Libreoffice dialog windows very slow

giomba · 2015-10-17 10:49:01

Hello,
I'm using LibreOffice 4.4.5 i686 (still version), and I can't work with it anymore because of very very slow dialog windows.
Every time I click on "Format -> Font" (or "Page", or "Paragraph", or "Cells", etc...) it freezes for about 10 seconds before opening the dialog window. This doesn't happen only at first startup, it always happens. Running from terminal shows nothing interesting.
But, when I open another dialog, for example "Tools -> Options" or "File -> Save", it works fine and opens immediately.

So, what I have done:
1) increased graphic memory limit in "Tools -> Options";
2) enabled/disabled font antialiasing and/or graphic hardware acceleration;
3) since these dialogs involve fonts, manually refreshed font cache - I'm not sure I've done it right, maybe someone can suggest some commands?
4) created a new user;
5) recompiled libreoffice-still (yaourt -Sb libreoffice-still - it takes about 24 hours on my machine);
6) uninstalled localization (italian) and used built-in english;
7) tryed libreoffice-fresh: very bad idea: the problem was not solved; moreover, it comes with very ugly-looking menus (other GTK3 applications works great on my system), is extremely slow and there is something wrong with hardware acceleration: glitches over check and radio boxes, random blank areas... I uninstalled immediately.

However, hardware acceleration seems to work right (module intel_agp is loaded; glxgears shows 60FPS and tells it is a good value; that old compiz-check script tells I can use Compiz; videos and everything else works smoothly)

My computer is a "not brand new" Toshiba Equium A100-063 laptop:
Graphic card:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)

CPU

Architecture:          i686
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                2
On-line CPU(s) list:   0,1
Thread(s) per core:    1
Core(s) per socket:    2
Socket(s):             1
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            6
Model:                 14
Model name:            Genuine Intel(R) CPU           T2300  @ 1.66GHz
Stepping:              8
CPU MHz:               1000.000
CPU max MHz:           1667,0000
CPU min MHz:           1000,0000
BogoMIPS:              3324.88
Virtualization:        VT-x
Flags:                 fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe constant_tsc arch_perfmon bts aperfmperf pni monitor vmx est tm2 xtpr pdcm dtherm

RAM
3GB (2+1)

Nothing helped. How can I solve this problem? What can it be related to?

Sorry for my bad english.
Thanks for your help and time
.
giomba

olive · 2015-10-19 18:26:10

Difficult to know. It works for me. What desktop environment do you use? It might be a buggy gtk theme. In the past I was on KDE and by default it force GTK to use the oxygen (in order to match the look and feel of KDE application) theme which was buggy and gives problems. What I would do to investigate the situation is:

1) Create a brand new user, say test.
2) log out and log in as test using a very simplistic window manager (like icewm, or whatever that do not launch daemons or set environment variables).
3) Try from there.

If the bug persists, I would have no further idea. Otherwise, you could investigate further. The variable SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN can be used to force a specific interface, try use SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk or OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=gnome. Also ensure that you use the default gtk2 theme. (The real default is Raleigh but Archlinux set it to Adwaita but it has not given me problems).

Last edited by olive (2015-10-19 18:28:28)

kabbalah · 2015-10-19 18:40:13

Interesting contribution but for those who do not know how to do it would be good will post the file to modify.
Thanks

olive · 2015-10-19 18:55:13

kabbalah wrote:

Interesting contribution but for those who do not know how to do it would be good will post the file to modify.
Thanks

The file to modify to revert to the default GTK theme? If this is set by an advanced Desktop, you will have to do it from there and it is dependent of the desktop. Otherwise, read: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GTK%2B

Last edited by olive (2015-10-19 18:56:34)

giomba · 2015-10-20 16:54:24

Thanks for your quick reply.
I'm using latest XFCE 4.12 with the BlueMenta theme (by Mate team, I like it because it looks good both on GTK2 and GTK3).

I created a new user and run LibreOffice without any DE (pure X), tried with different themes, and the problem persists.
Setting those SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN and OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP changes nothing, but... is there a way to see if they have been parsed by LibreOffice?

I really think that it is a problem with Libreoffice itself, a strange odd problem no-one can solve or has even asked for...
I'll have to switch to Abiword and Gnumeric. At least these seem to work

olive · 2015-10-20 17:39:16

giomba wrote:

Thanks for your quick reply.
I'm using latest XFCE 4.12 with the BlueMenta theme (by Mate team, I like it because it looks good both on GTK2 and GTK3).
I created a new user and run LibreOffice without any DE (pure X), tried with different themes, and the problem persists.
Setting those SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN and OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP changes nothing, but... is there a way to see if they have been parsed by LibreOffice?
I really think that it is a problem with Libreoffice itself, a strange odd problem no-one can solve or has even asked for...
I'll have to switch to Abiword and Gnumeric. At least these seem to work

The strange think is that it works for me. I am not affected. I am a little clueless of what could be the problem. You can see a change of the icons with the environment variables. Maybe you can use strace to see where it hangs (run strace /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice.bin ). Some softwares can have this kind of behavior when the network and specially the loopback interface is not set correctly. Do ping localhost or ping 127.0.0.1 works as expected. For the theme I suppose you have tried the Raleigh theme (which is the default theme, i.e. no theme at all).

What happens if you try with the official build (download the rpm and extract it with bsdtar, you can then run the program in place without messing your system, be sure to remove (backup) $HOME/.config/libreoffice).

giomba · 2015-10-26 10:16:29

Thank you for your help, olive, but it doesn't work.

Little clueless? Well, you're not the only one.

I backupped the ~/.config, then tried official RPMs, but they still hang for ~10sec when I open those dialogs. Also tried with new user and default Raleigh theme.

I have never used strace before. It outputs a lot of text simply moving the mouse; I gave a look at its man page and tried to grep something, but... is there something particular I should look for in the man page or in that log?

When LO freezes, it just does nothing: no disk I/O (led is off), no CPU usage (task manager). It justs hangs. This could suggest some network activity, but loopback interface is ok, I can ping 127.0.0.1 and localhost, and they show the same result. /etc/hosts is fine.

Any other ideas?
Thanks.

olive · 2015-10-26 19:21:47

This time I am out of idea. strace give you the system calls made by the program. It is not a miracle tool but sometimes you can use it to diagnose problems. The things to watch is the output when or just before it hangs. It must be waiting for something and the challenge is to figure out what. But it is not certain at all that you (or anybody else) could be able to diagnose something with it. I am inclined to think it could be related to the network... maybe some trouble with ipv6? (boot with ipv6.disable=1). Try with the network completely disconnected? Also I see that you use he 32 bits version that is not much used anymore, but I hardly see how can it leads to such hangs. I would be tempted to test a live Ubuntu CD. If it works there. try to find what can be different in Archlinux.

Last edited by olive (2015-10-26 19:53:13)

drcouzelis · 2015-10-26 19:40:24

I have two questions:

Did you add your hostname to the "/etc/hosts" file? Please show me the contents of the file.

What operating system are you using?

giomba · 2015-10-26 21:28:58

Yeah! Problem identified! It is a network issue.

LO hangs only when networking is enabled. Despite this, I have not found the solution. Not yet.

@drcouzelis:

#
# /etc/hosts: static lookup table for host names
#

#<ip-address>	<hostname.domain.org>	<hostname>
127.0.0.1	localhost.localdomain	localhost	myhostname
::1		localhost.localdomain	localhost	myhostname

# End of file

'cat /etc/hostname' and 'hostname' show myhostname. I can ping myhostname succesfully.

My OS is Arch Linux i686 with latest LTS kernel

Linux myhostname 4.1.11-1-lts #1 SMP Fri Oct 23 20:56:53 CEST 2015 i686 GNU/Linux

I edit /etc/hosts and added the latest column (myhostname, I didn't have it before), but it doesn't solve the problem.
Should I change the '::1' line?

@olive:
If I disable ipv6, will this solve the problem? Currently I am not interested in ipv6 and I can survive without it.
I added 'ipv6.disable=1' to GRUB, but LO still hangs.
It works smooth only if I completely disable network functionality.

$ cat /proc/cmdline

BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-linux-lts root=UUID=0123456789abcdef rw rootflags=subvol=thebtrfsrootsubvolume cryptdevice=/dev/sdaX:cryptroot resume=/dev/sdaY ipv6.disable=1

I'll try to deal with ipv6 disabling during next days, as soon as possible.
In the meanwhile, any suggestion is welcome.

Thank you very much.

olive · 2015-10-27 08:19:18

I have no idea if disabling ipv6 will solve the problem. I was thinking that maybe it tries to do something with a non working ipv6 and hence the hang. But if you say that booting ipv6.disable=1 does not solve the problem, it is unlikely this. But you already know that it is related to the network. I am not a network specialist. What I would do now is to disable any automatic tool like network manager or any systemd service file that configure the network, as well as any firewall you have setup and any daemon that is network related. Boot without network and enable it by hand with "dhcpcd enp3s0" (replace enp3s0 with your network card); If you use a wireless device , try to configure wpa_supplicant by hand but preferably try first with a cable since it is easier.

The general idea is to try first the simplest network configuration as possible and then enable what you want one by one until you find the culprit. With patience you will hopefully finally find it.

Last edited by olive (2015-10-27 08:37:24)

drcouzelis · 2015-10-28 14:05:44

Did you edit out your host name for the Arch Linux forums? Please don't do that. We won't know if there's a typo. And posting your host name is not a security risk.

I'm glad you found it's a network issue. What configuration do you use to connect to the Internet? Is it wired or wireless?

giomba · 2015-11-02 09:28:29

Good news. LibreOffice hangs because of CUPS.
At home I have a printer server which is generally turned off (it is an old electricity-greedy PIII which also acts as local NAS), and my laptop is configured to look for it. It had never been a problem before, but now it seems to wait too long for it to answer.
I've already reset CUPS client-side configuration, but I have not solved yet. I'll work on this and let you know (slooowly, in my spare time).

@olive:
Ok, it is not ipv6, but I followed your suggestion to use the try-and-error approach.
And learned this new command that lists all systemd unit files and their state: systemctl list-unit-files
Thank you.

@drcouzelis:
Well, my hostname is the commercial name of a local radio station (which I like and was listening to when I installed the system and didn't have any good hostname for it), so I thought it would not be a good idea to "promote" it on this forum. I double checked for mispelling myself. I'll change to something different.

Thank you.

pezcurrel · 2016-10-28 08:33:32

Hi,
I have the same issue with LO still 5.1.5.2
In my case disabling cups does not solve the problem.
I'd like to try and disable networking altogether, but I don't know how to do it.
Could you please tell me how to do it?

Docbroke · 2016-10-28 11:04:28

the issue is probably with gtk3, kindly check this similar thread, update to latest libreoffice-fresh solved the issue

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=218245

Arch Linux

#1 2015-10-17 10:49:01

Libreoffice dialog windows very slow

#2 2015-10-19 18:26:10

Re: Libreoffice dialog windows very slow

#3 2015-10-19 18:40:13

Re: Libreoffice dialog windows very slow

#4 2015-10-19 18:55:13

Re: Libreoffice dialog windows very slow

#5 2015-10-20 16:54:24

Re: Libreoffice dialog windows very slow

#6 2015-10-20 17:39:16

Re: Libreoffice dialog windows very slow

#7 2015-10-26 10:16:29

Re: Libreoffice dialog windows very slow

#8 2015-10-26 19:21:47

Re: Libreoffice dialog windows very slow

#9 2015-10-26 19:40:24

Re: Libreoffice dialog windows very slow

#10 2015-10-26 21:28:58

Re: Libreoffice dialog windows very slow

#11 2015-10-27 08:19:18

Re: Libreoffice dialog windows very slow

#12 2015-10-28 14:05:44

Re: Libreoffice dialog windows very slow

#13 2015-11-02 09:28:29

Re: Libreoffice dialog windows very slow

#14 2016-10-28 08:33:32

Re: Libreoffice dialog windows very slow

#15 2016-10-28 11:04:28

Re: Libreoffice dialog windows very slow

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