Thorsten has Vacation, therefore reassigned to myself

For further investigation please tell me more about your hardware and 
system configuration:
- distribution
- kernel version
- graphic device
- disk space
- and so on

This also happens with 641D. Quite annoying. :-(

Dear Uwe

I sent you an email not sure whether this is getting added
automatically here, so here goes again:

Sorry for the late reply, I was on vacation:

Distribution: Debian woody/Ximian Gnome
Kernel: 2.4.18
Graphics device: Geforce2 using NVidia driver
Disk space:
Filesystem    Type   1k-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2     auto       38890     32340      4542  88% /
/dev/hda6     ext3      497667    166410    305555  36% /var
/dev/hda7     ext3     1383377   1207965    103925  93% /usr
/dev/hda8     ext3      987220    873186     63030  94% /usr/local
/dev/hda9     ext3     5831553   4470583   1058950  81% /home
/dev/hda10    ext3     1026067      8387    964668   1% /tmp
/dev/hda11    ext3     7901826   3936765   3555406  53% /usr/sap
/dev/hda3     ext3       38890      6238     30644  17% /root
And so on:
641C always starts fine the first time. Installation of OO is as a
network installation on /usr/local.

Anything else?

Best regards
Andree

Not sure whether it is relevant but with 641D what happens is that
everything is as usual when OO starts up, the splash screen appears
and then the window, all in normal speed. What does not occur when the
program window disappears two seconds later is the cursor. Also, when
the OO window disappears it apparently exits cleanly. There are no
messages on the command line and there a no stray processes left.

HTH a little bit ;-)
Andree

The same with 641d on RedHat 7.2, Kernel 2.4.7-10 on a P3-500 with 64
MB of RAM.

Same problem here. Using RedHat 7.1 (with the kernel supplied with
RedHat 7.1...). I tried OpenOffice 641C, never had any problems except
for a crash bug when selecting different fonts. But OpenOffice 641D
and 642 almost always crash just after startup.

I tried several Java SDK's/JRE's (latest 1.3.1 and 1.4.0), but that
doesn't make a difference either (although I read something about it
when searching with Google for similar error reports).

The strange thing is, it starts, and you get to see the cursor
blinking, but after a few seconds it just closes (like it would when
you choose to exit). 

I also tried running it as root. And what do you think? It didn't
crash! So I did some experimenting (I did a setup /net install) and
changed the ownership of the main OpenOffice directory to me (normal
user login), but that did help either... :(

Well, as said above, you don't get to see any error messages at all,
so I can't tell anything more about it. Hope there's a known
workaround, because I like OpenOffice, and I would hate it to go back
to the old StarOffice (5.2)...

Created attachment 1398 [details]
trace of a crashing startup

I just sent you a gziped strace of a crashing startup, in case it can
help. For info, I havent't been able to start OO in more than 20
trials, so the problem renders the program completely unusable here.

I'm on debian woody, kernel 2.4.18, nvidia video card with nvidia's
drivers. I have 128Mb ram, and plenty of free space. I use devfs with
devfsd, and have plenty of space on my root partition (I have only one
partition, which is reiserfs). My locale is a mix of fr_BE@euro and
plain C, but I also tried with everything set to C, which didn't help.

Tell me if you need further info, I really need this program, and am
willing to give as much help as possible.

My system:
Current Debian unstable (it's almost the same as woody), nvidia m64,
192MB RAM, tried build641d and 642 with the same result - crash.
I was trying user and -net installs of both above builds.

After I run /usr/local/oo641d/soffice it shows main window, import
wizard, then main window dissapears, it shows "unrecoverable error"
window, wizard dissapears, "unrecov. error" window dissapears, on the
console I get "Aborted". That's all.

I copied .sversionrc file from user to root home dir and run oo as
root. I was surprised but it worked!

I don't know if it's because I use nvidia or maybe because of newest
glibc? (I had problem with vmware because of that) I am willing to
help, plesae contact me if I can help You anyhow.

Of course I didn't build oo.o myself, but used Yours binaries.

If You have any intermediate builds that have this problems solved -
please let me know as I really need oo.o badly.

HTH

Just to complete my comments :

* OO.o 641d works flawlessly under w2k
* under linux (see preceding post for my config), I launch it under
command line, then get two times the message "SIOCGIFADDR got
'00:00:00:00:00:00'", then the window appears, with the text imported
if I precised an MS Word document on the command line, then the same
message appears two times ("SIOCGIFADDR got '00:00:00:00:00:00'", that
makes four time in total) and I get the prompt back, then the OO.o
window disappears silently. No error message, no core dump, it just
closes cleanly.

Again, contact me if you need further info, I'm more than willing to
help in this issue.

just to be complete :-)

it works like a charm for root. I get one message "SIOCGIFADDR got
'00:00:00:00:00:00'", and a second one when I quit. I get additionnal
identical messages if I open files, but only two if I start OO.o and
then immediately exit. But I don't feel comfortable with such a beast
running as root. So that's not a possible fix :-)

I changed the ownership on the base OO.o installation directory to the
normal user, which didn't solve anything.

I gave an ip address to my eth0, which removed the SIOCGIFADDR
messages, but OO.o still crashes for a normal user.

Now to be precise, I get 4 such messages when I try to directly open a
file on the command line, and only 3 when no file is specified.

Hope this helps

reassigned to Thorsten

Confirmed here as well. OpenOffice closes immediately
after startup, with the initial frame fully
mapped, but cursor not yet blinking.

OpenOffice 641D & 642
Debian unstable (up to date)
Linux 2.4.18
glibc 2.2.5
DELL Latitute C600 laptop
ATI Technologies Inc Rage Mobility P/M AGP 2x

Need more?

It seems that oo closes cleanly. At the end of the strace output,
I see:

access("/tmp/OSL_PIPE_1003_SingleOfficeIPC_492818649", F_OK) = 0
connect(5, {sin_family=AF_UNIX,
path="/tmp/OSL_PIPE_1003_SingleOfficeIPC_492818649"}, 46) = 0
send(5, "InternalIPC::TerminateThread", 28, 0) = 28

and then signs of a clean exit (will attach this output).
No signs of SEGV or other exceptional signals.

This bug is extremely annoying, and my single major problem
with using OO daily!

Created attachment 1428 [details]
Proof of clean exit... strace of openoffice 642, exiting immediately.

It works for me.
Maybe you didn't have the necessary rights for the selected 
installation directory? How did you install? Please give us a step by 
step guide.
As Root install with /net in a installation directory e.g. /opt.
After installing it to /opt/openoffice641 use the normal user login 
and executed /opt/openoffice641/program/setup to install the local 
user files. In the setup choose "workstation install". The setup 
copies the files in your home directory. Now execute from your user 
installation ./soffice

I did exactly what you just described. I'm sure the user has the
proper rights. I even tried chowning the directory to the user, but
that didn't help either. This problem is very annoying, and it's
unfortunately not clear what is really happening internally.

BTW, you say maybe the user doesn't have the proper rights. But that
doesn't explain why OO sometimes *does* work for the user, and
sometimes (most of the times) it doesn't.

To bad nobody of the OO development team suffers from the above
problems, that should make it more easy to trace what's happening. As
a complete newbie (outsider) to the OO development I wouldn't know
where to start. This probably explains why nobody has accepted the
issue yet...

Update : 

I also did exactly what you describe to install the program, even
tried to chown the whole installation directory to my userid, which
didn't solve the problem. Now it could still be perms related bacause
AFAIK root doesn't display the problem (I didn't test this thoroughly).

Now I found a way to force OO to stay up : when the window comes up
(you can start before, just be sure that OO has the focus), just type
anything before it has time to close (I just keep pressing 'e' when
the logo screen appears to be sure that something makes it through).
Then it asks you what you want to do with your changes
(save/abort/discard). Abort and OO is there waiting for meaningfull
input :-)

I think this displays that it's not a normal crash, but that something
triggers the normal "bye-bye" mechanism. I just force it to ask me a
question before it closes.

If you have a spare HD, install debian woody on it, I think it's
related to the way debian is configured, or the versions of softs in
it. If there is no other option, I'm willing to give you shell access
to my box so you can try it for yourself. Contact me by email if it
comes to this.

Another way to solve this :
I installed debian's preliminary package for OOo641d in the hope that
it would solve the problem. Well, it didn't. But then I discovered
this on the mailing-list :
http://lists.debian.org/debian-openoffice/2002/debian-openoffice-200204/msg00159.html

And it seems to work well. The basic is : install OOo as root, copy
root's config directory to the user (for debian this is ~/.openoffice)
and chown/chgrp it (don't forget -R). I add that you have to do the
same for .sversionrc if it doesn't exist yet (edit it to reflect your
home directory). Then OOo seems to work fine. I'll come back and
report if the issue comes back, but I started it quite a dozen times
without the problem occuring.

Read the list's post to see what the author thinks is happening.

Forget my preceding post, the problem suddenly reappeared. Sorry for
the noise.

I just add that the method where I type letters before the window
appears does work flawlessly. I just have to cancel the "bye-bye"
procedure.

Downloaded and installed OpenOffice 1.0 today (on the same machine
where the 641D and 642 builds showed the above problems). Everything
works fine! No exit on startup anymore! I have (re-)started OO
multiple-times and everytime it works great! Thank you!

I`ve checked this problem using OO 1.0.0 final running under RedHat
Linux 7.2 and Debian Linux 2.2 and ffound it not reproducible.
Everything works fine ! Please check this problem with the 1.0.0 too.
Thanks !

Hi, 

I've managed to narrow the problem down a bit, I found the same
problem on both my Debian woody and unstable systems. The program
starts fine if run as another user loged in using su in an xterminal
(I havn't tried with root, nor will I!!) - I recommend that anyone
with this problem tries running OOo as a different user. If however X
is started using GDM (gnome X login, not tried with others) then
OpenOffice.org receives the exit signal as soon as it starts - as said
before, this can be avoided if a key is pressed just after the screen
pops up allowing cancel to be pressed aborting the exit sequence.

However, when X is started from the console and NOT from gdm then OOo
works as expected. I'll perform some more tests on gdm,xdm and kdm
configs when I have more time but hopefully this will make the bug
more easily reproduceable for other people!

Regards,
sam

UPDATE (From the original reporter):

Things seem to be working fine on with 1.0.0. No crashes so far.

Cheers
Andree

I only wanted to add that it still happens, even with 1.0 build :-((
(see my previous report for details)
Is there any way I can help with solving this issue?

Hi all,

I think maybe this bug is in fact many and that the orignally posted
bug has maybe been fixed in 1.0.0?? However, I still have problems and
it appears other people do too. I have managed to narrow the bug down
just a little bit more on my debian system, sadly it just gets more
wierd rather than a deffinate problem source. As I said in an earlier
post, I think its a GDM thing, I tried starting with XDM and no
problem ocurred, then tried under GDM the Debian window manager
option, rather than default Gnome option and it OOo loaded up fine
also. If I then go back to the default 'Gnome' option it breaks. (WTF?) 

So Grzegorz, try playing with GDM a bit, and see if it works. Maybe
its a freek option in some default debian setting, I now have no idea
any more!

Good luck! - IMHO OOo is well worth the effort!

sam

Update from original reporter again:

Unfortunately I was jumping the gun a bit here. It still happenens,
albeit less frequently than with prior versions. So far it always
stayed  up on the second attempt...

Cheers
Andree

I confirm the other posts : it still happens with OOo 1.0, but less
frequently. And I'm running with gdm.

Regarding the frequency of the bug, I now always have to start OOo
twice in a row for it to stay up. This was not so clear before 1.0, I
could start it several times in a row before it stays up. Now if I do
something else between the two starts, it doesn't work. And the method
I used to force it to stay up (type something before the window
appears to gat a Save/Discard/Cancel dialog) still works.

Could it be a speed problem ? I mean it seems it doesn't stay up if it
has to take the data from disk (be it file or swap), but once the
program is mostly in RAM it works.

Please have a look at #4494. That one seems to be similar to this 
one. When "unset session_manager" is added to the soffice-script, 
everything should work fine.

Yep, this is the same bug. (at least for me)

As advised on the issue page that you signaled, I added
--purge-delay=0 to my gnome startup script, and everything works fine
now. As I don't know what that option does, nor what "unset
session_manager"  does, could you please briefly describe what those
changes imply so I can choose which one I do ?

unsetting SESSION_MANAGER will disable session managment (which simply
restarts the application if you log out and log in again). The
purge-delay parameter of gnome-session on the other hand tells how
long (in milliseconds) to wait for an application to answer (0 meaning
infinity). If you set purge-delay to 0 OOo should still be restarted
if you log in again. This should also be the case if you set the value
of purge-delay high enough.

I am running debian unstable (T22, 256M, ..., more details available
if required) with the latest debian packages, and still have this
problem regularly.

The only thing that I have found is if I start OO _before_ I start
other programs (noteably evolution) things seem to work much
smoother--that is, OO starts.

cheers

Richard

*** Issue 5165 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

*** Issue 5165 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

This problem, which is caused by the gnome session-manager, can`t be
fixed/won`t be fixed within OO. Issue is therefore closed as "Wontfix" !

As mentioned on the qa dev list on March 5th I will close all resolved duplicate
issues. Please see this posting for details. First step in IssueZilla is
unfortunately to set them to verified.

As mentioned on the qa dev list on March 5th I will close all resolved
<wontfix/duplicate/worksforme/invalid> issues. Please see this posting for details.