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Finn Årup Nielsen
Asked: 2019-07-09 13:19:34 +0800 CST

Infinite loop "saving document" with libreoffice

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A docx document in Libreoffice at one point got into an infinite loop where the status line flashed "saving document". I was not able to interrupt it. I managed to close the window and save to ODT, but certain objects was lost in that file format, - apparently.

I am wondering what made Libreoffice get into this infinite loop and whether there are any tricks to make it stop and save the document?

Besides "saving document", I see a popup window with "Error saving the document : General Error. General input/output error."

Update:

with $ journalctl --since="- 4 hours", I find the only libreoffice match to be:

Jul 08 23:03:38 <server> dbus-daemon[870]: [system] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.hostname1' unit='dbus-org.freedesktop.hostname1.service' requested by ':1.10713' (uid=1000 pid=415 comm="/usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice.bin <document>" label="unconfined")
libreoffice

1 Answers

  1. Quick answer: hit Ctrl-S a few times. After 3 or 4 tries, usually one of them will register, and the autosave loop will then stop. Unless you're likely to need something in your undo history, I would then close LibreOffice and reopen it, in case any of its internal state is in a mess.

    This is, sadly, a known bug in LibreOffice, and remarkably it's been around for at least 6 years without getting fixed. I just had this happen to me, and realising I could stop it with Ctrl-S I thought I should put that information online somewhere, hence this somewhat late reply.

    LibreOffice is very useful software, but has a lot of bugs. Regardless of ideological positions on free vs proprietary software, I still use MS Office XP often, and I can say unreservedly it never crashes on me, loses my work or behaves in unexpected ways. I've not used later versions of Office much because I hate the new design, but if you have access to Office 2000/2002/2003/XP you can install the compatibility pack that makes it natively support docx, xlsx etc.

    I use mine in a WinXP virtual machine that's not connected to a network, and it complements the Linux host very well. It's also way faster, and hundreds of megabytes lighter on memory, for what it's worth. (You can run these versions under Wine also, but some versions are easier to install than others. I believe 2003 installs without trouble if you consider going that route, although I'd consult the Wine software status database first.)

    I mention the use of MS Office partly because I've found a lot of people assume a VM and Office will together consume a lot of RAM, and are surprised to learn that memory usage is actually less than using a native application. For me, LibreOffice wins when I want to quickly export something as a PDF, and is easier to print from than a non-networked VM.

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