Netbeans 6.7.1 crashes intermittently

[Jonathan Siebott]

Binary package hint: netbeans

I am trying to develop a project using gui builder. Everything seems to be working fine and then POOF! the whole IDE is just gone. This seems to happen only while editing properties, or refactoring, or doing just about anything aside from writing the code. It has never happened while building, cleaning, or running the project. It happens very often, and without warning several times an hour, but with no regularity in time. Again, it seems to happen when I am doing something, for example, when changing the text of a JLabel. After changing the text in the properties menu, the entire IDE vanishes the moment focus leaves the text property place of entry. Another case, which just happened, I changed a class name and POOF! right when the focus left the New Name text box as I clicked the Refactor button. Interestingly, when I restarted the IDE, the refactoring stuck and the class had its new name.

[Jonathan Siebott (jonsiebott)]

Also, the Ubuntu version is Karmic.

[Yulia Novozhilova (yulia-novozhilova)]

Could you, please, attach log file right after crash (~/.netbeans/6.7/var/log/messages.log).

[Jonathan Siebott (jonsiebott)]

Here is the messages.log file. This crash happened moments ago, but I was working on a different project. This one is not a gui builder project.
.

[Yulia Novozhilova (yulia-novozhilova)]

Well, you are using openjdk, it looks the same as https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openjdk-6/+bug/398280
Could you, please, try run netbeans using sun-java6?
See http://wiki.netbeans.org/NetBeansUserFAQ#Configuration for more details how to setup JDK used to run IDE. Shortly you can set JDK used by IDE either in
a) /etc/netbeans.conf (uncomment modify line starting with netbeans_jdkhome="", put path to JDK home dir into double quotes eg. netbeans_jdkhome="/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.16"
b) on command line: netbeans --jdkhome /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.16

[Jonathan Siebott (jonsiebott)]

So far so good. It looks like openJDK was the problem. I'm curious to know what exactly it is about openJDK that causes the problem. Thank you so much for your assistance Yulia.

[Yulia Novozhilova (yulia-novozhilova)]

You are welcome.
I suppose Matthias Klose can consult you about openjdk issues.

[JC Hulce (soaringsky)]

This bug has been marked as Fix Committed for over a year. If the fix has made it into Ubuntu, please mark this bug as Fix Released. If the fix has been released upstream, but not Ubuntu, create a new bug asking for the new version and tag it with upgrade-software-version. If this bug has not been fixed anywhere, change the status back to Confirmed.

[Thomas Hotz (thotz-deactivatedaccount)]

Jonathan: Is this bug fixed for you? Thank you for telling us!

[Jonathan Siebott (jonsiebott)]

Apparently the bug only manifested when using the openJDK. Switching to JDK6 alleviated the problem. I confirmed the "fix" even though it was a work around to simply not use the openJDK. Since the time of this posting, NetBeans has gone on to version 7.3 and I haven't seen the issue in subsequent versions regardless of JDK. It's fine to change the status to incomplete, which will lead to thread expiration. For anyone still interested and unable to surmise from the content of the thread, don't use the openJDK with netbeans 6.7.1.

[Thomas Hotz (thotz-deactivatedaccount)]

Thank you. I just wanted to get sure, that's why I ask.

The problem is here: We don't support Netbeans 6.7.1 in supported Ubuntu Desktop versions. Netbeans 7.0.1 is in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.