How to start LibreOffice on Debian

paledread · June 17, 2020, 6:01pm

I’ve been using LibreOffice happily on Debian for years.

Currently LibreOffice 6.4.4.2 40(Build:2) on Debian Testing.

Now suddenly for reasons unknown to me, I cannot open LibreOffice at all. I’ve tried from the menu and in a terminal with “libreoffice”, “libreoffice --writer”, and “libreoffice --calc”. Also tried all of these with another user on the same box.

The outcome is constant (in terminal). The splash screen shows up and the progress bar reaches about 50% of completion. Then all disappears from the screen. The terminal shows a message “Warning: failed to read path from javaldx” on each occasion. Nothing found in logs.

Help! Where to start looking?

gabix · June 17, 2020, 6:33pm

Try resetting your user profile. Also, show the output in the terminal. I can’t imagine how javaldx comes to play here. An incompatible extension? Then again, reset the profile.

mikekaganski · June 17, 2020, 6:52pm

I would suspect that “failed to read path from javaldx” is just an innocent warning that likely was there always, but now got noticed… and the problem is elsewhere. But it’s just a speculation.

paledread · June 17, 2020, 7:21pm

Thanks to gabix and Mike Kaganski for inputs.

I’m not sure how to resting my user profile without being able to open LO. I did move ~/.config/libreofice/ out of the way and tried restarting without any progress. A new sub-directory was created. I’ve also tried logging in as a different user on the same box, but no different behaviour.

Output in the terminal was simply “Warning: failed to read path from javaldx”.

As far as I recall no extensions are installed.

erAck · June 17, 2020, 8:33pm

You do have the HOME environment variable set to a writeable location? A Java JRE is installed? The libreoffice-java-common package is installed? But I second Mike, the problem likely is elsewhere.

paledread · June 17, 2020, 10:09pm

erAck thanks.

$HOME environment is fine and writeable. openjdk-11-jre is installed. libreoffice-java-common 1:6.4.4-1 is installed. I’m thinking that you and Mike are correct, and this is not really a java issue, but a different issue somewhere with LO.