https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=98002
Bug ID: 98002
Summary: Deadlock with Clipboard Help+Spell
Product: LibreOffice
Version: 4.0.1.2 release
Hardware: x86-64 (AMD64)
OS: Windows (All)
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Severity: normal
Priority: medium
Component: LibreOffice
Assignee: [email protected]
Reporter: [email protected]
This is a bug report for a bug that has existed at least since
March 2013. I just didn't get around to reporting it until now, as I chose just
to use Word instead of LibreOffice.
I am using the excellent Clipboard Help+Spell program
(http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/clipboardhelpandspell/) and have
it running constantly in the background.
When I use LibreOffice, and Clipboard Help+Spell is running in the background,
it very often happens that they both go into a deadlock with each other. By
"very often" I mean every 5 or 10 minutes, sometimes more often, sometimes less
often. The UI freezes completely in both applications, and I have to kill one
of the processes (either one will do) to release the deadlock. The processes I
kill are either soffice.bin or ClipboardHelpAndSpell.exe. When I kill one of
those processes, the other program immediately unfreezes and continues without
any problems. But of course I lose data every time I do that, either from
LibreOffice or Clipboard Help+Spell, as they do not get a chance to save their
state.
The mutual deadlock is detectable and provable. I will attach screenshots from
Resource Monitor and Process Explorer taken 2013-11-04. "Baglås" is Danish for
"deadlock". The processes focused are those with the process IDs mentioned by
Resource Monitor. They both seem to say "State: Wait:WrUserRequest", but I am
not knowledgable enough to know if that tells anything. I do not remember which
version of LibreOffice it was. But the same thing still happens in LibreOffice
4.4.7. I guess I could take new screenshots, but the problem is exactly the
same, so I currently see no reason to do that. If someone can provide me with a
good reason to do it, I could take new screenshots.
I know for certain that the deadlock happened already back in March 2013, and
that it happened in 4.0.1.2, 4.4.0 Beta 1, and currently 4.4.7.2 and that it
has been a constant nuisance for me. It is the most important reason why I
normally use Word instead of LibreOffice; I cannot have my word processor
crash/freeze all the time. My word processor should be extremely stable, like
Microsoft Word actually is. And I use Clipboard Help+Spell constantly, so not
using that program is not a viable option either.
As both Clipboard Help+Spell and LibreOffice go into a mutual deadlock, there
is of course a bug in both programs, as no program should ever go into a
deadlock with another program. If a resource needs to be waited for, it should
always time out after a short while, giving the control back to the program.
The program can then try again, repeatedly, but it should always give the user
the option to give up that specific task, especially if it delays the user. In
any case, the *user interface* should never freeze in wait for a resource, not
even during a short wait.
So blaming the other program would be unproductive. There is definitely a bug
in LibreOffice. A similar bug is just also present in Clipboard Help+Spell.
I have and have never had similar problems with interactions between any of the
many other programs I use, even though Clipboard Help+Spell is running all the
time. I only have the problem when LibreOffice and Clipboard Help+Spell are
running at the same time. They always end up in a mutual deadlock.
I have tried sorting out the problem with the author of Clipboard Help+Spell,
as that would "solve" the bug in Clipboard Help+Spell and therefore solve the
problem for me personally (if just one of the programs behaved correctly, the
deadlock would not occur), but even though he was extremely helpful, I gave up
in the end because I had to test it too much, as he could not reproduce the
deadlock on his computer.
I have experienced the problem on three different computers, two running
Windows 7 SP1 64-bit and my current one running Windows 10. It is not possible
for me to test it under other versions of Windows; I only have access to
Windows 7 64-bit and Windows 10. The three mentioned computers were my most
recent main computers.
The deadlock *seems* to happen randomly. Of course it is not random, but I have
failed to find a pattern, even though I have tried. It doesn't especially
happen when I copy or paste text. It can happen when I am just writing normally
in LibreOffice without using the clipboard. I do not have to issue any specific
command in either LibreOffice or Clipboard Help+Spell for it to happen. It can
happen seemingly out of the blue. Or it can not happen. But in general it
happens, as I said, at least every 5 or 10 minutes, and especially when I am
really working with writing a text in LibreOffice.
Of course I have thought that it "must" be clipboard related, because Clipboard
Help+Spell is a clipboard program that monitors the clipboard, but I did not
find any pattern to that. Copying and pasting can go perfectly fine, like all
other commands. No specific command seems to trigger it. So I guess it must be
some kind of background process that triggers it. Maybe in combination with
some unlucky timing, so it only happens one time out of a hundred.
In any case there is a bug in LibreOffice, and this bug is absolutely the
reason why I rarely use LibreOffice even though I would love to use it as my
main word processing program. The bug triggers data loss, and that is of course
not acceptable for a word processor.
By the way, I am not using version 5.0 or 5.1 of LibreOffice, as those versions
have another serious bug (Bug 94897) that makes them useless to me. Therefore I
have to use 4.4.7. But since I can find no description of this bug anywhere in
Bugzilla, the probability of it having been solved in 5.0 or 5.1 is probably
rather low.
I don't know if anyone can help solving this bug, but I thought at least I
would report it.
If anyone can guide me how to compile LibreOffice on my computer and tell me
how to debug it, perhaps I could find the actual point in the code were the
deadlock happens. I am a programmer, but I don't have any experience compiling
LibreOffice, much less debugging it.
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