LibreOffice: 7.4.7.2 40 (Build:2)
OS: Devuan GNU/Linux 5 (daedalus) Linux 6.1.0-27-amd64 x86_64
(The original title was “My .odt froze my Computer. I had to Press the Power Button”. That was true in late September but, for whatever reason, in November that is no longer true. Now the ODT in question freezes LO but the System stays alive. Just in case the startup process was badly delayed I also sat patiently for 25 minutes watching the power-bar sat at 25%, and only then force-closed it.)
2024-11-06: 1st response was to say “try under latest LO version”.
I added 24.8.2.1 (latest Fresh) as an AppImage. The version was GTK.The bad ODT now loaded under the AppImage & allowed me to move through the document. Hurrah!
At the bottom of the odt I noticed that the status-bar page-count was wrong & kept changing. More dramatically, Figure 15.1 (it is an image; use the pdf within GitHub to view it) kept being shown in the wrong place, wrong page, and also changing page from moment-to-moment. I tried to save the document & the screen froze-up, and LO had to be force shutdown yet again.
Try 2:
On a second attempt I notice that, immediately after load, 1 of the 4 machine cores was permanently occupied (~30% load). I tried to stay patient. After some minutes the load dropped to normal. The file could now be successfully saved & LO shutdown normally.This is still as buggy as can be.
2024-11-20: Yet more changes:
The wretched file is giving almost identical problems to what it gave under 7.4.7. I had made zero changes, but had tested stuff by conducting a save. I reverted to the original file up on GitHub & tried again. After 2 minutes LO froze solid. At least my computer is safe, but I can make zero changes to this document & cannot even copy stuff out of it.2024-11-07: Further changes:
After reports in a Devuan forum I installed AppImage 7.2.3.2 from LO Appimage dir & discovered that I could now open the odt (30% load, but I could get access to the documents + make changes & save it, which was better than the latest AppImage).Paying attention to what ajlittoz said, I used 7.2.3.2 to open 1_Programming-In-Python3.odt, saved it as 2_paragraph-fixes.odt, and began the mind-numbing task of changing every Direct Paragraph Formatting to Text Body (paragraph Style changes). Together with a host of other changes, that eventually led to the doc-load dropping after 10 seconds to a trivial figure when opening it under 7.4.7.
What a staggeringly stupid design feature to allow free-access to a Style that will then lead to a text document that will crash your computer.
I’m still working to try to clear up all the debris that has been left in this document by the explosion of these bugs (examples are Tables + Images + other elements moved from their original position into other pages).
(back to original post)
I was adding internal links (Contents, etc.) to an existing document. It got to ~600 pages. Things seemed OK & I was trying to add a Contents listing, but without joy (but no error message, and a full Heading sequence from H1 to H4 was in place).
The following morning I loaded the .odt & after ~2 secs my whole computer froze solid. I had to use the power button to shut down.
I’ve loaded every file up to Github, both ODT + PDFs.
Does anyone have the tools to investigate why this LO writer file does this? I’m at a loss as what to do.
The raw files are at GitHub - alexkemp9/Python3docs: Creating a PDF Manual about Python v3 .