[SOLVED] System freezes during work LibreOffice Calc

[Treepata]

Hi everyone,

Quite new to these forums (and LinuxMint), but I love the operating system. It is very nice and includes the functionality not included in Ubuntu.

However, I have one major issue with Linux Mint at the moment.

Very frequently, when I work on a LibreOffice Calc file, the systems stops responding and simply freezes. I cannot do anything, only move my cursor. I have to do a hard reset to get the system back. It happens about 90% of the time, after 5-10 minutes. What is worse, it has already corrupted several Calc files, rendering them beyond repair. This has costed me many hours, simply making the files again. And it is not limited to a specific action. It sometimes occurs when I copy/paste a cell, when I use my mousewheel o scroll up, when I add color to a column etc.

Some additional info:

Running Linux Mint 11 64bit edition on a Thinkpad X220.
4 gig ram, 64 gig SSD hard disk and Intel HD Graphics system.
Compiz shut off & removed from system. Running Metacity.
All updates installed and with newest BIOS version.
Working on these files in Windows 7 (using same version of LibreOffice) does not crash the system. Only occurs in Linux Mint.

What I have tried already:

Disable and enable the AutoRestore Function in LibreOffice
Stopped using the external mouse
Converted files from ods to xls and vise versa
Enabled and disabled spinning down of hard disk in Power options

However, none of these solutions worked.

I am not sure which log file to include. If someone likes to see one of the log files, let me know. I will happily paste them here.

I have included one of the files I am working on, and keeps freezing the system a lot.

I will check tomorrow if this issue occurs with all my Calc files (only tested a few now), but that does mean I am taking risks. Because the crashes/freezes can corrupt the file.

Hope that someone can help me or give me a few pointers! Thanks already!

(and yes, I did Google for a solution. But couldn't find any.)

[richyrich]

there is a bug mentioned in the Release Notes that may be related ? It started out with Compiz, but scroll down to about reply 40 or so, when they start talking about Sync to Vblank . . (note - post 56-57 ?)

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... mments=all
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NattyNarwhal/Re ... nd_display

[iLobster]

Same behaviour, but not only with Calc, Writer too. 2-3 times per workday.
I'm using Ctrl+Alt+Esc to respond.
Annoying a bit

[Treepata]

Hi there,

Thanks for your replies. I checked out the links and did the following;

- Installed newest Headers (the newest version supposed to offer a fix) through Synaptic
- Added "export CLUTTER_VBLANK=none" to etc/environment
- Logged out as user, and then checked "Gnome <no effects>" on logging in

However, none of the solutions work. My system still freezes while working on the Calc files.
I think that the solutions do not work for me because all of these solutions relate to Compiz not functioning and causing the problems. But I have already uninstalled Compiz a week ago, so it cannot be related to that.

And unfortunately, my complete system freezes. I cannot even, like iLobster, press Ctrl+Alt+Esc to respond. No key responds. The only thing I can do, is move the cursor around.

Any more suggestions? Thanks!

[Treepata]

Mmmm.. I might have stumbled on a solution:

After further examination, I noted that the files that were giving me issues, where all based on a certain older file. This made sense, as I didn't want to have to make the same format over and over.

I have now copied the contents of one of the files to a new ods file, and so far the system hasn't frozen yet. I will give it one more day to test, and then report back tomorrow if this fixes the issue.

[iLobster]

Hi there,
And unfortunately, my complete system freezes. I cannot even, like iLobster, press Ctrl+Alt+Esc to respond. No key responds. The only thing I can do, is move the cursor around.
Any more suggestions? Thanks!

My mistake, not Esc, sorry
Ctrl+Alt+Backspace
If autosave presents, you don'l loose anything

[Superfish]

Hi!
It's nice to finally find someone else with this problem! I have exactly the same problem on Ubuntu 11.04 64bit. When working on an .xls document, LibreOffice will randomly completely freeze the entire system, except the mouse. Ctrl-Alt-Bksp does not work (even though it's enabled). This occurs in KDE, Gnome, and Gnome without effects. I tried to copy everything into a new document, doing "Paste Special" and unchecking "Objects", and that seemed to work for a while, but the crashing returned. I've also switched from OpenJDK to Sun Java, and tried LibreOffice 3.3 and 3.4.

I opened your document, and it also crashes my system in the same way. My document is attached; does anyone else have this problem with one of these two documents? The only similarity I can see is that they're both .xls, and both very colorful.

I'm on a Dell Latitude E5420, if that's at all helpful. This has a core i5 with Intel HD graphics also. Opening these documents on my other computers (openSuSE 11.3 64bit nvidia desktop, ubuntu 11.04 32bit nvidia laptop) does not have the same problems.

Thanks for the help!

[Superfish]

After trying numerous other fixes (copying everything to new document, exporting to csv and re-importing, deleting .libreoffice, upgrading graphics drivers from ppa:glasen/intel-driver, turning off auto-save), it seems I've found a fix. At least, without this fix, it crashes within minutes, and with it, I haven't gotten it to crash yet.

The fix: under the Tools->Options->LibreOffice->View menu, turn off "Use Anti-Aliasing"
(If that doesn't work, try also turning off "Use hardware acceleration")

If you're still having trouble with this issue, give that a try and let us know if it works.

[aes2011]

A minor point is that it's safer to work on files that have been saved as odt or ods. In other words, open a .doc or .xls file and immediately save as odt or ods. That way, you'll still have the original (doc/xls files) and LibO may behave itself.

[Treepata]

Hi everyone,

I promised to let you know if simply not using a certain file would solve the problem (see couple of posts back). Well it did seem to work, but then the system crashed again with another ods file. Oh and sadly enough, CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE didn't work. The system stops responding completely.

I will try Superfish fix/workaround and let you know in a few days if this did the trick for me as well.

I do believe (also after reading Superfish's configuration) that this has something to do with the new HD graphics. I never had an issue with this on any of my other systems.

[Treepata]

Hi everyone,

So two weeks have gone by, and no issues with LibreOffice Calc anymore. So I assume Superfish was right, disabling hardware acceleration & Anti aliasing fixed the issue.

Thanks for your replies & help!

[ismailkimyacioglu]

I hope this is the solution. For the last 10 days, I have been installing and installing the OS one after another. I also have a Dell Inspiron M5110 and it is only 1 week old. I had started to doubt about my new purchase.

It also costed me a lot as kept me out of the business while investigating the issue.

Thanks Superfish for the solution and I hope it will not happen again.

[smohr]

Thanks,

I have got the same problem, now it works.

[ddaniel]

The fix: under the Tools->Options->LibreOffice->View menu, turn off "Use Anti-Aliasing"
(If that doesn't work, try also turning off "Use hardware acceleration")

If you're still having trouble with this issue, give that a try and let us know if it works.

Unfortunately, this fix doesn't work on large documents in LibreOffice, at least it doesn't work for me. I also tried different things, upgrade to 3.4. kernel, upgrade xserver-xorg-core, but that didn't solve the issue. System freezes on scrolling large documents ie. few hundredth pages, for a minute or two. Maybe the 3.3.6 kernel could solve this issue but I can't compile broadcom wl driver on it. On this kernel system didn't hang, although I didn't test it for a long period of time, but it doesn't hang after minute or two.
inxi -Gx

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Graphics:  Card-1: Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0
           Card-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Seymour [Radeon HD 6400M Series] bus-ID: 01:00.0
           X.Org: 1.11.3 drivers: intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1600x900@60.1hz
           GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Sandybridge Mobile x86/MMX/SSE2 GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 8.0.2 Direct Rendering: Yes


uname -a

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Linux julia 3.4.0-030400-generic-pae #201205210521 SMP Mon May 21 09:35:19 UTC 2012 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

cat /etc/default/grub

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GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet acpi_osi="Linux" acpi_backlight=vendor pcie_aspm=force i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.i915_enable_fbc=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1" #vt.handoff=7


radeon driver is blacklisted.

When I killed X server with ctrl-alt-backspace I got following error on dmesg

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soffice.bin[3458]: segfault at 804de6f0 ip b7575f14 sp af5b7f60 error 4 in libc-2.15.so[b7543000+19f000]
[ 2202.783637] Xorg[1595]: segfault at 7c ip b760ccd5 sp bfea5fb0 error 4 in Xorg[b75ce000+1f3000]
[ 2474.146954] soffice.bin[4117]: segfault at 9d342708 ip b74e5f14 sp af4fef60 error 4 in libc-2.15.so[b74b3000+19f000]
[ 2474.282806] Xorg[3851]: segfault at 7c ip b75dccd5 sp bf97fa50 error 4 in Xorg[b759e000+1f3000]


[tonywhelan]

It sure is not solved for me. I built a new Linux Mint 13 (Maya/Cinnamon) 32-bit machine with plenty of memory (4G) and every time I use LibreOffice Writer it hangs the display except for the mouse pointer. Its LibreOffice 3.5 and it hangs within a couple of minutes (usually sooner).

If I use CTRL ALT BACKSPACE to get out of the freeze and back to the login screen then go to a terminal and type dmesg, I get these lines:

Code: Select all

[ 1786.885985] soffice.bin[10838]: segfault at a4252188 ip 00142f14 sp bfc79280 error 4 in libc-2.15.so[110000+19f000]
[ 1787.038238] Xorg[1313]: segfault at 7c ip 0028fcd5 sp bf9df6c0 error 4 in Xorg[251000+1f3000]


Prior to this I have tried disabling anti-aliasing and hardware accelertion in LibreOffice; and have tried several versions of Java 6 (1.6.0.24 & 1.6.0.32). Also uninstalled LO and installed a later version of LO (v3.5.4), disabled anti-aliasing and hardware acceleration and also disabled Java, same old problem!

LibreOffice is useless with this problem happening, and that makes the machine rather useless. I may have to rebuild with another distro and see if that helps. I choose Mint originally as I DETEST Ubuntu's Unity interface and its a pain to disable it. And the bug has been reported with Ubuntu builds anyway. But at this rate, I might be trying OpenSuse.

PS: Noting some suggestions that this was related to Intel graphics cards, I put in a non-Intel DVI card and tried again, but no difference.

[tonywhelan]

I installed Ubuntu 12.04 and tested LibreOffice Writer, had no problems (apart from Unity being horrible).

I then reinstalled Mint 32-bit (Cinnamon) from scratch, did no upgrades or other installs at all.
Opened LibreOffice Writer and created a document, scrolled to and fro a bit and it locked up as before.

When I logged in again, I chose a Gnome session instead of Cinnamon, and repeated the document creation with LibreOffice Writer. Try as I might, I couldn't get it to lock up.

So Cinnamon is behaving badly with xserver on this particular hardware. Hence I have set Gnome session as the default since that seems to work for me.

[lelandbug]

tonywhelan - thank you for the (indirect) help. I had the exact same problem running LM13 on my Macbook Pro. I switched to Gnome Classic and LibreOffice worked perfectly.