I've been using OpenOffice.org1.1.3 just fine for quite a while. Today I was using it with no problems, went out to dinner, and when I came back both my spreadsheet and word-processing document (which I keep going all the time, starting them from .xinitrc) had disappeared from the screen; when I went to start up soffice again, I got messages complaining about not being able to associate a name with certain java files--I'm sorry, but I didn't copy the messages down. I tried again and got many messages about not finding libraries.

Then I tried running it as root, and it ran normally.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling from the same package I'd successfully used before, and saved, and was able to do the "setup -net" part and get root's copy installed and it works OK, but if I try to install for my regular user (me), the setup just hangs and I have to do a kill -9 to get rid of it. I have tried this about ten times or more, with both the original installation that worked earlier today, and brand new ones.

With the new installations, root can use the program, but even if I change ownership and permissions of root's OpenOffice.org directory, I can't run as a normal user. Sometimes I get complaining messages about libraries and sometimes nothing happens at all.

Any suggestions? I hate to lose my macros, auto-corrections, etc. that I've accumulated; but even if I rename my ~/.openoffice directory I still cannot install as normal user.

Running it as root is not a solution I want to adopt, because on principle I believe it's a bad idea to operate as root except when necessary to do things only root is allowed to do.

Update: I have a partial solution, along with a new problem that I know how to solve.

By attempting to run, as root, the program the way normal user "jon" runs it, I found out that the lock file was active in jon's OpenOffice.org directory. As jon I went and deleted it and then I was able once more to run OpenOffice.org as jon.

But I got the message that direct rendering had been disabled. OpenOffice.org prefers to have direct rendering on, since it lets it run faster.

I know how to fix that. It happened the other day--the lines setting mode "666" for direct rendering had disappeared from my xorg.conf file.

That's another mystery... If I find out what's causing those lines to disappear every now and then, I'll post under "Success Stories." Till then, this particular problem is solved, and another takes its place.

When I had what looks like the same problem (soffice working for root but not user), I finally got things back to normal again by deleting the file /tmp/mcop-username/secret-cookie. Prior to trying this, I looked for a .lock file for OOo, but I didn't see one.

So maybe deleting the secret-cookie will help some others, too.