openoffice crashed..

xushi · 04-21-2005, 02:00 PM

Alright.. ok , ok .. i'm trying not to panick here..

OO beta just crashed, and it deleted all my work. It asked if i want to recover, i said yes, it said recovered successufly, but the document is now empty, and the .odt file is 0B in size...

I'm trying not to panick but this project is due tomorrow, and i was just adding an extra paragraph..

Help.. wtf can i do? =/ I'm shaking here! lol

xushi · 04-21-2005, 02:17 PM

I found a folder in /tmp called sv244.tmp, it has 65 .tmp files, some of which are images of the pics i used in the document.., some i can't open, and others are very weird.. Maby this is some sort of temp directory for my document.. ?!

EDIT": there must be a way to stick these files somewhere and let OO recover the document =/

xushi · 04-21-2005, 02:55 PM

YYYYYESSSSSSS!!!!!!

Oh god, i REALLY hope no one will witness this problem. But just incase, here's a hack

When you're fscking around in OO, it creates a temp folder in /tmp which is /tmp/sv123.tmp where 123 are random characters.

In there, there are tens of .tmp files. Once you save a document in OO, it will create a zipped file in there called sv123.tmp. The trick is to find that zipped file.

Once you do, just unzip it, and you will find the .xml files for your document. To recover, just rename that sv123.tmp zip file into sv123.odt, or whatever.odt, and then it will be recognised by OO again, and there you go.

Next step, go to Tools > Options in OO, and ENABLE BACKUP in there ...... oh God, the relief i just had.. some would say better than sex.. i can vouch for them.

EDIT: info was taken from this post, http://seclists.org/lists/bugtraq/2004/Sep/0089.html

detpenguin · 04-21-2005, 03:17 PM

*applauds loudly!!!*

in less than an hour...you fought off panic, recovered your files and posted HOW you did it!!!

great job!!! i love people who come back with the answer once they've figured it out instead of just saying "nevermind, i fixed it..."

congrats!

xushi · 04-21-2005, 03:28 PM

lol, i like posting

heck i'd add my own tutorial on 2.6 kernel upgrading here, but i should wait till the other threads become a bit old

http://xushi.co.uk/guides/kernel.php

And yea, i like helping.. heck i'd see myself having a full time job here after an early retirment

KMcD · 04-22-2005, 02:47 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by xushi
YYYYYESSSSSSS!!!!!!

...... oh God, the relief i just had.. some would say better than sex.. i can vouch for them.

EDIT: info was taken from this post, http://seclists.org/lists/bugtraq/2004/Sep/0089.html

Thanks for posting how you fixed the prob. I hate it when people don't. As for being better than sex, yes it is a great feeling when you're after panicing and then you fix the problem but it sure ain't better then sex, you mustn't have the right partner,

.

Would you recommend OO2.0beta??

xushi · 04-22-2005, 02:55 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by KMcD
Thanks for posting how you fixed the prob. I hate it when people don't. As for being better than sex, yes it is a great feeling when you're after panicing and then you fix the problem but it sure ain't better then sex, you mustn't have the right partner, .

.. Or the right combination of drinks along with the partner.. :P

Quote:

Would you recommend OO2.0beta??

Putting this problem asside, Yes, i would.

I've seen vast stability improvements between 1.0.79, and the current stable and fast 1.0.95. With anything lower than 1.0.93 i used to get frequent crashes, but the auto recovery fixed every one of them.

It was just sheer bad luck that this happened to me, and even when it did, and deleted my work, i still managed to go and recover data from temp OO files that were luckely there. Don't quote me, but i highly doubt you could do the same with MS Office or other closed formats.. Sure they have a recovery, but if that fails, and you lose your document file.. you're screwed

On a side note, which i didn't even realised it existed (and disabled by default on my machine), ify ou open office,
Tools > Options > Load/Save > General
Put ticks next to

Save AutoRecovery information every 10 min

Quote:

Specifies that OpenOffice.org saves the information needed to restore all open documents in case of a crash. You can specify the saving time interval.

Always create backup copy

Quote:

Saves the previous version of a document as a backup copy whenever you save a document. Every time OpenOffice.org creates a backup copy, the previous backup copy is replaced. The backup copy gets the extension .BAK.
To change the location of the backup copy, choose Tools - Options - OpenOffice.org - Paths, and then enter a new path for the backup file.

So go right ahead, grab the latest OO from this link
http://download.openoffice.org/680/index.html

And run this script
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...06#post1603706

And enjoy

cathectic · 04-22-2005, 11:06 AM

Quote:

Would you recommend OO2.0beta??

Yes (with caveats. Also, as Xushi says, get one of the newer builds, not the 2.0beta/1.9.79).

Pros:

1) More goodies! (Well, mostly Base, which is their new MS Access competitor)

2) OASIS open formats! (Open formats used for *all* the programs by default, no more StarOffice formats. This is what OOo is hoping will be the real MS killer)

3) Erm... nice icons?

4) Stability - getting better. I'd say it's fine for most things.

5) Points for style (well, you have to get something for living dangerously I suppose...

)

Cons:

1) The backwards compatibility isn't yet perfect between OOo 2 Betas and OOo 1.1.x

2) As Xushi pointed out, it can still crash on you for no good reason (but this is fairly rare, and I've only triggered it by mucking about upgrading other things at the same time and an old OOo 1.x sxw document (but they fixed that))

(Latest SlackBuild for the binaries is now here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...37#post1604737 )

gbonvehi · 04-22-2005, 01:34 PM

This "bug" appears as "Unconfirmed issues reported since OOo 2.0 Beta" here: http://development.openoffice.org/re...mozTocId674373

In the line: 47821 Word pro 680m91 0 editing OO-1 files (.sxw) and saving sometimes sets the file

Maybe you can add another vote to fix it.

aviel · 04-27-2005, 05:14 AM

yes, I was the one who posted the 47821 bug.
Thanks Xushi for posting your case there.

I also lost some info and would like to recover. I followed your instruction, but couldn't find any *.zip file in the suspected /tmp/sv*.tmp directory.

Quote:

In there, there are tens of .tmp files. Once you save a document in OO, it will create a zipped file in there called sv123.tmp. The trick is to find that zipped file.

What have I missed?

xushi · 04-27-2005, 05:31 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by aviel
I followed your instruction, but couldn't find any *.zip file in the suspected /tmp/sv*.tmp directory.

Sorry, i didn't mean an actual .zip file.
it is a .tmp file, which has a similar name to all the rest, but in konqueror's file manager, if you move your mouse over it, instead of saying 'plain text document' or 'unknown', it will say 'Zip Archive'.

in the command prompt, its a bit difficult to locate it, but In my directory, it is the largest file out of them all. you could try aranging by size if you want.

Code:

-rw-r--r--  1 root root  30564 2005-04-21 19:54 sv9hh.tmp
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  24505 2005-04-21 19:54 sv9hk.tmp
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  24631 2005-04-21 19:54 sv9hn.tmp
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  21067 2005-04-21 19:54 sv9ho.tmp
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  21193 2005-04-21 19:54 sv9i1.tmp
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  18656 2005-04-21 19:54 sv9i2.tmp
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  18782 2005-04-21 19:54 sv9i5.tmp
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  27090 2005-04-21 19:54 sv9i6.tmp
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  27216 2005-04-21 19:54 sv9i9.tmp
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 105941 2005-04-21 19:54 sv9ia.tmp
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 106067 2005-04-21 19:54 sv9id.tmp
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 247975 2005-04-21 19:55 sv9im.tmp
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   1129 2005-04-21 19:55 sv9in.tmp
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   1129 2005-04-21 19:55 sv9io.tmp
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   6913 2005-04-21 19:55 sv9ip.tmp
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   6913 2005-04-21 19:55 sv9j0.tmp

As you can see from part of my list, it is the sv9im.tmp file. Hope this helps.

aviel · 04-27-2005, 06:25 AM

No good

I copied all the directory to a new directory: ooc.tmp and ran

Code:

lcnpc18:ooc.tmp > rename tmp zip *.tmp; for i in `ls` ; do unzip $i
 ; done

No file could be unziped.
I also tried to zip the directory and rename it to ooc.odt, but OO failed to open it.

Any other ideas?

aviel · 04-27-2005, 06:38 AM

Coming to think of it, in light of the security issue raised in http://seclists.org/lists/bugtraq/2004/Sep/0089.html, the *.tmp files are probably encriped. Also looking on the permissions, the *.tmp files are readable to the world, so there is a good reason for them to be encriped.
I guess then, that if i am not lucky enough to have the .zip file - I cannot recover the data without deciphering the *.tmp files first.

xushi · 04-27-2005, 07:40 AM

Yea, but then why have encrypted .tmp files, and one unencrypted compressed .tmp file which you can just rename and open ?

aviel · 04-27-2005, 07:54 AM

I guess it crashed *after* the zip file was created.

Diagnosing a current .odt file, I noticed that
1. the files are readable by the user only.
2. none of the files can be unziped. as before.