troubleshoot libreoffice locking computer

dgermann · 08-27-2017, 06:08 PM

Friends--

How would you troubleshoot this issue?

Issue: LibreOffice locks up the entire computer. Hard reboot is necessary. By lock up I mean that the clock at the top which shows seconds stops advancing. Occasionally it happens with other programs.

Production environment. We have similar problems with 3 other machines, but on those LO seems to crash and have to be re-started.

All machines are Ubuntu 16.04 lts, using gnome, and have both whole disk encryption and home directories encrypted. LO is version 5.1.6.2, from Ubuntu repositories. Pretty plain vanilla. Network is cifs to a 14.04 machine.

Most often it seems that the behavior happens as we click on the "x" in the corner to close a document, or to close out of a file in PDFStudioPro12. Often it seems that Nautilus is involved. The person on this computer will usually have open Nautilus, LO, and PDFStudioPro12 simultaneously. (The other users rarely if ever use PDFStudioPro12).

Here are the last 10 entries from /var/log/syslog from three recent crashes:

Code:

Aug 24 17:27:04 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1888]: (soffice:17991): Gdk-WARNING **: gdk_window
_set_icon_list: icons too large
Aug 24 17:27:11 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1888]: W: Unknown node under /registry/extlang: de
precated
Aug 24 17:27:11 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1888]: W: Unknown node under /registry/grandfather
ed: comments
Aug 24 17:27:11 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1888]: W: Unknown node under /registry/grandfather
ed: comments
Aug 24 17:28:47 yarn systemd[1]: Started CUPS Scheduler.
Aug 24 17:28:47 yarn colord[1156]: (colord:1156): Cd-WARNING **: failed to get session [pi
d 20879]: No such device or address
Aug 24 17:28:47 yarn colord[1156]: message repeated 3 times: [ (colord:1156): Cd-WARNING *
*: failed to get session [pid 20879]: No such device or address]
Aug 24 17:28:58 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1888]: (soffice:17991): Gdk-WARNING **: gdk_window
_set_icon_list: icons too large
Aug 24 17:30:12 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1888]: (soffice:17991): Gdk-WARNING **: gdk_window_set_icon_list: icons too large
Aug 24 17:30:26 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1888]: Warning: failed to read path from javaldx
Aug 24 17:30:27 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1888]: (soffice:20966): Gdk-WARNING **: gdk_window_set_icon_list: icons too large

Code:

Aug 21 16:41:13 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[17616]: ** (soffice:21980): WARNING **: Unknown ev
ent notification 34
Aug 21 16:41:13 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[17616]: ** (soffice:21980): WARNING **: Unknown ev
ent notification 36
Aug 21 16:41:13 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[17616]: ** (soffice:21980): WARNING **: Unknown ev
ent notification 36
Aug 21 16:41:13 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[17616]: ** (soffice:21980): WARNING **: Unknown ev
ent notification 34
Aug 21 16:41:13 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[17616]: ** (soffice:21980): WARNING **: Unknown ev
ent notification 36
Aug 21 16:41:13 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[17616]: ** (soffice:21980): WARNING **: Unknown ev
ent notification 36
Aug 21 16:41:13 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[17616]: ** (soffice:21980): WARNING **: Unknown ev
ent notification 34
Aug 21 16:41:17 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[17616]: ** (soffice:21980): WARNING **: Unknown ev
ent notification 36
Aug 21 16:41:17 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[17616]: ** (soffice:21980): WARNING **: Unknown ev
ent notification 36
Aug 21 16:41:17 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[17616]: ** (soffice:21980): WARNING **: Unknown event notification 34

Code:

Aug 17 13:16:28 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1876]: ** (soffice:13217): WARNING **: Unknown eve
nt notification 36
Aug 17 13:16:28 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1876]: message repeated 15 times: [ ** (soffice:13
217): WARNING **: Unknown event notification 36]
Aug 17 13:16:28 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1876]: ** (soffice:13217): WARNING **: Unknown eve
nt notification 37
Aug 17 13:16:28 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1876]: ** (soffice:13217): WARNING **: Unknown eve
nt notification 36
Aug 17 13:16:28 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1876]: message repeated 15 times: [ ** (soffice:13
217): WARNING **: Unknown event notification 36]
Aug 17 13:16:28 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1876]: ** (soffice:13217): WARNING **: Unknown eve
nt notification 37
Aug 17 13:16:28 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1876]: ** (soffice:13217): WARNING **: Unknown eve
nt notification 36
Aug 17 13:16:28 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1876]: message repeated 15 times: [ ** (soffice:13
217): WARNING **: Unknown event notification 36]
Aug 17 13:16:28 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1876]: ** (soffice:13217): WARNING **: Unknown event notification 37
Aug 17 13:17:01 yarn CRON[13632]: (root) CMD (   cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)
Aug 17 13:17:21 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1876]: ** (soffice:13217): WARNING **: Unknown event notification 36

Searches on "icons too large" and "unknown event" have not proved fruitful.

We have tried letting the machine sit for 5 or 10 minutes after a lock up, and it does not start up on its own. We have tried leaving Nautilus off. No success either one.

On another machine, I have noticed that when I have multiple LO docs open, print one, then close it using the "x" in the upper right corner, that's when LO crashes.

What would be some steps I can take to narrow down this problem?

Thanks!

ondoho · 08-28-2017, 12:31 AM

i think the warnings are harmless, and the error messages might not be related.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dgermann

All machines are Ubuntu 16.04 lts, using gnome, and have both whole disk encryption and home directories encrypted.

is the underlying hardware strong enough to support this heavy setup?
1. ubuntu is heavy
2. disk encryption creates additional overhead
3. LO is heavy

DavidMcCann · 08-28-2017, 11:52 AM

This seems to have been a problem with early versions of LO5.
1. Try launching LO from the command line and see if it leaves any error messages behind. If you get a CRITICAL, you need a different LO.
2. Do you have JRE? LO can get testy without its Java.
3. If all else fails, replace the Ubuntu version with the official one from the LO site.

Personally, I feel like the man asked for directions who replied "Well, if I were going there, I wouldn't start from here." There's no way I'd use Ubuntu in a enterprise environment!

dgermann · 08-28-2017, 07:57 PM

ondoho--

Thank you for helping me.

The hardware is a new machine built January 2016 on a Gigabyte mobo lga 1150, h97m-d3h. What other underlying hardware would you want to see in this installation for it to handle the weight?

I had been thinking that the encryption only beccomes an overhead issue when the system is booting up and shutting down, but not in minute to minute operation. Was I mistaken?

DavidMcCann--

Thank you for helping me.

OK, so starting soffice from command line shows nothing in the syslog, but in the cli screen it shows:
Warning: failed to read path from javaldx
Gdk-WARNING**: gdk_window_set_icon_list: icons too large

Is there another log file I need to be tracking?

Synaptic shows I have installed: java-common; openjdk-9-jre; openjdk-9-jre-headless.

LO > tools > options > Libreoffice > advanced has unchecked use a Java runtime environment. If I check the box, nothing shows up, and I cannot figure out what to put in the "add" box.

At this point I wonder if the jre is the issue, but I am unsure how to solve it. I found these different approaches:

Code:

sudo apt-get install default-jre

or

Code:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:openjdk-r/ppa  
sudo apt-get update   
sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk

Aside from Ubuntu, what would you use in a production environment where the main work is word processing, some spreadsheets, some scanning and ocr, almost no graphics?

Everyone--

Before I responded, this afternoon we had another crash on this machine. Here are some close-by syslog entries. I am wondering about the *** BUG *** reference:

Code:

Aug 28 16:21:51 yarn systemd[1]: Started Hostname Service.
Aug 28 16:22:21 yarn gnome-session[2007]: Window manager warning: Invalid WM_TRANSIENT_FOR
 window 0x2c0189b specified for 0x2c018a2 (Open).
Aug 28 16:22:41 yarn pdfstudio12.desktop[21817]: OSD: Weak margin (3.72) for 213 blob text
 block, but using orientation anyway: 0
Aug 28 16:22:56 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1867]: *** BUG ***
Aug 28 16:22:56 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1867]: In pixman_region32_init_rect: Invalid recta
ngle passed
Aug 28 16:22:56 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1867]: Set a breakpoint on '_pixman_log_error' to 
debug
Aug 28 16:22:56 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1867]: (evince:30478): Gtk-WARNING **: gtk_widget_
size_allocate(): attempt to allocate widget with width -3 and height 25
Aug 28 16:22:58 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1867]: *** BUG ***
Aug 28 16:22:58 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1867]: In pixman_region32_init_rect: Invalid recta
ngle passed
Aug 28 16:22:58 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1867]: Set a breakpoint on '_pixman_log_error' to 
debug
Aug 28 16:23:17 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1867]: (soffice:26250): Gdk-WARNING **: gdk_window
_set_icon_list: icons too large
Aug 28 16:23:28 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1867]: (soffice:26250): Gdk-WARNING **: gdk_window_set_icon_list: icons too large
Aug 28 16:23:39 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1867]: ** (soffice:26250): WARNING **: Unknown event notification 36
>>>crash happened at this time<<<<<

Thanks everyone for your help!

DavidMcCann · 08-29-2017, 12:01 PM

The complaints about the icons are probably not a serious problem — gtk complaints are very common — but the BUG report may be bad news. I also wonder about yarn: is that the Apache thing? I'm a bit out of my depth here!

This is one of the situations where commercial support would probably pay for itself in saved time. If you really want a free Linux, then CentOS is the way to go. The LTS version of Ubuntu is no different from any other, just supported longer: it's still based on Debian Unstable, with no extra debugging.

dgermann · 08-29-2017, 09:18 PM

DavidMcCann--

Thanks!

Well, that is kind of scary about the bug. Will have to do some googling on that, and hope someone here has seen it.

"yarn" is the name of the machine which is having the woes. Probably not related to anything Apache.

When you say "commercial support" are you thinking of a particular distro?

Did not know that Ubuntu was based upon Debian unstable. It has worked for me for 9 or more years, after I switched from Red Hat. Will have to look into CentOS. Thanks for the hint.

Thanks for your help, David!

DavidMcCann · 08-30-2017, 10:50 AM

I think the best thing would be to remove the Ubuntu version of LibreOffice and replace with the latest stable version (5.3.5) from the site: they have a .deb package available
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/

With luck, that may fix it!

dgermann · 08-30-2017, 08:11 PM

David--

That's kind of what I was thinking would be the next (and hopefully last) step.

Thanks David!

dgermann · 09-07-2017, 07:14 PM

Friends--

The person who works on this machine has been ill a lot since we installed the LO update direct from the LO site, so we had not been able to give it much of a workout.

Today LO did crash; the good news is that it did not crash the whole machine. So it seems to be progress.

The error message from today's crash relates to Nautilus:

Code:

Sep  7 16:57:23 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1864]: **
Sep  7 16:57:23 yarn org.gnome.Nautilus[1864]: GLib-GIO:ERROR:/build/glib2.0-prJhLS/glib2.0-2.48.2/./gio/glocalfilemonitor.c:433:g_file_monitor_source_handle_event: code should not be reached

To me it is curious that the word "should" is used. Anybody have any idea what this message means?

Not sure if it is a bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...0/+bug/1598360

DavidMcCann · 09-08-2017, 11:57 AM

The error message means that every attempt to sort things has failed, and so g_file_monitor_source_handle_event (which should not normally be needed) has shut things down. The bug report shows it's in glib, which is an essential component of GTK. Other posts on-line show the problem with Mate and Xfce as well as Gnome. At least we now know that the problem is not LibreOffice!

It might be worth adding the KDE desktop and getting the person who gets the most crashes to use it and see if it cures the problem. You'll still be using GTK for LO, but for for the file manager.

dgermann · 09-08-2017, 05:11 PM

David--

Many of the error messages point to Nautilus, so perhaps it ties in there somewhere.

I will give kde a try and see....

Soitgoes · 09-08-2017, 05:24 PM

I don't know if this applies. But I was just reading yesterday on another forum(Gentoo) about the same issue. They were able to fix the problem by compiling libreoffice without GTK3 support. I don't use Ubuntu, but I figured I would share.

Regards

dgermann · 09-09-2017, 05:03 PM

Soitgoes--

Thank you.

Not sure I would know how to compile it, let alone without gtk, but I suppose I could learn. For now, think I will see if it settles down and also test kde....

Thanks!