Posted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 8:24 am Post subject: Cannot open neooffice with any consistency
I've spent some time reading some of the solutions posted here, and admittedly I haven't run disk repair....I doubt that's it, given that neooffice is the only application I've had such a problem with on this computer. but ultimately if that's the only possible solution, I can do that. I have a g5 quad, 10.5.8.
Now, it's at the point that even trashing preferences rarely works. What does work is to load up a new app file (I now always keep a spare copy). But that generally works once or twice - the next time I try to start I get 'the application NeoOffice quit unexpectedly'. The first time around, I may eventually get in by choosing relaunch and then reset, but then I cannot, and have to replace the application file again.
Posted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 9:43 am Post subject: Re: Cannot open neooffice with any consistency
droolmaster0 wrote:
I've spent some time reading some of the solutions posted here, and admittedly I haven't run disk repair....I doubt that's it, given that neooffice is the only application I've had such a problem with on this computer. but ultimately if that's the only possible solution, I can do that. I have a g5 quad, 10.5.8.
If NeoOffice is installed on your main volume, I would highly recommend that you repair your main volume. An explanation for why I think a disk repair is really necessary is at the end of this post.
Fortunately, there is a fairly simple way to run a disk repair. The following steps should complete a disk repair within 15 minutes so so.
1. Reboot your machine and hold the Command-S keys when you reboot
2. When the screen changes to a black background with text only, type the following commands, press the Return key, and wait until your machine reboots itself after a few minutes:
Code:
fsck -fy ; reboot
3. After the disk repair is complete, move your NeoOffice installation to the Trash, empty your Trash (it may have unrepairable files in it), and reinstall NeoOffice 3.0.1 and Patch 2
Does the crashing stop after a disk repair and reinstalling NeoOffice? If the crashing continues, can you attach a new crash log so that we can see if the location of the crash changes?
droolmaster0 wrote:
Now, it's at the point that even trashing preferences rarely works. What does work is to load up a new app file (I now always keep a spare copy). But that generally works once or twice - the next time I try to start I get 'the application NeoOffice quit unexpectedly'. The first time around, I may eventually get in by choosing relaunch and then reset, but then I cannot, and have to replace the application file again.
From your crash log, it appears that NeoOffice cannot read its own internal application configuration files. This is very odd because all of NeoOffice's internal files are read-only and owned by root. In other words, your Mac user has no ability to change any of those files.
This is why I recommend doing a disk repair: HFS+ disks get corrupted slightly from time to time (it has happened to my G5 a few times) and when the get corrupted, some of NeoOffice's critical files won't be readable and NeoOffice will crash. We know that the affected NeoOffice files cannot be changed by your user so the next likely cause of the problem is disk corruption.
I forgot to add one more thing to try if the crashing still occurs after doing a disk repair: disable all of the OpenOffice.org extensions that NeoOffice bundles. To disable such extensions, do the following steps:
1. Quit NeoOffice
2. Go to the Finder, Control-click on the NeoOffice icon, and select Show Package Contents from the popup menu that appears
3. Step 2 will cause the Finder to show a Contents folder, go into that folder and find a "share" subfolder. Go into the "share" subfolder and find a "uno_packages" subfolder.
4. Drag the "uno_packages" subfolder to the Trash.
Does NeoOffice stop crashing after doing the above steps?
One more question: are you copying NeoOffice from a backup location to "restore" NeoOffice?
If so, I have a theory as to what is happening. Copying NeoOffice using the Finder will set all of the copied NeoOffice files to writable by your user. This, in turn, allows NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org the ability to modify the NeoOffice application configuration files.
It is very dangerous of the OpenOffice.org code to edit NeoOffice's application configuration files. This is why use an installer to install NeoOffice: to make the application configuration read-only.
You can safely move a NeoOffice installation if you limit moving it to the same volume. But if you move it to another volume or copy NeoOffice, the copy will be exposed to OpenOffice.org's dangerous tendency to edit its own application configuration files.
Followed that procedure, and things seem ok. I saved a file, quit, reopened, etc, and it seems to be working without unexpectedly quitting. It did unexpectedly quit the first time, but not after that.
as far as your question about copying from a remote location - because it was the only way I could open neooffice of late, I did keep a backup copy on the same drive, in the same location. I don't think that's what you meant. I only turned to that when it already was giving me big problems.
In any case, I will post back soon about whether this seems to be working permanently. Thanks for your help - this has been frustrating. I appreciate it.
Followed that procedure, and things seem ok. I saved a file, quit, reopened, etc, and it seems to be working without unexpectedly quitting. It did unexpectedly quit the first time, but not after that.
That is good news. But I am curious which procedure fixed the problem. Did you only need to do a disk repair? Or did you have to also move the uno_packages folder to the Trash?
droolmaster0 wrote:
as far as your question about copying from a remote location - because it was the only way I could open neooffice of late, I did keep a backup copy on the same drive, in the same location. I don't think that's what you meant. I only turned to that when it already was giving me big problems.
I am not sure if copying has any affect but I posted about it because I thought it might be a possible cause. In any case, I have been investigating what code I can add to stop the OpenOffice.org code from editing its own files if you are running an installation copied using the Finder just to be safe.
hmmm - I guess I thought that you meant to trash the actual application file that I was using plus the preferences. As I recall I deleted those, downloaded the latest full version (don't have the # in front of me), and then used the downloaded patch update.
And of course, I ran the disk repair.
Thus far no problems...
thanks again,
Gene
pluby wrote:
droolmaster0 wrote:
Followed that procedure, and things seem ok. I saved a file, quit, reopened, etc, and it seems to be working without unexpectedly quitting. It did unexpectedly quit the first time, but not after that.
That is good news. But I am curious which procedure fixed the problem. Did you only need to do a disk repair? Or did you have to also move the uno_packages folder to the Trash?
droolmaster0 wrote:
as far as your question about copying from a remote location - because it was the only way I could open neooffice of late, I did keep a backup copy on the same drive, in the same location. I don't think that's what you meant. I only turned to that when it already was giving me big problems.
I am not sure if copying has any affect but I posted about it because I thought it might be a possible cause. In any case, I have been investigating what code I can add to stop the OpenOffice.org code from editing its own files if you are running an installation copied using the Finder just to be safe.
hmmm - I guess I thought that you meant to trash the actual application file that I was using plus the preferences. As I recall I deleted those, downloaded the latest full version (don't have the # in front of me), and then used the downloaded patch update.
And of course, I ran the disk repair.
That is what I was looking for: you did a disk repair and a clean reinstall. The hacky "move uno_package folder to Trash" step that I posted after later the same day is apparently not needed and that is good news.
it's also good to know about the disk repair procedure. I had thought that you had to run from the disk utility, booting from the cd....so this is quite convenient, actually.
pluby wrote:
droolmaster0 wrote:
hmmm - I guess I thought that you meant to trash the actual application file that I was using plus the preferences. As I recall I deleted those, downloaded the latest full version (don't have the # in front of me), and then used the downloaded patch update.
And of course, I ran the disk repair.
That is what I was looking for: you did a disk repair and a clean reinstall. The hacky "move uno_package folder to Trash" step that I posted after later the same day is apparently not needed and that is good news.
it's also good to know about the disk repair procedure. I had thought that you had to run from the disk utility, booting from the cd....so this is quite convenient, actually.
I agree. We used to give the instructions for running a disk repair from your Mac OS X installation disk, but doing it that way is really a hassle. Once I found the "boot with Command-S" approach, I now run a disk repair once or twice a month and definitely before I make a backup of my main volume.
it's also good to know about the disk repair procedure. I had thought that you had to run from the disk utility, booting from the cd....so this is quite convenient, actually.
I agree. We used to give the instructions for running a disk repair from your Mac OS X installation disk, but doing it that way is really a hassle. Once I found the "boot with Command-S" approach, I now run a disk repair once or twice a month and definitely before I make a backup of my main volume.
Patrick
well, given the result, it does seem like a good idea to run this occasionally. It didn't take as long as I thought it would...certainly less time than hunting up the cd, booting from it, etc...
Since it takes some time for this to happen, one theory is that one or more of your machine's memory cards has gone bad. The longer you run your machine without rebooting, the more likely that you will put all of the physical memory in your machine in use. Then, when you launch a large application like NeoOffice, NeoOffice gets allocated memory on one of the bad memory cards and things go bad. To test this theory, can you reboot your machine? Does NeoOffice launch OK for a while after you reboot?
If NeoOffice still does not launch after you reboot, then my next theory is that your disk might have some bad sectors and, after running your machine for some time, the normal creation and editing files that happens when you save files or even browser the web eventually causes one of those bad sectors to be used. Any data written to such bad sectors will be irrecoverable. If you do a disk repair again, does NeoOffice launch OK?
I ran disk repair again, and I can't even install. I assume it's ok to use the .dmg file that I already downloaded....but it apparently tries to load the application and it won't do it.
I've had trouble minutes after rebooting - so I don't think, from your description that the memory card is the issue. And I don't have issues with any other application on the computer.
I'm going to try installing to my other hard disk - unlike some programs this seems to let me do that, but I haven't tried it yet.
hmmm - there is another issue that I haven't had before, and maybe I screwed up here. When I try to delete the trash, I get an error that neo3s_.ttf is in use. I thought that I deleted it by holding down option when I pressed continue, but actually I didn't. So possibly that's why none of this worked this time? I'll try rebooting, and I expect I can delete it then.
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