Ubuntu

Dapper or Oooo getting suddently unstable

Asked by achevrier

Hi everybody

My Dapper seems getting unstable.

My OpenOffice is crashing regularly and randomly. I did not find any solution to re-install it correctly yet. Oooo is still blocked on the recovery window and does not want to pass to next step (impossible to close recovery window - nothing happend)

My RealPlayer did not work any more, so I had to re-install using synaptic. It works now.

I'm afraid it could be a general unstability of my kernel after having use aptitude and apt-get to install / remove programms leading to a crash with devede 3 days ago.

Question is :
How could I check, re-install or repare last dapper version ? using synaptic, and choosing re-install ?
How could I re-install or repare last Oooo files (how to detect, re-install or repare the last update version in synaptic ? )
Is there a tools to repare, as ->synaptic->edit->repare ? Do I have to select files before using this way ...

thanks a lot for all of your next contribution and your help .

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Simos Xenitellis 
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Simos Xenitellis  (simosx) said : 		#1

It is difficult to say what causes the crashes; whether it is conflicts with other installed packages or configuration issues.

As a desktop user, I would suggest to upgrade to a more recent version of Ubuntu.
Currently the latest version is 7.04 (Feisty) and in October the new version 7.10 (Gutsy) is coming out.

This (installing a newer distribution) is especially important if you use packages from the Universe or Multiverse repositories. For example, devede is from the Multiverse repository.

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achevrier (a-chevrier-pro) said : 		#2

Thanks Simos,

I've already heard and read of it: change from Dapper to Feisty.
However, for now, I'm feeling well with Dapper Drake.

Is there any else solution ?

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Simos Xenitellis  (simosx) said : 		#3

> How could I check, re-install or repare last dapper version ? using synaptic, and choosing re-install ?

This might help (synaptic, reinstall selected packages).
I am not sure if your /home directory resides on a separate partition. If it does, you can reinstall and choose to re-use the existing /home partition. From there you can start again.

> How could I re-install or repare last Oooo files (how to detect, re-install or repare the last update version in synaptic ? )

You may choose to reinstall OOo (all relevant packages). You can also remove the old ~/.openoffice.org/ directory with the settings in case there are some remnants.
Another alternative would be to perform a manual installation of the latest OOo, from
http://www.openoffice.org/

> Is there a tools to repare, as ->synaptic->edit->repare ? Do I have to select files before using this way ...

Packages installed with synaptic/apt-get can be uninstalled/reinstalled. If you used something like Automatix, then you have to fix manually.

In computers, the general idea is to separate the installed files from your data. That is, make sure you know where your data are (in /home/xyz/) and not somewhere else. Then, you can experiment freely and if it goes wrong, you can install again and put back your customisations. Having a separate partition for /home helps a lot, but if you do not have, you can take a backup and burn on CD/DVD to restore latter. If you are familiar, you can use "tar" to backup the whole /home directory.
What brings life to your installation is your data (/home/), not the installed programs. Those can be reinstalled again. An element of proficiency in Linux is the ability to be able to move your /home between distros and get things working again.

Educationally speaking, it is great you got Dapper in pieces. This means you are tinkering and trying things out. Sorry if all this sounds paternalistic.

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achevrier (a-chevrier-pro) said : 		#4

Yep !
1/ I've renamed .openoffice.org directory as .odl_openoffice.org
2/ I've removed openoffice.org package using synaptic
3/ I've reinstall openoffice.org package using synaptic
4/ I've reinstall last ubuntu kernel linux...29 using reinstall in synaptic

Oooo seems now to work normaly.

However, I've read it should be better to use the last version 2.2.1 from official OpenOffice sources instead of OpenOffice Ubuntu package.

Have you any point of view / explanation concerning this strange information and / or "how to do ways" to prefer and install official version directly from OpenOffice sources ?

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Best Simos Xenitellis  (simosx) said : 		#5

It's great it worked!

> Have you any point of view / explanation concerning this strange information and / or "how to do ways" to prefer and install official version directly from OpenOffice sources ?

Normally you get the advice to install the package that came with the distribution. That is actually what I personally recommend for the vast majority of cases.
In the case of OOo, there have be several cases that the distributed version with Ubuntu for Edgy (and I think Dapper) had some issues that made them crash "often". I do not know the details (was it something going wrong in ~/.openoffice.org?); this is a personal empirical observation. So, for Dapper and Edgy I would recommend either a fresh install or get the official OOo package.
If you want to delve into this, you would have to check the "bugs" part of launchpad, for package OpenOffice.org.

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achevrier (a-chevrier-pro) said : 		#6

Excellent !
Super thanks !

Your recommandations links are pretty usefull.

Let's say all of this solves my problem.

Bye

Revision history for this message
achevrier (a-chevrier-pro) said : 		#7

Thanks Simos Xenitellis, that solved my question.