Libreoffice Calc causes Desktop to stop functioning

[Bad2theBone]

I have just updated from F16 LXDE to F17 Gnome Shell/Cinnamon. I have noticed that after having a calc spreadsheet file open and the focus on it for a while the desktop suddenly becomes unresponsive. The mouse pointer can be moved around but that is it. I can not change windows or desktops. I am able to Ctl-Alt-F3 to another virtual console and login there. I have tried kill -9 of all processes related to Libreoffice with no change. The only thing that works it Ctrl-Alt-Bkspace which of course restarts X and I'm able to log back in, but of course all opened files will be locked when I try to restart those apps, and I have to go through a file recovery for calc.

Anyone else experiencing anything like this, or have any ideas as to what may be causing this? I haven't found anything in the logs to suggest any problems prior to this happening.

[itsjustarumour]

I have just updated from F16 LXDE to F17 Gnome Shell/Cinnamon. I have noticed that after having a calc spreadsheet file open and the focus on it for a while the desktop suddenly becomes unresponsive. The mouse pointer can be moved around but that is it. I can not change windows or desktops. I am able to Ctl-Alt-F3 to another virtual console and login there. I have tried kill -9 of all processes related to Libreoffice with no change. The only thing that works it Ctrl-Alt-Bkspace which of course restarts X and I'm able to log back in, but of course all opened files will be locked when I try to restart those apps, and I have to go through a file recovery for calc.

Anyone else experiencing anything like this, or have any ideas as to what may be causing this? I haven't found anything in the logs to suggest any problems prior to this happening.

Yep, I'm seeing the same thing in LibreOffice Writer. Use it for about 30 minutes, then everything freezes and I can only move the mouse. Have to hard reboot each time. Using Fedora 17 (64 bit) with lastest Cinnamon. Everything was working perfectly until 2 days ago when I updated Cinnamon, so I'm suspecting thats where the problem lies... so far I've been unable to pin it down with any degree of certainty though...

[SlowJet]

Libreoffice takes up some memory.
Is there plenty in your machine.
F17 in vobx with 1024MB frose on me yesterday.
The Gnome-shel was using a lot and the same symtoms you describe occurred.
I check the vbox task in top and sure enough it was well over the limit.
I changed the memory in the VM to 1152M and there was no more problem.
fyi, the shel used 400MB virtual, so you need a swap even if it doesn't show being used, other wise it could hang at any time.

SJ

[Bad2theBone]

Slowjet, I have 8gb on bare metal. I had also thought, the same, but I sort of doubt it, unless there is a memory leak.

---------- Post added at 08:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:53 PM ----------

Yep, I'm seeing the same thing in LibreOffice Writer. Use it for about 30 minutes, then everything freezes and I can only move the mouse. Have to hard reboot each time. Using Fedora 17 (64 bit) with lastest Cinnamon. Everything was working perfectly until 2 days ago when I updated Cinnamon, so I'm suspecting thats where the problem lies... so far I've been unable to pin it down with any degree of certainty though...

Hmm, I haven't tried straight Gnome Shell, to see if it's actually Cinnamon. Now based on your comment I am definitely try it to see. Will get back to ya'll.

[itsjustarumour]

Slowjet, I have 8gb on bare metal. I had also thought, the same, but I sort of doubt it, unless there is a memory leak.

---------- Post added at 08:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:53 PM ----------



Hmm, I haven't tried straight Gnome Shell, to see if it's actually Cinnamon. Now based on your comment I am definitely try it to see. Will get back to ya'll.

Coolio, let us know how you get on, and in the meantime I'll have another look at things this end. I'm on 4GB of RAM plus 2GB of swap, so I don't think I'm running out. I have noticed that this latest version of Cinnamon uses more RAM over time - its starting out at 105MB, but gradually goes up to 250MB and beyond. No idea how the previous version fared in comparison, as since I had no problems, I never needed to check!

EDIT - well that didn't take long to replicate the problem again. Opened a LibreOffice Writer document, and within 10 minutes my system completely froze up apart from the mouse. I was monitoring RAM usage for both Cinnamon and LibreOffice, and didn't see anything abnormal on that score...

[Bad2theBone]

Hey itsjustarumor, I've been working in Gnome Shell DE instead of Cinnamon and all seems to be fine. Been up for about 30+ minutes, with FF (3 tabs open), TB (with Lightning and using about 5 cal. through provider), Gnucash with about 7 tabs open, LO Calc spreadsheet, Calculator, Nautilus (using split payne) and KeePassX (password Manager). I have about 5 or 6 gnome shell extensions running that includes the 2nd panel on the bottom for task bar and desktop selector with 4 static desktops.

This is my current mem usage:

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 8178664 7705668 472996 0 396340 4779236
-/+ buffers/cache: 2530092 5648572
Swap: 10649588 1728 10647860

[Gareth Jones]

This could be a graphics driver issue – I've noticed various programs have managed to crash the Shell/X/driver stack with the new Shell and Gallium3d drivers. Certain drawing operations just seem to catch it out, e.g. using the location buttons in Nautilus was a reliable way to crash on my machine, but that disappeared in the next update luckily.

[itsjustarumour]

This could be a graphics driver issue – I've noticed various programs have managed to crash the Shell/X/driver stack with the new Shell and Gallium3d drivers. Certain drawing operations just seem to catch it out, e.g. using the location buttons in Nautilus was a reliable way to crash on my machine, but that disappeared in the next update luckily.

I was just wondering myself if this might be a graphics card driver issue. I'm on a GT240, using the NVidia binary blob. I'd previously tried the Nouveau/Gallium driver, but found that much more unstable on my system. Everything was working fine though until a couple of days ago with NVidia, so if some combination of packages or updates triggered this, then I'm not sure what...

[Bad2theBone]

I have an older HD3650 (ATI) card, using the opensource driver and the problem definitely seems to be with Cinnamon as switching back to Gnome 3.4 it has dissappeared. I only have about 5 or 6 extensions installed, to include the bottom panel. There is one characteristic of the Task Bar that I miss the ability to move the tabs around in any order you want. Anyone happen to know of a way to do that?

[itsjustarumour]

the problem definitely seems to be with Cinnamon as switching back to Gnome 3.4 it has dissappeared

Yep, thats the way its looking here too. I've been using LibreOffice Writer and Gnome Shell all day instead of Cinnamon, and I haven't had a single lockup.

[Catastrophe]

yeah, just posting to confirm the issue on F17 x64, with any app of the libreoffice suite... sometimes it doesnt need even 3 minutes to die on me. trying GNOME on the meantime.

edit:
seems a problem on upstream cinnamon, the linux mint forums are also talking about this.

[libregeek]

I'm also having the same issue with Cinnamon+LibreOffice. Is there a bug reported in upstream?