crash on save OOo1.0.3 = unhappy partner..

[stib]

I'm in big trouble with my partner at the moment, somebody help me! I've been trying to convince her that this open source software stuff is the go, instead of the old version of word *cough* that had a suspiciously similar serial number to my last place of employment*cough*.

She just wants something non-geeky that opens, she can use, and won't eat her work. "But it's Unix, of course it's reliable. And look, you just hit the start open office icon in the dock and.. er.. wait for it.. dum de dum.. oh there you go. Looks just like word on a PC, sorta".

So after she spends an afternoon typing up some work, only to have OOo1.0.3 crash when she goes to save, she's pretty dark on me. Can anyone help with this so she can stop muttering about how much money we spent on the new computer and how much better system 8.5 was than OSX?

The details, as far as I can remember, are that the program hung when she went to save an openOffice document. She got the X11 spinning watch cursor, the status display down the bottom said "saving file", but no dots appeared on the progress indicator. It stayed like that for hours, until I got home from work.

when I opened a terminal and ran top, the soffice process was using up about 50% of one of the CPUs. After quitting X11 and killing OOo in the process (or so i thought), soffice was still using the same amount of CPU(!). I had to kill -9 the process or restart to get it to stop.

When I killed the process, and my beloved's afternoon worth of work, I tried creating and saving a document a few times. If I tried to save as an openOffice document it crashed every time. Saving as a RTF kinda worked: there was an error message, but the document seemed to be there.

I checked the permissions on the folder she was trying to save to, and they were all ok. The document was a new document created in OOo and saved as a native OOo file whatever the extension is.

OS10.2.6 and whatever the current version of X11 was about two weeks ago when I installed it.

I hope there's enough info to go with there. Has anyone else had issues with saving documents?

[OPENSTEP]

Oh boy, that sucks There have been issues with saving documents, and there's an IZ bug on it with the general gist "crashes on save every time"...sounds like it's reproducing what you've got going on. Unfortunately I've never been able to reproduce it and never been able to track down what's causing it. It definitely sucks trying to debug something when you can't reproduce the problem

Here are some shots in the dark, or questions that may narrow down what's causing it:

1) Is your partner using OOo under the same account from which it was installed? This may be useful knowledge...

2) What is the destination directory when you're trying to save? Does it happen for all directories? Try saving to the User directory, or to a "Shared" directory that everyone has permissions to write to.

3) Are there spaces in the name of any directory leading up to the destination directory?

4) Are there spaces in the filename you're trying to save?

5) From the comments, I intimate you're on a dual processor machine. Is this the case? If so, would you be willing to go through the exercise of disabling one of the CPUs to see if it still happens? The reason for this is that there are some known bizarre locking problems that used to occur on dual CPU machines, and I'd like to try to make sure that's not the case here. The easiest way to do this is by installing the CHUD developer tools from Apple:

http://developer.apple.com/tools/performance/

Inside of your System Preferences it'll give you a new "CPU" preference panel that you can use to turn off one of the processors and make your box seem like a single CPU machine.

I've only got single CPU machines and have only used OOo on single CPU machines for the last year and a half/two years, which could be why I've never seen it.

6) If you can get it to hang on save like it is, do you have the developer's tools installed on the machine? If so we may be able to attach to the process and get a stack trace to point out exactly in the code where it's spinning and make the shots in the dark a little more directed (kind of like shots in the dark while holding a lighter).

Sorry you hit this bug on your try to show OSS is so cool Note that all of the above suggestions are more to help us try and track down just what may be causing this problem for you...none of them are solutions, unfortunately. For a workaround, you may want to try saving as Word 97/2000/XP format until we can track down what may be causing the OOo format to honk on your machine. It'll retain more formatting then RTF including tables and such. In my documents thus far the primary problems I've had with keeping my documents in Word format is the annoying "warning" message and garbling of some embedded objects in the document like formulas (yes, unless you do use Perl or other tools the "Open XML Format" is really just hype...it doesn't matter what you use if it can retain the formatting you need to save, and it's only understood really well by OpenOffice.org, making the choice of applications you can use to edit it even less then the "proprietary" Word format).

If worse comes to worse and trying to help solve this just sounds frustrating to you, try going to check out AbiWord if your partner just needs word processing. Also, Nisus Writer express is freely available. There are also a couple others listed in the Macintosh Products Guide on the apple site

ed

[Elias Rrezov]

I recognize this problem which started for me after several attempts to import an appleworks file (saved as MS-Excel file and as Text first, in ooo for x11 1.03). The import was unsuccessful and I have not been able to open or save any files from ooo since. This is unfortunate, as it means for me that I have to wait for a next version before using this as my main app. It is the second time I have these problems (after the first I re-installed), which to me means the risk is always there.

This will be solved sometime soon no doubt, and I look forward to a new osx x11 version. I can hardly wait to have ooo as my main office suit, but testing suggests it is not stable enough to run my business just yet.

[Bruno]

Hello,
I had the same issue and from testing I found that the issue is related to multiple user enviroment: You install OOo for account A , login with account B you can do anythink you want with OOo except saving.
I have tried to select different directories where I was sure I had write permissions but no luck, changed name of files or save in other format didn't solved it.
I have tried it the way around: installed OOo on account B and now account A has the crashes on saving.

[OPENSTEP]

Interesting...this almost implies that it may be something with work directories. Could you quickly open up a Terminal and find the output of the following:

ls -al /var/tmp

and look at the letters next to the first entry after the "total #" count ("." means the current directory). See if they're all letters "drwxrwxrwt".

I just realized on all of my boxes may have explicitly changed permissions of this directory to be writeable by other, but on 10.0 at least I think it may have been different. I'll look further into where else it may use during saving, but just wanted to make sure that one's out of the way.

ed

[ruvinio]

HI there

i have exactly the same problem. ooo hangs when i try to save a document.
i worked for years with ooo / staroffice (started with staroffice 3.0 on os/2, oh yes) and now im really unhappy with this productivity-killing problem.

i just changed to a macintosh, coz i knew, there is my ooo....
AND I DONT WANT TO CHANGE TO MS OFFICE (cough), so pleazzz fix this prob asap.

i use OSX 10.2.8 and apple's x11 on a G4 Dual 1GHz, 768MB Ram, Superdrive.

i have a multiuser-environment (2 users - both administrator).

[OPENSTEP]

I still have been unable to reproduce this issue on my machines. Can you please check the permissions on that /var/tmp directory so I can rule that possibility out? Also, do you have the developer's tools installed or do you see a crash log from soffice.bin in Console that you could post to help track down the problem?

ed

[OPENSTEP]

If anyone's actually still testing this, try opening up /Applications/OpenOffice.org1.0.3/program/bootstraprc with a text editor and change the "UserInstallation" line to:

UserInstallation=$SYSUSERCONFIG/Library/Preferences/OpenOffice.org1.0.3

I believe that may be required in addition to the .sversionrc to point everything to the proper place for user accounts other then the default install account.

ed

[Guest]

Hello Ed,

I will check both questions, but I need to first reinstall such a configuration,

I hope to have some sparetime coming days.
Greetings

bruno

[Bruno]

Hello Ed,
Here are the answers to your questions:
- 1) via ls -al /var/tmp
I see all the letters you have written, so that's out of the way

-2) I have changed the bootstraprc with the line you gave me
result: still not working, tried it on 2 different Mac's.
I got still the clock waiting . I have 2 crashlogs from the soffice.bin
Can I mail these logs to you?


1 remark I'm testing on a french and German system.

Greetings

bruno

[OPENSTEP]

Yes. Please please please mail me the crashlogs if you have them. Do you recall if they were generated while you had the frozen watch on save?

I've still been unable to get this puppy to reproduce on my machines, and for the life of me I'm stumped as to what's different on my installations. I don't think the system language should make a difference, but who knows. Feel free to e-mail them or post them to this thread so others can get at them as well.

ed

[Bruno]

Hello Ed,
Yes I have checked that the crash log was generated at the time the watch was turning.
please find below the crash log:

Greetings

Bruno

PS: One user is administrator (enseignant) and the other not(enfant)!
Installed for the "enfant" and working fine, "enseignant" has the saving issue.
/
PS2: is there a way to set the default saving path the the ∼user's document folder?

[cwebster]

I am seeing problems when attempting to save from the other account as well. I am using Os X 10.3.1. In my case neither account is admin.

[cwebster]

I noticed that the OpenOffice/share/config/registry directory is owned by the first user of open office which only has write permissions for the owner (no group or user). I am wondering if this would cause the hanging save problem.

[flar_p]

I have the same problem as described in the thread. I have installed Open Office as user Admininistrator and save works perfect, but when i use Open Office as User Flar Open Office hangs on saving. If someone finds an solution for this please post it.

Thanks in advance

Greetings

Flar