The application cannot be started. A general error occurred while accessing your central configuration.

[whitis]

Binary package hint: libreoffice

localc
OR
lodraw
OR
libreoffice
ETC.

You get the following popup:
"The application cannot be started.
A general error occurred while accessing your central configuration. "
Afterwards, you get the following on the tty:
[Java framework] Error in function createSettingsDocument (elements.cxx).
javaldx failed!

Running as root this doesn't happen.

Upgrading to the latest did not help.

This same message seems to be plauging people with various different causes.

Stupid message. Which central configuration are you trying to access and how.

I have no ~/.config/.libreoffice-whatever
I do have a ~/.openoffice.org and ~/.openoffice.org2 directories, with correct ownership.
dbus is running, though it had problems earlier (but if it wasn't running ubuntu-bug would have died).
gnome-settings-daemon has been restarted.
I have not intentionally installed any "extensions".

Workaround: sudo chown -R whitis.whitis /home/whitis/.libreoffice

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: libreoffice 1:3.3.2-1ubuntu5
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
Architecture: amd64
CheckboxSubmission: 1e1a99f31ec2933306456e1f141c45d8
CheckboxSystem: edda5d4f616ca792bf437989cb597002
Date: Sat Jun 4 18:04:12 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release amd64 (20110427.1)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: libreoffice
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Mike Sollanych (msollany)]

I am having the same problem here on both 64 bit and 32 bit Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal across 3 different machines with different specs. This is limiting my deployment of 11.04 because people obviously need an office suite!

Running libreoffice as root works fine.
Running libreoffice as a normal user (accounts are coming from Likewise Open in this case) results in the following on the console:

[Java framework] Error in function createSettingsDocument (elements.cxx).
javaldx failed!

I also got a pk-gtk-module error, but that must not be related as turning the module off in Gconf made that error line go away but the main problem persisted.

The problems have occurred for brand-new user accounts with nothing in their home directories.

I have tried:
- removing and reinstalling libreoffice (no change)
- switching JVMs back and forth from Sun Java 6 and OpenJDK
- creating a .libreoffice directory manually and chmodding it 777
- creating a local group named the same as my username (one does not exist normally due to the accounts coming from Likewise), adding my username to it, and changing the group on that .libreoffice directory to the new group
- setting HOME to a new directory (chmodded 777) called /tmp/libreoffice-test and trying the previous two steps in it

Nothing

[Roland Giesler (lifeboy)]

Just did a fresh install of Lucid (10.04) LTS and installed LibreOffice 3.3.2 and have exactly the same issue.

[Roland Giesler (lifeboy)]

Ah, I moved ~/.libreoffice to a temp location and viola! it Libreoffice starts up fine. So this must be caused by some extension that I installed.

[Mike Sollanych (msollany)]

This is happening to me even on brand new home directories with nothing in them at all.
Roland, could you possibly attach a copy of the ~/.libreoffice you get generated by a fresh start of Libreoffice?
I want to see if it perhaps is willing to start once it's got a decent config directory.

Perhaps make a test user with a test name, so that I can make the same user here in case anything depends on the username.

Thanks!

[gareth (garethbaxter)]

I am getting the same message Ubuntu 10.04. Libreoffice 3.3.? (can't check the version number because not able to start libreoffice)

Running as root doesn't make any difference.
Removing '.libreoffice' doesn't make any difference.

I recently added this:
http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/backports/ubuntu
to my software sources, to get Paperpile working. First time it requested a lot of updates.
Could this have screwed up libreoffice?

[Mike Sollanych (msollany)]

I believe I've solved my particular incarnation of the bug - the problem was that I was using the XDG environment variables to configure an alternate, system-wide location for a customized GNOME menu that included in the normal system menu, and because this location was not world-writable, Libreoffice could not start.

I have given up on the XDG method and have resorted to just dropping .desktop files into the normal menu hierarchy, which is not as clean but I suppose it's necessary.

(Someone really needs to take a look at some of these Ubuntu problems relating to system-wide configuration defaults - it's a damn shame that the only way for me to customize people's experience is to resort to fairly messy hacks, even when I have a framework like Puppet in place to implement them as cleanly as possible).

[gareth (garethbaxter)]

re #6

My incarnation of this bug seems to have disappeared with today's updates (kernel update?)

[Gonzalo (gonzalo-poseidonlinux)]

I have the same error in 10.04 LTS. Libreoffice works when calling it as root, but not as user. I thought it was something related to folders permission, since I have copied out and back in my files and some of them were accessible only to the root user, but after changing that, re-installing Ubuntu, re-installing (the 3rd time) Libre ofice 3.3, the problem persists.
I also removed some language paks, what got me suspicious about, but -again- after purging and re-installing LO, it doesn't work!

Go figure :-(

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Bert Lemmens (bert-l-14)]

I have the same problem using ubuntu 11.10 beta. I tried to remove Libreoffice and afterwards re-install it, but that didn't solve the problem.

[bostjanv (bostjanv)]

Hello,
I am encountering this same problem on Ubuntu 11.04. The history of the problem in my case is as follows: on initial install of Ubuntu 11.04 libreoffice worked OK (an ordinary user could call the program); however, after a while I began getting the "The application cannot be started. A general error occurred while accessing your central configuration. " I was not able to determine what caused the bug; it may have been after I installed emacs, though I am not sure.
Regards,
bostjanv

[bostjanv (bostjanv)]

Hello,
I am seeing the same bug in Ubuntu 11.10. Again, the bug began appearing after installation of emacs23 package.
Regards,
bostjanv

[bostjanv (bostjanv)]

Hello,
It seems this bug still has not been removed. I am now encountering it on the newest version of Mint Linux; but since the latter is derived from Ubuntu, I will add some comments here. I have now managed to make a stack trace of the libreoffice call leading to the crash resulting from libreoffice having been called by a nonroot account.
bostjanv

[penalvch (penalvch)]

whitis, thank you for reporting this and helping make Ubuntu better. However, your crash report is missing. Please follow these instructions to have apport report a new bug about your crash that can be dealt with by the automatic retracer. Assuming your using Openjdk, may execute at the Terminal:
sudo apt-get -y install openjdk-6-dbg libreoffice-dbg uno-libs3-dbg ure-dbg && sudo service apport start force_start=1

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'.

Please post to this bug either:
+ the crash report bug hyperlink,
+ or comment here that no crash report was generated and mark the Status back to Confirmed.

Thank you for your understanding.

bostjanv (bostjanv), please do not post non-official Ubuntu derivative attachments to this bug report. For more on official Ubuntu derivatives please see:
http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/derivatives

[bostjanv (bostjanv)]

With regard to comment by penalvch, I suppose that position (regarding postings of non-official Ubuntu derivative attachements) is reasonable. Therefore, I am posting an strace of a libreoffice call on Ubuntu 11.10.
Regards,
bostjanv

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for libreoffice (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[RyanHall85 (ryanhall85)]

I'm having the same issue after an update to Ubuntu 12.04

[RyanHall85 (ryanhall85)]

I was able to solve this in my case. It appears to be a permissions issue.
 I opened nautilus as root by running "sudo nautilus" from the command line. I navigated to
Home/user/.config
I then right-clicked on .libreoffice and selected "Properties"
I selected the "permissions" tab on top
I set the group and owner as myself (username)
Folder Access - Create and Delete Files
File Access - Read and Write
I selected "Apply permissions to enclosed files" on the bottom
I also did this for the libreoffice subfolders "3" and "user"
I was then able to run it from the desktop.

[KingPommes (dennis-pahl)]

I had the same problem with my LibreOffice 4 version.

The solution was to reassign the ownership of the directory ".config".

kingpommes@Karlsruhe:~$ sudo chown -hR kingpommes .config

My guess is that my userID changed after I reinstalled my ubuntu some time ago. So although I used the same user name "kingpommes" in the new installation, the userID in the probably changed.

Anyway, the command I mentioned above solved the access problem of LibreOffice.