How to report crashes and freezes if the Crash Report Tool does not appear and situations are not replicable?

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#1

Hi all, I have a problem with regularly occurring crashes and freezes in LibreOffice. I want to report bugs for them, but almost never the Crash Report Tool pops up after a freeze or crash. Furthermore, the exact replication of the crashes or freezes is - in most cases - not possible. How can I report crashes and freezes in such cases?

Background, I am a frequent and heavy user of LibreOffice, but I am not a developer. I use Writer with long and complex documents and Calc with ordinary and sometimes big spreadsheets. I notice a decline in stability of LibreOffice for large documents for 4+ years. I frequently notice sudden crashes or freezes of Writer and Calc, sometimes Impress. On average, this happens every second day, sometimes more often, and in most cases some data are lost. The crashes/freezes happen while editing, opening, closing, copy&pasting and other usual activities. I would like to report these freezes and crashes, but the Crash Report Tool does usually not appear and the crashes/freezes are barely replicable. I noticed these problems on the Linux(Ubuntu) and Mac versions over the past years. Currently, I am using LibreOffice 24.2.7.2 on Ubuntu 24.4. I notice these problems also on fresh installs and clean LibreOffice profiles.

#2

With my developer’s hat on: I would suggest to build an own, debug build of LibreOffice, and use it for your work, started from console - in the hope that upon the crash, there would be some relevant output in the console.

#3

cf Crash Report Tool :

Vendors like Ubuntu or Apple package their own crash reporter in their version of LibreOffice. No data is sent to The Document Foundation.

you may wanna try the LO distrib directly from Download LibreOffice | LibreOffice - Free and private office suite - Based on OpenOffice - Compatible with Microsoft

#4

Hi Mike, thank you, unfortunately I am not a developer. Is there any way to switch on “start recording debug output” on a usual LibreOffice installation?

#5

No. The logging is compiled out from the release builds.

#6

Hi fpy, thank you, does the LibreOffice version if downloaded from the LO website collect debug information and starts the crash reporter after freezes and crashes? Is this the same with the PPA version? LibreOffice Fresh : “LibreOffice Packaging” team

#7

Thanks Mike, that’s bad. Does this mean that, as a user, I cannot somehow get debug logging? Or is there any solution for this?

#8

As I wrote: build your own debug build. The belief that a user can’t do it (without becoming a developer) is a misconception.

#9

Hi Mike, this (the info in your link) sounds somewhat complicated and seems to take lots of disk space, time, and shovels lots of stuff on my computer that I’ll somehow have to remove afterwards.

Would the following be an easier solution?: Is the debug logging still enabled in Alpha and Beta builds? If so, I could try 25.2 Beta.

#10

I guess so.
but who knows where side effects may come from :confused:

also LibreOffice as Snap | LibreOffice - Free and private office suite - Based on OpenOffice - Compatible with Microsoft

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#11

Please try LibreOffice master daily builds.

1 Like
#12

Thanks Mike, I will try the master daily builds. Does only the “TDF-dbg” build contain the debug logging or also the “TDF (deb)” build?

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#13

Use the dbg build for this and: QA/BugReport/Debug Information - The Document Foundation Wiki

2 Likes
#14

Thanks ilmari and mike, then will use the master daily build “TDF-dbg” and then follow the steps in the wiki to report the bug. Thanks!

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