base frequent random crashes delete all tables, cannot be recovered despite autosave

[stabiloboss]

Hi,

I keep experiencing frequent random crashes in Base when changing properties of controls or editing macros. Frequent meaning at least once per hour. Random meaning that I cannot reproduce the crashes and I have no idea what causes them. A crash can happen when I change the properties of of control, it can happen when I close a window, it can happen when I’m editing code, it an happen when I save a table, form or macro… These crashes regularly completely destroy the database, meaning that all tables are gone, the code is gone, the forms may or may not be gone. While the tables are gone, the relationships may still exist somewhere in an invisible background, so that when I recreate a table, I might not be able to save data because of foreign key violations involving non-existing relationships to non-existing tables. Autosave is set to save documents every 2 minutes, but after a crash often autorecovery can’t recover much. Just now recovery recovered the forms, but all tables and code are gone. AnEarlier a crash left me with a completely empty file with a size of 0 bytes.

I had this problem so often in version 5 that I stopped using Base. I’m now trying in version 6, but I seem to have the same problem.

Does this sound familiar? Suggestions?

Using Linux Mint 18.3 mate, LO 6.2.8.2

thanks

[Ratslinger]

Hello,

Have used Mint 18.3 Cinnamon for a few years with various LO releases with little problem. Currently mainly use Ubuntu 18.04 Mate but also have Mint 19.2 Cinnamon and neither exhibit these problems with the current releases.

Now you don’t mention where your version was obtained from. My experience showed the most problems were related to distro releases. Have stayed away from these. For my purposes I use the TDF (The Document Foundation) releases. I do this for various personal reasons. For Ubuntu based systems, the recommended method is to use a PPA version found here → PPA.

Now if you are already using something other than the distro version and continue to have problems, the next place to look would be the User Profile. Many strange things can happen with a corrupt profile. This is one area which does not get refreshed when removing an LO version and installing a new one.

For instructions see → LibreOffice user profile

Hope this helps solve the problem.

Edit:

Just a note. I do not rely on the auto recovery function especially for my Base files (regardless of DB type). My practice is to create a backup copy especially with important changes made. Most personal data is on a PostgreSQL server which is also backed up. And by a backup it is meant to an external/removable drive.

[ve3oat]

I have no experience with Base but I agree totally with what @Ratslinger says about backups. Autosave is not what you might think it is. Always do your own saves and separate backups. It doesn’t have to be complicated and simply Saving As to an external drive might be enough for most situations.

[stabiloboss]

Thanks for the suggestion, I wasn’t aware of the user profile thing, so I’ll look into it. Since my problems don’t sound familiar, the cause may indeed be there.
My LO 5 came with Linux MInt 18.3, my version 6 was downloaded from the LO website.

I scheduled a cron job to save my database every 10 minutes. This practice has save me several times today

[stabiloboss]

As a follow up: I removed my old profile and made a new one, but the crashes are just as frequent. It reminds me a lot of programs like windows95 that had very poor exception handling. I’m now relying on my cron job to make a copy of my application every 5 minutes (10 minutes was too long).