LibreOffice 4.1.2 and Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks)

users
#1

Hi Guys,

  my copy of LibreOffice 4.1.2 keeps crashing as soon as I start editing a text document. It keeps asking for Java Runtime SE 6.0 even though it is installed already.

  Any ideas of a fix? maybe 4.1.3 RC1 can help? Thanks in advance for your response

Regards

Stefano

#2

What platform?

What version of java (32bit or 64bit) Libreoffice will only work with 32bit java.

#3

my copy of LibreOffice 4.1.2 keeps crashing as soon as I start editing a text document. It keeps asking for Java Runtime SE 6.0 even though it is installed already.

What platform?

It's in the subject line! <BG> Sorry, couldn't resist! LOL

#4

On 2013-10-22 4:47 AM S o H o N Y C wrote concerning "LibreOffice 4.1.2 and Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks)":

Hi Guys,

   my copy of LibreOffice 4.1.2 keeps crashing as soon as I start editing a text document. It keeps asking for Java Runtime SE 6.0 even though it is installed already.

On menu bar go to LibreOffice/Preferences/LibreOffice/Advanced.
Make sure the box is checked besides "Use a Java runtime environment"
Under "Java runtime environments (JRE) already installed:" check the circle besides the installed version.

#5

Hi,

  my copy of LibreOffice 4.1.2 keeps crashing as soon as I start editing a text document. It keeps asking for Java Runtime SE 6.0 even though it is installed already.

  Any ideas of a fix? maybe 4.1.3 RC1 can help? Thanks in advance for your response

Currently, LO is released as a 32bit program on Mac OSX and consequently
requires a 32bit Java VM. Mountain Lion provides both 32bit and 64bit
versions of JVM, but I have no idea whether Maverick still continues to
provide that 32bit version of the Apple supplied JVM.

Additionally, there may simply be as yet undiscovered bugs in LO with
regard to Maverick. As far as I know, no one on the Mac dev team is
building LO on OSX Maverick (hardly surprising as it was only officially
released yesterday ?). It is possible to obtain test releases of LO for
the 64bit architecture, but these are considered works in progress. Look
for the OSX daily builds with the x86_64 tag, there used to be at least
one machine producing them.

My own-built 64bit developer builds seem to work mostly OK, but I
haven't made the switch to Maverick yet.

Alex

#6

Hi :slight_smile:
Actually it is probably better to just switch Java off. Chances are that
you are not really using it anyway so you can avoid these sorts of issues
just by switching it off
Tools - Options - Advanced ?
and UNtick the box at the very top that asks if you want to use the broken
mess of Oracle coding that we lovingly call Java and that Homeland Security
have apparently warned companies to stop using.

If you really are using Java then you will just get an error message at
some point in the future at which point you just re-tick the box. Not much
of a problem.

LibreOffice used to have quite a lot of Java in it's code but that has
almost entirely been written out or converted to Python or C++ which are a
LOT more stable and far less dependant on the whims of a single
profit-making company.

At some point Oracle will probably release a "Professional" or "Enterprise"
version of Java which will fix most of the problems that Java currently has
but it's not clear how much they would charge or what licensing they would
use. So far they seem to have been following a good strategy for turning
something from being free into making it profitable although it'/s not
clear whether that was their intention or whether they really are
incompetent at producing secure coding. (just my own opinion)

About 6 months - 1 year ago there was a report saying that only around 12%
of LibreOffice's code was still in java and most of that was in wizards
that almost no-one ever uses. That 12% will probably have shrunk quite
drastically. Java also sometimes gets used is when using Base with it's
internal back-end (which is possibly the worst way of using Base right
now). Generally start with that but then swiftly move the data tables into
something like MySql (Oracle's again), MariaDB (doesn't work on Macs
apparently), Postgresql or one of the tiny fast back-ends fro smaller
databases. There is work going on to switch to a more recent version of a
different database program for the internal back-end and that should be a
huge improvement.

The only other place Java gets used is a lot of the Accessibility stuff
such as screen-readers. Sadly there is no way around that one :frowning: We are
hoping that a ton of coding gets pulled in from external sources to
massively improve accessibility. There are people working on the
accessibility stuff so if you have Java for that they might be able to help
but their fixes might not be relevant for other users.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#7

Hi,

   my copy of LibreOffice 4.1.2 keeps crashing as soon as I start editing a text document. It keeps asking for Java Runtime SE 6.0 even though it is installed already.

   Any ideas of a fix? maybe 4.1.3 RC1 can help? Thanks in advance for your response

Currently, LO is released as a 32bit program on Mac OSX and consequently
requires a 32bit Java VM. Mountain Lion provides both 32bit and 64bit
versions of JVM, but I have no idea whether Maverick still continues to
provide that 32bit version of the Apple supplied JVM.

Additionally, there may simply be as yet undiscovered bugs in LO with
regard to Maverick. As far as I know, no one on the Mac dev team is
building LO on OSX Maverick (hardly surprising as it was only officially
released yesterday ?).

Alex, apologies for the cynicism, but they could have gotten a developer's preview version of Mavericks before it was released. I have two commercial programs installed here that did just that, so they could have their software ready for the Mavericks release.

I doubt money would have been an issue, anyone upgrading to Mavericks gets the new OS for free.

#8

Hello Stefano,

   my copy of LibreOffice 4.1.2 keeps crashing as soon as I start editing a text document. It keeps asking for Java Runtime SE 6.0 even though it is installed already.

   Any ideas of a fix? maybe 4.1.3 RC1 can help? Thanks in advance for your response

I am not subscribed to this list, so please Cc me for replies.

I cannot confirm this behaviour. I run 4.1.2 on 10.9. The first start provoked a crash when editing a document, asking for Java - having confirmed the Java download in OS X, it works like a charm for me.

Do you have only the Apple-provided Java installed, or also a third-party one?

Florian

#9

Stefano,

I assume you have installed some LibreOffice extension for spell/grammar
checking or similar that uses Java. That might explain it if you experience
crashes now when typing in Writer after upgrading to Mavericks (which
appears to replace any pre-existing Java installation with a "download it
now" stub).

Can you provide a list of LibreOffice extensions you have installed ("Tools
- Extension Manager...")?

(I cannot reproduce the problem here on a Mavericks box, where I went
through that Java "download it now" procedure shortly after upgrade from
Mountain Lion, and now have Java working apparently just fine in both 32-
and 64-bit builds of LibreOffice.)

Stephan

#10

Meanwhile found out that it is the wiki-publisher extension (which comes bundled with LibreOffice by default) that requires a Java VM to be instantiated in the LibreOffice process as soon as you type the first letter in Writer. (See <http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2013-October/056991.html> "Why typing in Writer instantiates the JVM on Mac OS X" for details.)

So, one quick fix for people who are stuck with Writer keeping crashing would probably be to move away the wiki-publisher extension that is bundled in the LibreOffice installation. To do that in Finder, first make sure LibreOffice is not running, then navigate to the LibreOffice (aka LibreOffice.app) application, from the right-click menu select "Show Package Contents", there navigate from "Contents" to "share" to "extensions" and move the "wiki-publisher" folder to the trash (or move it to some other place outside the "extensions" folder). Then create a new folder (with more or less arbitrary name, you can use "Dummy") within the "extensions" folder. When you start LibreOffice again, the problem should be gone (it might show a "LibreOffice quit unexpectedly" dialog once directly while starting, which is an unrelated problem and a different story, in which case just press the "Reopen" button).

Stephan

#11

Well my upgrade to Mavericks hosed my MacMini OSX 10.8.5 installation
and the hard disk on which it was installed, to the extent that the
installation would not complete, the system would not reboot, and the
disk could not even be repaired - now that's what I call a
professionally made OS, thanks Apple :wink:

Will now have to see if TimeMachine did the backups properly...

Alex

#12

Alex,

Ouch! Any idea what failed, so as the rest of us can avoid it? :wink:
I'd been looking at a Mavericks upgrade on a late model MacMini I've been playing with.

None the less good luck with recovery!

Stuart

#13

Alex, apologies for the cynicism, but they could have gotten a
developer's preview version of Mavericks before it was released. I have
two commercial programs installed here that did just that, so they could
have their software ready for the Mavericks release.

I doubt money would have been an issue, anyone upgrading to Mavericks
gets the new OS for free.

Well my upgrade to Mavericks hosed my MacMini OSX 10.8.5 installation
and the hard disk on which it was installed, to the extent that the
installation would not complete, the system would not reboot, and the
disk could not even be repaired - now that's what I call a
professionally made OS, thanks Apple :wink:

Things like this is why I'm leery of upgrading. But I also see no reason to upgrade. From reading Apple's Mavericks page, it sounds like the major changes are mostly better interoperability with iOS. I don't have a single iOS device, so that means nothing to me. Tabbed browsing I solved some time ago using XtraFinder (free). Tags, which aren't the magic jelly bean for searches some think it is, are supported by PathFinder 6 which I also have installed.

I have Mountain Lion installed with two boot partitions. I wonder if, destroying one by Mavericks would also destroy the ability to boot from the other partition.

Will now have to see if TimeMachine did the backups properly...

The couple times I've used Time Machine to restore my computer due to my errors, it's worked fine.

#14

Hi :slight_smile:
Well found!!

Thanks for sharing that fix. it's a bit weird to have something like that
enabled by default but i guess it is quite useful for a lot of people.
Personally i do all my wiki-editing either directly in the page's built-in
editor but occasionally copy&paste into GEdit or something. Word made me
suspicious of using a word-processor for that sort of thing and i've never
tried Writer for it.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#15

Note that LO 4.1.3 for Mac OS X from <http://www.libreoffice.org/download> comes without a bundled Wiki Publisher extension.

Stephan

#16

Mavericks Apple Java WAS installed on my machine before LO was invoked,
so it was not simply a matter of Java not being on the machine at the
time of the invocation if Apple supplies as before 32 and 64 bit Java.

How did anyone at LO argue that LO would work under Mavericks if using a
JVM crashes LO? Under what circumstances will LO NOT crash if Use JVM
is selected prior to upgrade? And if the devs knew that Mavericks would
cause LO to crash over a week ago, why wasn't that published clearly?

In my case Java was repeatedly installed after the LO problem, with no
impact on LO

LO blew up even if one started the product by opening a calc file; one
did not have to open write and enter any keystrokes -- by blew up I mean
that the app simply disappears and generates no crash or error report.
It does so starting from command line or gui -- in any event my case
indicates that the problem IS NOT limited to entering text

It will still crash any time you access Zotero, though I now have it
stable enough that I can otherwise use it

so, at present, Zotero plugin will not work with LO because Zotero, no
matter the java supplied to the OS, will not recognize it.

I started a new thread because the existing one seemed to be slipping
sideways :slight_smile:

#17

Hi Ken,

I have Mountain Lion installed with two boot partitions. I wonder if,
destroying one by Mavericks would also destroy the ability to boot from
the other partition.

No, it doesn't and this is what saved me in the end. On my Mac mini I had two hard disks, and Mavericks installed itself in the end on the second one, overwriting the backup I had on it without telling me in advance (nice). After several reboots, I can now actually use a cordless mouse and my keyboard has been recognized again (why, I don't know). I can now even read the data on my old OSX installation drive, but not write to it. I see that the Mavericks installation created a folder there with disk images and other data in it, which I shall remove after saving it to external storage. At least I can now copy the contents of my old Applications folder to the new installation Applications folder.

I have to say, this has been the worst OSX upgrade I've ever had the misfortune to suffer. Had I only had one disk, I would've been well and truly stuffed.

Alex