LibreOffice pause during startup

Robert_Mesibov · July 20, 2012, 6:54am

I'm running LibreOffice 3.4.6 OOO340m1 (Build:602) on Debian Squeeze.

The progress bar on the splash screen stops part-way during startup for about 10 seconds. During this time LO sends a request of some sort over the network connection (lights flash on router) every 2 seconds, 5 times in all. LO then completes startup.

This happens
- with the splash screen turned off in /etc/libreoffice/sofficerc (the pause and network requesting still happen)
- when launching LO by itself, or when opening a Writer or other LO document through a file manager
- with Java RE option on or off

With an LO document already open, there is no pause when opening a second LO document. The pause only occurs during startup.

How to stop LO from sending requests over the network on startup, so that it opens without the 10-second pause?

planas · July 20, 2012, 12:08pm

My guess is that LO is trying to connect to something on the network. Try checking TOOLS >> OPTIONS>>LIBREOFFICE>>PATHS to see any are located on a remote machine.

I can not replicate you r problem.

Don_C_Myers · July 20, 2012, 12:10pm

Hi Robert,

This has worked for me in all recent versions of Ubuntu:

In terminal, do gksudo gedit /etc/hosts
Add line as shown below for, for instance, 127.0.0.1 galaxy localhost galaxy.(none) below
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 galaxy
4) and add a line so it looks like this:
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 galaxy
127.0.0.1 galaxy localhost galaxy.(none)
5) save
6) now LibreOffice.org Writer and Calc open fast when the network connection is attached.

For anyone new reading this. replace "galaxy" with whatever you have named your computer.

elderdanlewis · July 20, 2012, 1:06pm

Don Myers wrote:

Hi Robert,

This has worked for me in all recent versions of Ubuntu:

In terminal, do gksudo gedit /etc/hosts
Add line as shown below for, for instance, 127.0.0.1 galaxy localhost
galaxy.(none) below
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 galaxy
4) and add a line so it looks like this:
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 galaxy
127.0.0.1 galaxy localhost galaxy.(none)
5) save
6) now LibreOffice.org Writer and Calc open fast when the network
connection is attached.

For anyone new reading this. replace "galaxy" with whatever you have
named your computer.

I'm running LibreOffice 3.4.6 OOO340m1 (Build:602) on Debian Squeeze.

The progress bar on the splash screen stops part-way during startup
for about 10 seconds. During this time LO sends a request of some sort
over the network connection (lights flash on router) every 2 seconds,
5 times in all. LO then completes startup.

This happens
- with the splash screen turned off in /etc/libreoffice/sofficerc (the
pause and network requesting still happen)
- when launching LO by itself, or when opening a Writer or other LO
document through a file manager
- with Java RE option on or off

With an LO document already open, there is no pause when opening a
second LO document. The pause only occurs during startup.

How to stop LO from sending requests over the network on startup, so
that it opens without the 10-second pause?

Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Online Update
If an update option of Daily is checked, would this account for the network connection? Or, might it be a bug in that every time LO is opened it checks for an update instead of once a day? If so, would unchecking "Check for updates automatically" stop this?

--Dan

Don_C_Myers · July 20, 2012, 2:32pm

Hi Dan,

I don't know. These instructions go back to the first release of LibreOffice when it opened initially really slowly for me. If I recall correctly, they were originally for open office. I found them on the Internet. It was essential for LibreOffice 3.3x and 3.4x for me. I've seen less difference in 3.5x. I've only updated LibreOffice when a new version is out, such as 3.5.4.2 to 3.5.5.3.

Don

anne-ology · July 21, 2012, 2:15am

If you're referring to it getting hung-up, then this has happened to
me a few times -
my solution is to shut it down -> clear out the caches [CCleaner
is good] -> re-start the computer;
when it re-starts, OO/LO works great again.

One of the problems with OO/LO is its immense size; if there were
some way to reduce its size then this might not occur, but then it might
not be as good a program as it is

Mine is not caused by 'calling home or anywhere' since my machine
only allows 'cookies', etc. which I accept and only at the time I accept
them; in fact, each time I've tested my machine, it's invisible to these
robotic eyes

I'm running LibreOffice 3.4.6 OOO340m1 (Build:602) on Debian Squeeze.

Anthony_Easthope · July 21, 2012, 9:48pm

Anne that work around works on windows but as the gentlemen said he was
using debian squeze which is a variation of linux. I am curious as to
why it is hanging to - by rights it should not be.

Anthony_Easthope · July 21, 2012, 9:50pm

Infact your workaround could work in theory, the problem is finding a
ccleaner equivalent for debian

Don_C_Myers · July 21, 2012, 9:57pm

Hi,

I run Ubuntu. As I understand it, Linux (including Ubuntu) doesn't use a registry, therefore you don't need to have a registry cleaner.

Don

Anthony_Easthope · July 21, 2012, 10:05pm

If there is no registry or temporary paging system within the OS then
how does that work? It is a curiosity within itself

Don_C_Myers · July 21, 2012, 10:13pm

I've been running Ubuntu for three years. I'm quite proficient at using it. I've done a lot of reading about Linux and Ubuntu on line. I've read that you don't need to defrag the hard drive since Linux does not fragment a hard drive. Also that Linux doesn't use a registry, therefore it doesn't get corrupted like a registry in Windows does. That is why Linux doesn't slow down with time since nothing gets corrupted. But I'm not enough of a Linux expert to explain further details. Hopefully someone else can.

Villeroy · July 21, 2012, 10:33pm

Am 20.07.2012 08:44, Robert Mesibov wrote:

I'm running LibreOffice 3.4.6 OOO340m1 (Build:602) on Debian Squeeze.

The progress bar on the splash screen stops part-way during startup for about 10 seconds. During this time LO sends a request of some sort over the network connection (lights flash on router) every 2 seconds, 5 times in all. LO then completes startup.

This happens
- with the splash screen turned off in /etc/libreoffice/sofficerc (the pause and network requesting still happen)
- when launching LO by itself, or when opening a Writer or other LO document through a file manager
- with Java RE option on or off

With an LO document already open, there is no pause when opening a second LO document. The pause only occurs during startup.

How to stop LO from sending requests over the network on startup, so that it opens without the 10-second pause?

It searches for an update server or network printer.
Turn off everything in Tools>Options>Update
I don't know where the default printer for a new document is saved but

Villeroy · July 21, 2012, 10:40pm

Am 22.07.2012 00:05, Anthony Easthope wrote:

If there is no registry or temporary paging system within the OS then
how does that work? It is a curiosity within itself

Windows is the only system with a registry database.
Under Linux everything is a file. All configuration is written into plain text files, XML files or scripts for dynamic configuration. LibreOffice uses XML.
When you tell the software manager to remove a software everything will be removed except for user data. The LibreOffice profile folder belongs to user data.

Don_C_Myers · July 21, 2012, 11:01pm

Thank you so much Andreas!

anne-ology · July 21, 2012, 11:16pm

Well, when you uncover the solution, ... ... ...

well, I'll be watching for a solution to this 'bug' whenever

Anne that work around works on windows but as the gentlemen said he was

anne-ology · July 21, 2012, 11:21pm

Have you checked out Gizmo's Freeware
Utilities<http://www.techsupportalert.com/>?

this is a site with a wealth of programs for any computer ...
all tested and all free

In fact your workaround could work in theory, the problem is finding a

anne-ology · July 21, 2012, 11:25pm

CCleaner is not necessarily a registry cleaner ... it can do that;
but it mainly is used to clean out the caches.

And there are more than this one listed on this site - Gizmo's
Freeware Utilities <http://www.techsupportalert.com/>.

Hi,

Tom_Davies · July 22, 2012, 12:37pm

Hi
In Ubuntu i try to use "The Janitor" occasionally or from the grub-boot-menu choose "recovery mode" and then "Clear some space". I think some other distros offer that 2nd option but i don#'t know how to or even if i would want to risk trying the janitor in other distros.
Regards from
Tom

Tom_Davies · July 22, 2012, 12:50pm

Hi
The devs are doing a "code clean up" as part of the whole process. The whole code has been reduced by somewhere around 30% last time i heard.

Even before the code-clean-up started, and AOO at the moment, are still far tinier than MS Office. For something really tiny you might having a quick go with Gnome Office, that is AbiWord (word-processor) and Gnumeric (spreadsheets). Neither have the type of integration that LO has with all it's other modules, such as Impress or Draw but i think Gnumeric manages to have some very nice features squeezed into it's tiny size. AbiWord can be a bit of a pain as it lacks many of the nice features we seldom use in Writer. For me the annoying thing was not being able to set it to default to saving everything in MS formats which i rarely do nowadays anyway. Another option if you are looking for smaller&lighter is google-docs although that kinda requires a decent internet connection.

Anyway, the size is coming down and becoming more compact but the delay in start-up might be something the devs could solve if a bug-report was posted about the 2 different issues;
1. clearing the caches
2. stopping so many network calls at start-up
I doubt they can do much about 1 but maybe 2 is fixable?

Regards from
Tom

Tom_Davies · July 22, 2012, 1:30pm

Hi
It is the files on the drive (or rather, partition) that get fragmented. Not the partition itself.

Ntfs tries to cramp all the files onto the beginning of the drive. When you add things to a file then it can no longer fill the space comfortably so a chunk of the file needs to be written further along. Once you have added things to quite a few files there is a bit of a mess which Ntfs then has trouble in tracking and the read/write head bounces backwards and frowards all around the partition collect all the parts of the file.

Ext2, 3 and 4 all leave comfortable gaps after the ends of files and if the file still wont fit into the extra space that has been reserved for it then it just tries to write the entire file elsewhere or maybe (rarely) shift a few other files around to make space. Files do occasionally get fragmented but not quite as often and usually only when some fool has nearly filled their hard-drive.

Then i get a bit lost because although Ext2, 3 and 4 carefully avoid fragmentation they use the "inode" system for keeping track so that even if files do get fragmented the OS doesn't suffer. So why bother to avoid fragmentation? What is inode?

The clincher is that most Windows defraggers (or at least the official MS ones) can't defrag system files (or at least not well and not easily), critically the "virtual memory" (which gets called "swap" in Gnu&Linux).

Since virtual memory was so crucial to a system one might have expected it to be set to avoid letting it fragment ever. On Windows systems it's reasonably easy but very fiddly to set virtual memory to a fixed amount and that significantly stops any further slow-down. You still get some due to the registry kludge and other mis-management of key resources but the major difference seems to happen when you defrag and fix the virtual memory.

On Gnu&Linux systems the Swap is often given it's own 'drive' (really a partition on a drive) so that it doesn't have a chance of getting fragmented, ever. Again this can be done in Windows but it's never the default. Also Swap/Virtual-memory in Gnu&Linux can be set to be a file instead of a partition and that might be easier for people who only need a swap in the unlikely event they hibernate. Again it's weird that Gnu&Linux takes an extra unneeded precaution against something it 'shouldn't' ever suffer from but the one platform that does suffer from it doesn't do anything to protect against it.

It's just one example that makes me wonder if Windows is deliberately set-up in order to force users to buy new hardware and a whole new system every couple of years.

Regards from
Tom