20151021)
SourcePackage: libreoffice
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to xenial on 2016-01-20 (4 days ago)

Revision history for this message
penalvch (penalvch) wrote :
penalvch (penalvch)
description: updated
Revision history for this message
Phil Troy (phol) wrote :

I have LibreOffice 5.1.3.2 installed via Lubuntu 16.04 Software Center. It crashes an awful lot. In particular, it crashed Lubuntu while working on a writer document document, and each time I relog in and try to have it recover the document and crashes Lubuntu again. I am using synergyc 1.5.1 on my machine.

Revision history for this message
penalvch (penalvch) wrote :

Phil Troy, please file a new report with your crash file following https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs (not manually attach crash files).

Revision history for this message
penalvch (penalvch) wrote :

Issue also happening in Artful as per:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1772425

tags: added: artful
Revision history for this message
penalvch (penalvch) wrote :

Adding Apport (Ubuntu) in case this is due to Apport not working correctly, changes would need to happen in LO+Apport, etc.

Revision history for this message
penalvch (penalvch) wrote :

Confirmed in Bionic. What happens in Windows is that it offers to send a crash report to https://crashreport.libreoffice.org/, where one may then input the crash ID in to review the stack trace.

tags: added: bionic
penalvch (penalvch)
description: updated
tags: added: regression-update
removed: regression-release
Revision history for this message
Brian Murray (brian-murray) wrote :

I was unable to recreate this on bionic.

[ 11:31AM 10096 ] [ bdmurray@impulse:~ ]
 $ pkill -11 lowriter
[ 1:07PM 10113 ] [ bdmurray@impulse:~ ]
 $ ls /var/crash/
_bin_cat.2001.uploaded
_bin_cat-kylin.uploaded
crash-in-postinst.0.uploaded
_usr_bin_apport-cli.2001.uploaded
_usr_bin_apport-unpack.2001.uploaded
_usr_bin_gnome-calculator.2001.uploaded
_usr_bin_gnome-calculator-awesome.uploaded
_usr_bin_lowriter.1000.crash
_usr_bin_xeyes.2001.uploaded
_usr_lib_dconf_dconf-service.2001.uploaded

Do you have libreoffice installed as a package or as a snap on Ubuntu 18.04?

Changed in apport (Ubuntu):
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
penalvch (penalvch) wrote :

1 of 2 reproduction documents for Bionic.

Revision history for this message
penalvch (penalvch) wrote :

2 of 2 reproduction documents for Bionic.

Revision history for this message
penalvch (penalvch) wrote :

Log in to Ubuntu (i.e. GNOME xorg) > double click GS5007-GettingStartedWithDraw.odt > click Edit > Track Changes > Compare Document... > highlight GS4207-GettingStartedWithDraw.odt > click button Open > in window Manage Changes click button Close > File > Save As... > in textbox Name GS5007-GettingStartedWithDraw-v2 > click button Save > window pops up titled LibreOffice 6.0 Document Recovery with text "Due to an unexpected error, LibreOffice crashed." but no files in /var/crash generated by apport. However, apport does create crash files following steps in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libreoffice/+bug/1537566/comments/7 so crash files not being being generated is dependent how LO crashes, not always if LO crashes.

Changed in apport (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → New
Revision history for this message
Olivier Tilloy (osomon) wrote :

Re comment #7, lowriter is a shell script that runs "soffice --writer", crashing it with "pkill -11 lowriter" doesn't actually crash libreoffice, only the wrapper script, so it's not a valid counter-example.

To really crash libreoffice, one needs to run "pkill -11 soffice.bin". This results in the libreoffice crash handler (and recovery tool) kicking in, which apparently overrides whatever processing apport would do.

Revision history for this message
Olivier Tilloy (osomon) wrote :

In libreoffice 4.2.8 on Ubuntu 14.04, when the program crashes (or is made to crash with pkill -11), apport kicks in. At the next libreoffice run, it offers the user to try and recover the document that was being worked on when the crash occurred.

In contrast, in libreoffice 5.1.6 on Ubuntu 16.04, when the program crashes, its built-in document recovery handler kicks in, offering the user to recover the document immediately. In that case, the built-in handler is hooked to a SIGSEGV handler that prevents the creation of a core file.

Revision history for this message
Olivier Tilloy (osomon) wrote :

Looks like https://github.com/LibreOffice/core/commit/61c0c81caeb97dad0ed5bd201d06ad4e27f618c2 might be responsible for that behaviour change.

Changed in apport (Ubuntu):
status: New → Invalid
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