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Having rather serious issues with LibreOffice (v4.1.3.2) at the moment. This seems to have happened ever since upgrading from 13.04 to 13.10 - for whatever reason, a variety of different things are causing it to crash out.

The two main triggers that cause a crash are:

  • Opening a file of the same type as initially started in (e.g. opening a .odt file if I've started in Writer mode, a .ods file in Calc or a .odp file in Impress). Cross extensions (e.g. starting in Calc, and opening a .odp to switch to Impress) are fine. Once one file is open, however, I can open as many as I like of any type on top of it.
  • Closing any LibreOffice window will cause all of them to crash (it will come up with a recovery dialog for any file that was open).

I've seen other causes too (even opening the Save As dialog has done it a couple of times) but these are not as consistent. I don't get any kind of error report dialog like I normally would; I think it must have auto-checked "don't show me these" at some point so I'm not getting the error dumps any more.

I have no idea what's causing this, but I'd very much like to fix it if possible. I've tried fully reinstalling LibreOffice (sudo apt-get purge libreoffice*, followed by sudo apt-get install libreoffice), but to no avail - it continues to crash without fail whenever I perform one of the triggers above (not exactly uncommon actions). Any help would be much appreciated.

EDIT: I have also tried running from a terminal, using libreoffice --writer etc., but get no additional outputs or error messages that would help. I only know that it's crashing on close because it opens the recovery manager the next time I start it (even if there was only a single, blank document open, it will do this on close)

EDIT #2: I am still completely stuck with this. I have tried the command listed in Reinstall package and its installed dependencies to reinstall all of the dependencies, as well as purging entirely and installing from the PPA, all to no avail. The only difference now is that, with the version from the PPA, Libreoffice now crashes before it even loads a blank document, rather than when trying to open a file.

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Jez W
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  • This is off-topic as it is a bug report. – don.joey Jan 31 '14 at 15:32
  • @don.joey ...Is it? I saw it more as a case of "does anyone know of this issue/how to fix it", hence posting here. Doesn't necessarily require dev intervention. – Jez W Jan 31 '14 at 15:38
  • Have you tried moving the config files in your home directory - ~/.config/libreoffice etc - those would not of been purged. – Wilf Jan 31 '14 at 15:44
  • @wilf Thanks for the suggestion - I tried moving ~/.config/libreoffice/4 to ~/.config/libreoffice/4.old after another purge/reinstall - it regenerated the 4 folder and crashed again when I tried to open a text document. – Jez W Jan 31 '14 at 15:47
  • Run it in terminal with libreoffice --writer, and open the document. Try other documents as well. – Wilf Jan 31 '14 at 17:00
  • @wilf Doesn't change anything unfortunately. I've tried with multiple .odp files under libreoffice --impress, and with .odt and .doc files alike under libreoffice --writer, all to no avail. As mentioned though, if I open, say, a .odp after running libreoffice --writer it works okay (until I close, at least, at which point it crashes again - opens Document Recovery on the next startup) – Jez W Jan 31 '14 at 17:07
  • Weird... tried sudo apt-get -f install to clear up any dependencies? – Wilf Jan 31 '14 at 17:11
  • @wilf with that I get libreoffice is already the newest version; 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded – Jez W Jan 31 '14 at 17:19
  • No, just sudo apt-get -f install, not with libreoffice after it. – Wilf Jan 31 '14 at 17:20
  • @wilf I tried that first; it gives the same thing, just without the line regarding libreoffice at the start. – Jez W Jan 31 '14 at 17:23
  • I fixed this in the end by just installing 4.2.0.4 from the deb file on the Libreoffice website. So, pretty much "no repro". Still no idea what went wrong, but it's unlikely to be of much help in future. – Jez W Feb 26 '14 at 14:41
  • As don.joey mentioned, bug (including crash) reports are off-topic on Ask Ubuntu (see the FAQ). This should be reported as a bug. You can make Apport collect and submit the necessary technical information--but still make sure to read the bug reporting documentation first, and describe the problem thoroughly in the bug report you write in the web browser (which will come up automatically after Apport sends the data). – Eliah Kagan Mar 07 '14 at 03:14

1 Answers1

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You could try to upgrade to 4.1.4.2.

First, completely uninstall your LibreOffice :

sudo apt-get remove --purge libreoffice
sudo apt-get -y autoremove 
sudo apt-get autoclean

Then remove the files that have been left : 

sudo rm -r $HOME/.config/libreoffice
sudo rm -r /usr/share/libreoffice

Install 4.1.4 through PPA (4.2 if 13.10 or 12.04) : 

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libreoffice

I don't have any issues on 13.10 (32 bits + Unity)

MrVaykadji
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  • Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it, though, and it didn't work unfortunately... I am still getting the same crashes as before. – Jez W Feb 04 '14 at 09:33
  • I edited my answer, with now a way to completely remove libreoffice, then reinstall. – MrVaykadji Feb 04 '14 at 17:27
  • Tried purging as suggested - still no good. This new version doesn't even get as far as opening the blank document before segfaulting (according to the apport window that popped up) and quitting out. – Jez W Feb 05 '14 at 12:46
  • Really strange. It works ok for me. Maybe some java incompatibility? Have you some java installed? Another suggestion: try to make another user and test LO from there. – Rmano Feb 05 '14 at 17:23
  • @Rmano Not beyond the ones installed as dependencies for Libreoffice, no - I tend to stay as far away from Java as much as possible considering the constant zero-day exploits it was getting not too long back. New user account looked promising to start (presumably while it was making user files), but crashed in the same way. I'm starting to suspect that the somehow-botched upgrade to 13.10 (http://askubuntu.com/questions/407414/errors-when-upgrading-to-13-10-but-has-it-actually-worked) broke a couple of things slightly deeper than expected... – Jez W Feb 06 '14 at 10:41
  • Installing the latest version through the .deb packages on the Libreoffice site (rather than through apt-get, either the main repository or the PPA) seems to have worked, no more crashes (well, yet, but I've tried all the possible triggers and there don't seem to be any issues) – Jez W Feb 06 '14 at 11:27
  • Maybe it's 4.2 version that fixed your issues? PPA got updated yesterday. When I first wrote the comment, it was 4.1.4 – MrVaykadji Feb 06 '14 at 20:08