If any OpenOffice.org application is run as a helper inside a new Firefox tab, and the tab with OOo is closed, then OOo is subsequently broken and will not run again. I have not been able to find (using ps -ef) any stub application that is blocking OOo. Closing Firefox does not recover. The only way I have found to get OOo working again is to log out completely (I will check this out again in a few minutes). Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Make sure there are no OOo apps running. 2. Start up OOo in Firefox in a new tab, e.g by clicking on the link above which describes how to install OOo on Windows. 3. Close the Firefox tab containing OOo. 4. Try to start any OOo application. Actual Results: The new OOo app locks up before even displaying anything on the screen. Running the apps inside strace shows that they are stopping in the middle of an action that prevents strace from completing its output. If the OOo app is launched inside Firefox again, the system continually eats about half the CPU on my system. If the OOo app is launched from a shell, there is no CPU use once it hits the lockup point. Here are a couple of strace runs: bash-2.05b$ strace oowriter execve("/usr/bin/oowriter", ["oowriter"], [/* 56 vars */]) = 0 brk(0) = 0x80fa814 old_mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x2aac2000 ... [many pages deleted] ... _llseek(10, 0, [0], SEEK_CUR) = 0 fstat64(10, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2096, ...}) = 0 mmap2(NULL, 2096, PROT_READ, MAP_SHARED, 10, 0) = 0x2bb30000 _llseek(10, 2096, [2096], SEEK_SET) = 0 munmap(0x2bb30000, 2096) = 0 close(10) = 0 getuid32() = 1000 access("/home/johna", F_OK) = 0 getcwd("/home/johna", 4096) = 12 lstat64("/home", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=240, ...}) = 0 lstat64("/home", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=240, ...}) = 0 lstat64("/home/johna", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=3528, ...}) = 0 lstat64("/home", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=240, ...}) = 0 lstat64("/home/johna", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=3528, ...}) = 0 lstat64("/home/johna/.sversionrc", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=128, ...}) = 0 access("/home/johna/.sversionrc", F_OK) = 0 access("/tmp", R_OK|W_OK) = 0 socket(PF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, 0) = 10 fcntl64(10, F_GETFD) = 0 fcntl64(10, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC) = 0 stat64("/tmp/OSL_PIPE_1000_SingleOfficeIPC_bc1af0849749393363fe33e58fafde3f", {st_mode=S_IFSOCK|0755, st_size=0, ...}) = 0 connect(10, {sa_family=AF_UNIX, path="/tmp/OSL_PIPE_1000_SingleOfficeIPC_bc1af0849749393363fe33e58fafde3f"}, 110 bash-2.05b$ strace oocalc execve("/usr/bin/oocalc", ["oocalc"], [/* 56 vars */]) = 0 brk(0) = 0x80fa814 old_mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x2aac2000 ... [many pages deleted] ... _llseek(10, 0, [0], SEEK_CUR) = 0 fstat64(10, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2096, ...}) = 0 mmap2(NULL, 2096, PROT_READ, MAP_SHARED, 10, 0) = 0x2bb30000 _llseek(10, 2096, [2096], SEEK_SET) = 0 munmap(0x2bb30000, 2096) = 0 close(10) = 0 getuid32() = 1000 access("/home/johna", F_OK) = 0 getcwd("/home/johna", 4096) = 12 lstat64("/home", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=240, ...}) = 0 lstat64("/home", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=240, ...}) = 0 lstat64("/home/johna", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=3528, ...}) = 0 lstat64("/home", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=240, ...}) = 0 lstat64("/home/johna", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=3528, ...}) = 0 lstat64("/home/johna/.sversionrc", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=128, ...}) = 0 access("/home/johna/.sversionrc", F_OK) = 0 access("/tmp", R_OK|W_OK) = 0 socket(PF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, 0) = 10 fcntl64(10, F_GETFD) = 0 fcntl64(10, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC) = 0 stat64("/tmp/OSL_PIPE_1000_SingleOfficeIPC_bc1af0849749393363fe33e58fafde3f", {st_mode=S_IFSOCK|0755, st_size=0, ...}) = 0 connect(10, {sa_family=AF_UNIX, path="/tmp/OSL_PIPE_1000_SingleOfficeIPC_bc1af0849749393363fe33e58fafde3f"}, 110 Expected Results: The OOo application should have launched the splash window and then started up the application. sabre root # emerge info Portage 2.0.51-r2 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.3.4, glibc-2.3.4.20040808-r1, 2.4.26-gentoo-r9 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.4.26-gentoo-r9 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1700+ Gentoo Base System version 1.4.16 distcc 2.16 i686-pc-linux-gnu (protocols 1 and 2) (default port 3632) [enabled] Autoconf: sys-devel/autoconf-2.59-r5 Automake: sys-devel/automake-1.8.5-r1 Binutils: sys-devel/binutils-2.14.90.0.8-r1 Headers: sys-kernel/linux-headers-2.4.19-r1,sys-kernel/linux-headers-2.4.21-r1 Libtools: sys-devel/libtool-1.5.2-r5 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-O3 -march=athlon-xp -funroll-loops -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.1/share/config /usr/kde/3.2/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/env /usr/kde/3.3/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/ /usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/ /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-O3 -march=athlon-xp -funroll-loops -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs ccache distcc distlocks sandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://128.213.5.34/gentoo/ http://cudlug.cudenver.edu/gentoo/ http://gentoo.noved.org/ http://mirror.tucdemonic.org/gentoo/ http://gentoo.osuosl.org http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo" MAKEOPTS="-j3" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="3dnow X alsa apache2 apm arts avi berkdb bitmap-fonts bonobo cdr cjk crypt cups curl dga directfb doc dvd emacs encode esd ethereal f77 fastcgi fbcon foomaticdb gb gd gdbm gif gnome gphoto2 gpm gtk gtk2 gtkhtml guile imap imlib innodb java jpeg kde libg++ libwww mad maildir mikmod mmx motif mozilla mpeg mysql ncurses nls odbc ofx oggvorbis opengl oss pam pda pdflib perl png python qt quicktime quotes readline samba sasl sdl slang slp spell sse ssl svga tcltk tcpd tetex tiff truetype unicode usb wmf x86 xml xml2 xmms xprint xv zeo zlib" sabre root #
Minor revision: the only way to get OOo working again is to reboot. I'm pretty sure that restarting networking would also work, since it appears to be hung up on a socket, but that would probably leave my system more messed up than not being able to use OOo.
How do you start an OOo application in a Firefox tab? I'm not familiar with the procedure.
Edit->Preferences->File Types->Downloads->File Types If you ever start downloading a file that OOo can open (e.g. doc, xls) and tell the download dialog what OOo command to use the open the file, then firefox will embed the OOo application in the web browser window and record that mime type and application in the Preferences dialog as seen above. If you middle mouse click some time later, then it will open a new tab and automatically launch OOo in that tab. about:plugins says that I have: Blackdown-1.4.1-01 (javaplugin_oji.so) Default (libnullplugin.so) QuickTime Plug-in 6.0, mplayerplug-in (mplayerplug-in.so) nppdf.so (nppdf.so) Shockwave Flash (libflashplayer.so)
I can reproduce that, but: I don't think OOo-docs are meant to be read in firefox, anyway there is not a lot we can do about this at the moment, so marking cantfix. One thing more: You don't have to reboot, killing the soffice process should be sufficient
As I stated in my initial report, I couldn't find any relevant application running using ps -ef, i.e. there was no soffice (or soffice.bin) task listed. That said, time has passed and I thought it worthwhile to re-test this so that I could report it upstream. Now I have openoffice-1.1.4 and mozilla-firefox-1.0 (I wish I had recorded what version of firefox I was using at the time, but judging from the date it had to have been 1.0_rc1 or earlier). With the new versions of software, OOo does not embed itself in the Firefox browser window (which makes me happier because I hated that embedding stuff), and everything is working.