Bug 827528

Summary: LibreOffice not starting in M2 GNOME
Product: [openSUSE] openSUSE 13.1 Reporter: Jon Cosby <jon.l.cosby>
Component: LibreOfficeAssignee: E-mail List <bnc-team-ooo>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED QA Contact: E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity: Major    
Priority: P5 - None CC: antoine.mechelynck, bkbin005, pmladek, tchvatal
Version: Final   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: x86-64   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Found By: --- Services Priority:
Business Priority: Blocker: ---
Marketing QA Status: --- IT Deployment: ---
Attachments: strace.log.bz2 see comment #30
strace after removing the offending softlink
libreoffice uninstallation log from YaST
cleanup log
libreoffice reinstallation log from YaST
Part 4 - update 4 more packages, with vendor change

Description Jon Cosby 2013-06-30 21:55:45 UTC
User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:21.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/21.0

LibreOffice is not starting in M2 GNOME. There are no details in the terminal, just a quick splash screen and oowriter or libreoffice close.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Enter 'oowriter' or 'libreoffice' in the terminal

Actual Results:  
No results, Libreoffice closes.

Expected Results:  
Launch LibreOffice/LibreOffice Writer.
Comment 1 Mitsutoshi NAKANO 2013-06-30 22:41:51 UTC
It looks like https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=824451
Comment 2 Jon Cosby 2013-06-30 23:29:26 UTC
I'll try the LO unstable repo and check back.
Comment 3 Jon Cosby 2013-07-01 17:18:06 UTC
I'm trying the factory version, and now see 

> libreoffice --calc %U
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'com::sun::star::uno::RuntimeException'

zypper warned that 'libicuuc' is not available, but I went ahead and installed anyway. I can't find it on the OBS.
Comment 4 Petr Mladek 2013-07-02 07:32:24 UTC
Ah, libreoffice was not rebuilt for M2, was binary inconsistent, and crashed.

Strange, people say the it works in Factory now.

You could also try the packages from the LibreOffice:Factory project. The repository is at http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/LibreOffice:/Factory/openSUSE_Factory/

Anyway, I am going to update the packages in Factory. I hope that the build won't break again.
Comment 5 Petr Mladek 2013-07-09 09:51:23 UTC
LibreOffice works in the last Factory build in the repositories:

   http://download.opensuse.org/factory/repo/oss/
   http://download.opensuse.org/factory/repo/non-oss/

I hope that it will stay like this for the next milestone.

Anyway, there is nothing to fix right now, so let's close this bug.
Comment 6 Tony Mechelynck 2014-03-21 09:04:28 UTC
After upgrading to openSUSE 13.1 Final x86_64 (from 12.2), I get the same sysout/syserr error message as in comment #3 above, and LibreOffice refuses to start. At first I thought I had done something wrong but apparently it is not "just me".

Now I've enabled http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/LibreOffice:/Stable/openSUSE_13.1/ in yast (and zypper), we'll see if they find something to update.

However I wouldn't regard this bug as FIXED as long as the appropriate versions are not present in the "ordinary" 13.1 Update repository.
Comment 7 Tony Mechelynck 2014-03-21 09:18:36 UTC
...Neither "zypper lu" nor "yast :: Software :: Online Update" finds anything related to LibreOffice. But who knows? After they finish, I'll try starting LO again anyway.
Comment 8 Tony Mechelynck 2014-03-25 01:30:43 UTC
(In reply to comment #7)
> ...Neither "zypper lu" nor "yast :: Software :: Online Update" finds anything
> related to LibreOffice. But who knows? After they finish, I'll try starting LO
> again anyway.

No change.

After typing

    libreoffice 2>&1 |tee ~/libreoffice.log

at a bash prompt (after logging in as root to avoid any possible permissions problems as mentioned in some of the above comments), the green splash image appears, then the single line

terminate called after throwing an instance of 'com::sun::star::uno::RuntimeException'

is output and no LibreOffice-related process can be found after that. "libreoffice --version" gives the same one-line answer without the splash screen.

openSUSE 13.1 final

YaST "Software Management" says that packages libreoffice, libreoffice-base (and some others) are at version 4.1.5.3-17.1-x86_64 installed and in openSUSE 13.1 Update repository. The version available with vendor obs://build.opensuse.org/LibreOffice in the newly enabled repository is only 4.1.2.3-1.1 for both i586 and x86_64 platforms.

Petr, do you think I should downgrade to the above-mentioned version with vendor change (and do you have a list of packages which I should downgrade, or is YaST smart enough to find them if I select just libreoffice ?)? — N.B. AFAICT, I'm unable to set NEEDINFO on this bug.
Comment 9 Tony Mechelynck 2014-03-25 01:49:50 UTC
Oops: Typo: only 4.1.5.3-5.1 with vendor change
Comment 10 Petr Mladek 2014-03-26 13:24:28 UTC
Tomas, does it ring any bell?
Comment 11 Tomáš Chvátal 2014-03-26 13:31:55 UTC
No idea. I would actually recommend trying LibreOffice:Factory repo to see if it is still present in the 4.2 releases too?
Comment 12 Tony Mechelynck 2014-03-26 21:16:00 UTC
(In reply to comment #11)
> No idea. I would actually recommend trying LibreOffice:Factory repo to see if
> it is still present in the 4.2 releases too?

Is that compatible with openSUSE 13.1 Final? And which package(s) should I tell YaST to upgrade from there?
Comment 13 Tony Mechelynck 2014-03-26 21:57:37 UTC
P.S. Would "zypper up -lRr http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/LibreOffice:/Factory/openSUSE_13.1/ libreoffice libreoffice-base" be an appropriate command? Or would you recommend some other variation?
Comment 14 Tony Mechelynck 2014-04-09 17:37:12 UTC
(In reply to comment #13)
> P.S. Would "zypper up -lRr
> http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/LibreOffice:/Factory/openSUSE_13.1/
> libreoffice libreoffice-base" be an appropriate command? Or would you recommend
> some other variation?

Tomas Chvatal: ping?

(AFAICT I cannot set NEEDINFO on this bug.)
Comment 15 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-02 06:11:02 UTC
There was a LibreOffice online update yesterday (to 4.1.6.2-21.1.x86_64 as shown by "rpm -q libreoffice") but the new version still doesn't start, with the same error message as in comment #3 (I tried "libreoffice" with no parameters, and also "libreoffice --version", in a konsole terminal).
Comment 16 Tomáš Chvátal 2014-07-02 09:06:00 UTC
Oops I totally missed your question few months back...

Anyway the approach is:

zypper ar -f http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/LibreOffice:Factory/openSUSE_13.1/LibreOffice:Factory.repo

zypper ref
zypper in libreoffice # or "zypper dup"
Comment 17 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-02 10:15:26 UTC
(In reply to comment #16)
> Oops I totally missed your question few months back...

And I just found that at bugzilla.novell.org, NEEDINFO is a Status, unlike at bugzilla.mozilla.org with which I am more familiar, where it has been added relatively recently as a separate flag.

> 
> Anyway the approach is:
> 
> zypper ar -f
> http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/LibreOffice:Factory/openSUSE_13.1/LibreOffice:Factory.repo
> 
> zypper ref
> zypper in libreoffice # or "zypper dup"

This gives me the following error:

linux:~ # zypper ar -f http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/LibreOffice:Factory/openSUSE_13.1/LibreOffice:Factory.repo OfficeFactory\ 13.1
Adding repository 'OfficeFactory 13.1' ...................................................................................................[done]
Repository 'OfficeFactory 13.1' successfully added
Enabled: Yes
Autorefresh: Yes
GPG check: Yes
URI: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/LibreOffice:Factory/openSUSE_13.1/LibreOffice:Factory.repo

linux:~ # zypper ref
Repository 'LibreOffice for openSUSE 13.1' is up to date.
Retrieving repository 'OfficeFactory 13.1' metadata .....................................................................................[error]
Repository 'OfficeFactory 13.1' is invalid.
[|] Valid metadata not found at specified URL
Please check if the URIs defined for this repository are pointing to a valid repository.
Skipping repository 'OfficeFactory 13.1' because of the above error.

(followed by "is up to date" messages for my other repositories).


The following are my "enabled" repositories:

linux:~ # zypper lr -Ed
#  | Alias                         | Name                          | Enabled | Refresh | Priority | Type   | URI                                                                                                  | Service
---+-------------------------------+-------------------------------+---------+---------+----------+--------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------
 2 | LibreOffice_for_openSUSE_13.1 | LibreOffice for openSUSE 13.1 | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/LibreOffice:/Stable/openSUSE_13.1/                         |        
 4 | OfficeFactory 13.1            | OfficeFactory 13.1            | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | NONE   | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/LibreOffice:Factory/openSUSE_13.1/LibreOffice:Factory.repo |        
 6 | Packman_(openSUSE_13.1)       | Packman (openSUSE 13.1)       | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://packman.inode.at/suse/openSUSE_13.1/                                                          |        
11 | openSUSE-13.1-1.10            | openSUSE-13.1-1.10            | Yes     | Yes     |   98     | yast2  | hd:///DVD-13.1?device=/dev/sda1                                                                      |        
12 | openSUSE-13.1-Debug           | openSUSE-13.1-Debug           | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | yast2  | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/distribution/13.1/repo/oss/                                       |        
18 | openSUSE-13.1-Kernel-kdump    | openSUSE-13.1-Kernel-kdump    | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Kernel:/kdump/openSUSE_13.1/                               |        
19 | openSUSE-13.1-OSS             | openSUSE-13.1-OSS             | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | yast2  | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/13.1/repo/oss/                                             |        
20 | openSUSE-13.1-Source-OSS      | openSUSE-13.1-Source-OSS      | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | yast2  | http://download.opensuse.org/source/distribution/13.1/repo/oss                                       |        
21 | openSUSE-13.1-Source-non-OSS  | openSUSE-13.1-Source-non-OSS  | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | yast2  | http://download.opensuse.org/source/distribution/13.1/repo/non-oss/                                  |        
22 | openSUSE-13.1-Update          | openSUSE-13.1-Update          | Yes     | Yes     |   95     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/update/13.1/                                                            |        
23 | openSUSE-13.1-Update-Debug    | openSUSE-13.1-Update-Debug    | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/update/13.1/                                                      |        
24 | openSUSE-13.1-Update-Test     | openSUSE-13.1-Update-Test     | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/update/13.1-test/                                                       |        
25 | openSUSE-13.1-Update-non-oss  | openSUSE-13.1-Update-non-oss  | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/update/13.1-non-oss/                                                    |        
26 | openSUSE-13.1-non-oss         | openSUSE-13.1-non-oss         | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | yast2  | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/13.1/repo/non-oss                                          |        



What did I do wrong?
Comment 18 Tomáš Chvátal 2014-07-02 11:35:02 UTC
Haum, no idea.

Delete then the repo OfficeFactory and just edit the Stable one by replacing the word Stable with Factory in the url (repo 2). It should work.
Comment 19 Tomáš Chvátal 2014-07-02 11:35:03 UTC
Haum, no idea.

Delete then the repo OfficeFactory and just edit the Stable one by replacing the word Stable with Factory in the url (repo 2). It should work.
Comment 20 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-02 11:42:24 UTC
Found it with the help of YaST: there was one element too many in that path (LibreOffice:Factory.repo). After removing it, a valid "rpm-md" repository is found. I'll continue with YaST in case the Vendor needs a change… and it does…
Comment 21 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-02 13:40:53 UTC
After the following (in YaST):

1. Request an update from the version in comment #15 to the 7.3 version in the newly enabled repository (4.3.0.1-178.5.x86_64), with vendor change, for all libreoffice-* packages already installed for which such an update was available;
2. Accept the upgrade of myspell dictionaries with the same vendor change, in preference to either "do not install libreoffice-blahblah" or "break libreoffice-blahblah by ignoring some of its dependencies";
3. Click "Accept" at bottom right;
4. Accept all additional autoinstalls / auto-upgrades proposed by YaST;
5. Wait until it had finished (successfully, though with several "File not found" messages when removing the en-US help package),

I still haven't tested the result, but that will have to wait until I come back from the doctor's. => NEEDINFO myself so I don't forget.
Comment 22 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-03 01:21:33 UTC
1. Bug is still present in LibreOffice 4.3.0.1-178.5.x86_64, vendor obs://build.opensuse.org/LibreOffice

2. Then an update arrived, to version 4.3.0.1-178.7.x86_64. Bug is still present after instaling it.
Comment 23 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-03 01:33:57 UTC
P.S. Here are the "installing" part of "zypper up; date" and the attempt to launch the program (from a konsole terminal). The green LibreOffice splash screen was visible for a few seconds.

( 1/20) Installing: libcmis-0_4-4-0.4.1-32.1 .............................................................................................[done]
( 2/20) Installing: libetonyek-0_1-1-0.1.1-18.1 ..........................................................................................[done]
( 3/20) Installing: libreoffice-4.3.0.1-178.7 ............................................................................................[done]
Additional rpm output:
Unknown media type in type 'all/all'
Unknown media type in type 'all/allfiles'
Unknown media type in type 'uri/mms'
Unknown media type in type 'uri/mmst'
Unknown media type in type 'uri/mmsu'
Unknown media type in type 'uri/pnm'
Unknown media type in type 'uri/rtspt'
Unknown media type in type 'uri/rtspu'


( 4/20) Installing: libreoffice-icon-theme-crystal-4.3.0.1-178.7 .........................................................................[done]
( 5/20) Installing: libreoffice-icon-theme-tango-4.3.0.1-178.7 ...........................................................................[done]
( 6/20) Installing: libreoffice-icon-theme-galaxy-4.3.0.1-178.7 ..........................................................................[done]
( 7/20) Installing: libreoffice-icon-theme-sifr-4.3.0.1-178.7 ............................................................................[done]
( 8/20) Installing: libreoffice-icon-theme-hicontrast-4.3.0.1-178.7 ......................................................................[done]
( 9/20) Installing: libreoffice-icon-theme-oxygen-4.3.0.1-178.7 ..........................................................................[done]
(10/20) Installing: libreoffice-l10n-en-4.3.0.1-178.7 ....................................................................................[done]
(11/20) Installing: libreoffice-writer-4.3.0.1-178.7 .....................................................................................[done]
(12/20) Installing: libreoffice-pyuno-4.3.0.1-178.7 ......................................................................................[done]
(13/20) Installing: libreoffice-math-4.3.0.1-178.7 .......................................................................................[done]
(14/20) Installing: libreoffice-kde4-4.3.0.1-178.7 .......................................................................................[done]
(15/20) Installing: libreoffice-impress-4.3.0.1-178.7 ....................................................................................[done]
(16/20) Installing: libreoffice-gnome-4.3.0.1-178.7 ......................................................................................[done]
(17/20) Installing: libreoffice-draw-4.3.0.1-178.7 .......................................................................................[done]
(18/20) Installing: libreoffice-calc-4.3.0.1-178.7 .......................................................................................[done]
(19/20) Installing: libreoffice-base-4.3.0.1-178.7 .......................................................................................[done]
(20/20) Installing: libreoffice-filters-optional-4.3.0.1-178.7 ...........................................................................[done]
Thu  3 Jul 03:07:20 CEST 2014
linux:~ # libreoffice
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'com::sun::star::uno::RuntimeException'
Comment 24 Tomáš Chvátal 2014-07-03 07:26:13 UTC
This is weird. Do you happen to reproduce it also under "fresh" user (different account).
Comment 25 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-03 11:16:56 UTC
(In reply to comment #24)
> This is weird. Do you happen to reproduce it also under "fresh" user (different
> account).

I tried logging in to X11 as "guest", which is cumbersome because my current window manager remembers only some of its windows and none of its "workspaces" (virtual desktops) from one session to the next, and it does not provide for "switching users" (leaving one X11 session on tty7 and launching another one for a different login name on tty8). The so-called "default" window manager for the guest user looked different from my usual one (or at least there was a very different theme, with large rounded corners and no separate titlebar) but the bug was still present.

I'll create a new "test" user but I won't test it immediately, I still have other things to do (including more than 8000 Mozilla bugmail messages waiting for me to look at them; not necessarily react). Maybe tomorrow, or at next boot.
Comment 26 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-03 13:16:02 UTC
Tried logging in to X11 as the newly created "test" user. No matter which window manager I selected in the login window, and no matter in which terminal I tried to start libreoffice (konsole, xterm, mlterm; couldn't try gnome-terminal which looked "black on black" despite any prefs I tried to set), the same message appeared, and LibreOffice did not start (beyond temporarily displaying its splash screen).

Starting from a terminal shell allows of course to immediately see anything displayed on sysout or syserr.
Comment 27 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-04 04:10:27 UTC
4.3.0.2-179.1 : no change.

In the future I'm going to apply any new changes but not comment here except if there is a change or in answer to a question. I'm a plain user (not a Novell empoyee) and not even the reporter of this bug, but I can reproduce it every time. If I can help you in any way, or if anyting above is unclear, feel free to ask: this is a top-priority bug for me.
Comment 28 Petr Mladek 2014-07-04 08:36:53 UTC
Tony, first, I am sorry that you have this problem. Unfortunately, we are not able to reproduce it here, so we need some more information. Do not worry. Most of them should be very easy to get.

Let's start with a simple consistency check. Could you please provide output from the following command? 

      rpm -V `rpm -qa | grep libreoffice`
Comment 29 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-04 21:46:10 UTC
(In reply to comment #28)
> Tony, first, I am sorry that you have this problem. Unfortunately, we are not
> able to reproduce it here, so we need some more information. Do not worry. Most
> of them should be very easy to get.
> 
> Let's start with a simple consistency check. Could you please provide output
> from the following command? 
> 
>       rpm -V `rpm -qa | grep libreoffice`

That command produces no output.

So here are:

1. the output from "rpm -qa |grep libreoffice":

libreoffice-icon-theme-hicontrast-4.3.0.2-179.1.noarch
libreoffice-draw-4.3.0.2-179.1.x86_64
libreoffice-filters-optional-4.3.0.2-179.1.x86_64
libreoffice-icon-theme-sifr-4.3.0.2-179.1.noarch
libreoffice-branding-openSUSE-4.0-2.1.2.noarch
libreoffice-templates-de-3.3-10.1.4.noarch
libreoffice-icon-theme-tango-4.3.0.2-179.1.noarch
libreoffice-math-4.3.0.2-179.1.x86_64
libreoffice-templates-labels-letter-1.0.1-9.1.2.noarch
libreoffice-l10n-en-4.3.0.2-179.1.noarch
libreoffice-icon-themes-prebuilt-4.1.6.2-21.1.x86_64
libreoffice-templates-en-3.3-10.1.4.noarch
libreoffice-templates-presentation-layouts-3.3-9.1.4.noarch
libreoffice-writer-4.3.0.2-179.1.x86_64
libreoffice-4.3.0.2-179.1.x86_64
libreoffice-pyuno-4.3.0.2-179.1.x86_64
libreoffice-icon-theme-crystal-4.3.0.2-179.1.noarch
libreoffice-kde4-4.3.0.2-179.1.x86_64
libreoffice-icon-theme-galaxy-4.3.0.2-179.1.noarch
libreoffice-base-4.3.0.2-179.1.x86_64
libreoffice-templates-labels-a4-1.0.1-9.1.2.noarch
libreoffice-calc-4.3.0.2-179.1.x86_64
libreoffice-gnome-4.3.0.2-179.1.x86_64
libreoffice-impress-4.3.0.2-179.1.x86_64
libreoffice-icon-theme-oxygen-4.3.0.2-179.1.noarch
libreoffice-converter-3.3-18.1.2.noarch

2. Prepending "rpm -V " to every line of the above, then adding a first line "#!/bin/bash", writing the result as a file which is then "chmod a+x" and executed, still gives no output.
Comment 30 Petr Mladek 2014-07-07 07:51:41 UTC
No output means that there are no obvious installation problems, for example broken dependencies, modified or missing files. So, your installation looks fine.

The next step is to check strace output. Please,run the following command:

      strace -o strace.log -f -tt -s 512 libreoffice

The command should finish when the libreoffice command fails. It will take a bit longer than usual because strace slows down the process. Anyway, it should produce rather big strace.log file. Please, compress it, for example using:

     bzip2 strace.log

and attach the strace.log.bz2 file for investigation.
Comment 31 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-08 08:58:42 UTC
Created attachment 597618 [details]
strace.log.bz2 see comment #30
Comment 32 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-08 09:06:56 UTC
IIUC, the error is triggered by not finding a Spanish langpack :-?
Comment 33 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-08 09:32:07 UTC
/usr/lib64/libreoffice/share/registry/Langpack-es.xcd is a softlink to a nonexistent file of the same name in /usr/share/libreoffice/share/registry/ where the only Lang*.xcd is Langpack-en-US.xcd
Comment 34 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-08 10:40:47 UTC
Created attachment 597641 [details]
strace after removing the offending softlink

After removing the danglink link, no change: lstat (result:0) and open (result:ENOENT) for the same Spanish langpack, followed by the same abort.
Comment 35 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-08 12:45:16 UTC
FWIW, the softlink I removed was dated 4 March, while everything else in the same directory or in the directory pointed to was from the upgrade in comment #21 or from later.
Comment 36 Tomáš Chvátal 2014-07-08 12:50:25 UTC
Hmm we can do some experiment:

1) uninstall all the libreoffice-* packages
2) remove all files in /usr/lib64/libreoffice/* if any
3) install back libreoffice

It seems there was some weird hickup during the update that got it into undefined state and maybe starting clean would sort it out.
Comment 37 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-08 16:05:30 UTC
Created attachment 597711 [details]
libreoffice uninstallation log from YaST

Part 1: Uninstall: I removed anything beginning with libreoffice and accepted YaST suggestions to remove further packages.
I copied the YaST "installation log" because there were warnings. Not sure if significant. At least "file not found" doesn't anymore abort a package removal.
Comment 38 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-08 16:21:13 UTC
Created attachment 597713 [details]
cleanup log

Part 2: Cleanup
result of "rm -Rvf *" run in /usr/lib64/libreoffice
5755 files and directories recursively removed even after removing the packages (Part 1).
Comment 39 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-08 17:18:34 UTC
Created attachment 597723 [details]
libreoffice reinstallation log from YaST

Part 3: Reinstall all packages in comment 29 from LibreOffice Factory 13.1 repository, except that libreoffice-branding-openSUSE (whose version was much lower there) was replaced by libreoffice-branding-upstream. This includes a couple of packages with lower versions than on the "vendor openSUSE" repositories.

Now I shall check where autoinstalled packages came from. There will be a part 4 if YaST took them from the "wrong" repositories.
Comment 40 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-08 17:59:46 UTC
Created attachment 597727 [details]
Part 4 - update 4 more packages, with vendor change

Next comes the big one: try to run it.
Comment 41 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-08 18:15:51 UTC
yayayay! It started up, I tried to open some .doc file which was lying there, and the result seemed OK.

Note: I have not tried running the "official" openSUSE version of LibreOffice in the repositories with vendor openSUSE (OSS, Update, etc.).

Unless Jon Cosby (reporter) still has the problem, and unless the LibreOffice version in the official repositories must be tested for the same bug, I suppose that this can be RESOLVED WORKSFORME.
Comment 42 Petr Mladek 2014-07-09 07:59:07 UTC
Tony, thanks a lot for the amazing debugging story.

It is a pity that LO crashes when the language specific file is not present. It should fallback to en-US that should be always presented. I think that we should look at it. The symlinks are SUSE-specific because we want to have the localizations in noarch packages.

Tomas, do you have an idea why the symlinks were not removed during the update or package removal?
Comment 43 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-09 08:43:01 UTC
(In reply to comment #42)
> Tony, thanks a lot for the amazing debugging story.

Thanks Tomas for comment #36 without which I would still be unable to read .doc and .pps files which many of my friends send me as attachments to email messages, and even my own .odt texts written before the bug happened.
> 
> It is a pity that LO crashes when the language specific file is not present. It
> should fallback to en-US that should be always presented. I think that we
> should look at it. The symlinks are SUSE-specific because we want to have the
> localizations in noarch packages.

LibreOffice did lstat and open for the US-English langpack (which was there as both symlink and target) before trying the Spanish one. I wonder which configuration file made it try the Spanish langpack even after the dangling symlink was removed.
> 
> Tomas, do you have an idea why the symlinks were not removed during the update
> or package removal?
Comment 44 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-09 17:55:30 UTC
Just had a spontaneous reboot (AC glitch, maybe?) _during_ the install part of a run of "zypper up" for LibreOffice (from 4.3.0.2-179.3 to -179.4). After rebooting, "zypper up" updated three more packages (libreoffice-base, libreoffice-calc and libreoffice-filters-optional). The latter was shown with i586 architecture so I upgraded it to x86_64 using YaST. Then "rpm -V `rpm -qa |grep libreoffice`" said that libreoffice-calc, required by libreoffice-filters-optional, was missing. Indeed, both "rpm -q libreoffice-base" and "rpm -q libreoffice-calc" reported the packages as missing (even though zypper had just installed them).

After "rpm --rebuilddb" both packages were shown as installed twice with the same version. So I did "rpm -ev --nodeps --allmatches libreoffice-base libreoffice-calc" then started YaST once rpm had successfully removed both pairs of duplicates. It suggested re-adding libreoffice-base and libreoffice-calc which was what I expected, and after that "rpm -V pm -qa | grep libreoffice`" remained silent.

"rpm -qa |grep libreoffice" now displays most packages at version 4.3.0.2-179.4 (and a few "side packages at very different versions), nothing at 4.3.0.2-179.3.

I'm only half sure I did the right thing. Let's hope it won't give me more trouble. <span class="hit_head">Let's touch wood.</span>
Comment 45 Petr Mladek 2014-07-10 07:46:22 UTC
I do not have much experience with repairing system after such interrupted update. Anyway, if "rpm -V" does not complain and LO works, you should be on the safe side. If you see any problems later, you could repeat the reinstallation as suggested in the comment #36.
Comment 46 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-21 22:57:23 UTC
(In reply to comment #42)
> Tomas, do you have an idea why the symlinks were not removed during the update
> or package removal?

Tomas, sorry if I pushed this out of your radar by comments about an interrupted update.
Comment 47 Tomáš Chvátal 2014-07-28 07:22:26 UTC
Hmm I am going to mark this as fixed per your comments :)

I really suspect the broken symlinks during the update to cause all this to you so you should now be on safe side. Sadly there is never any protection against such broken update.

The best practice would in theory be to look up what packages were updated when trying out and then remove them and add again (or just force new install on them) as this way you can really end up with tainted system.

FWIW there is upstream bug with parsing the language files as we observed. But it is nothing for SUSE itself to fix so if you really feel like doing good deed just go ahead and report it on upstream bugzilla at bugs.freedesktop.org.
Comment 48 Tony Mechelynck 2014-07-28 08:52:59 UTC
(In reply to comment #47)
> Hmm I am going to mark this as fixed per your comments :)
> 
> I really suspect the broken symlinks during the update to cause all this to you
> so you should now be on safe side. Sadly there is never any protection against
> such broken update.
> 
> The best practice would in theory be to look up what packages were updated when
> trying out and then remove them and add again (or just force new install on
> them) as this way you can really end up with tainted system.

IIUC this would mean logging to disk the output of "zypper up" (and doing it every time, since of course a spontaneous reboot or an AC brownout cannot be foreseen, and once they've happened, whatever was displayed at the console is lost).

If it happens again I repeat what I did in comment #44 (unless you tell me it's dangerous): rebuild the RPM DB indices, then remove the "dubious" packages with --allmatches --nodeps, and immediately add them back.

> 
> FWIW there is upstream bug with parsing the language files as we observed. But
> it is nothing for SUSE itself to fix so if you really feel like doing good deed
> just go ahead and report it on upstream bugzilla at bugs.freedesktop.org.

I wouldn't know how to make a useful bug report: I don't know what caused the problem, I never knew how to reproduce it (and now that it is gone, I wouldn't want to try); and now that the problem has disappeared, I couldn't answer questions of the kind "please do this to investigate the problem, then tell us the answer", other than what I did in previous comments of this bug while I still saw the problem.