Bug 68240 - Cannot start LibreOffice
Summary: Cannot start LibreOffice
Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Installation (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
4.2.0.0.alpha0+ Master
Hardware: Other Windows (All)
: medium major
Assignee: Stephan Bergmann
URL:
Whiteboard: target:4.2.0
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2013-08-18 11:44 UTC by Olivier R.
Modified: 2013-09-09 11:38 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


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Description Olivier R. 2013-08-18 11:44:37 UTC
After installing LO on Windows 7, I try to launch it, but I always get a "Fatal error".

The message is: "The program cannot be started. A general error occurred while accessing your central configuration."

If I delete the profile, same error, same message.
Comment 1 bfoman (inactive) 2013-08-18 15:02:37 UTC
Which build (paste full version details) did you install?
Comment 2 Olivier R. 2013-08-18 16:04:50 UTC
LO doesn’t launch so I can’t give details except the installer name:
master~2013-08-17_23.59.35_LibreOfficeDev_4.2.0.0.alpha0_Win_x86.exe

It’s been two weeks that I can’t launch Master builds downloaded from here:
http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/master/Win-x86@6-debug/

or here:
http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/master/Win-x86@39/
Comment 3 bfoman (inactive) 2013-08-18 17:44:51 UTC
Does this build work:
http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/master/Win-X86@42/current/?
Comment 4 Olivier R. 2013-08-18 18:27:40 UTC
No. Same issue.
Comment 5 Stephan Bergmann 2013-08-20 14:38:35 UTC
(In reply to comment #0)
> The message is: "The program cannot be started. A general error occurred
> while accessing your central configuration."

That means that the call to LanguageSelection::prepareLanguage in Desktop::Init (desktop/source/app/app.cxx) returned false with a status other than LanguageSelection::LS_STATUS_CANNOT_DETERMINE_LANGUAGE.

Olivier, what is your Windows locale?  (Whatever that means exactly on Windows; adding erAck on cc, maybe he knows whether something has changed here recently, assuming older versions of LO did work for you on that Windows 7 machine.)
Comment 6 Olivier R. 2013-08-20 15:56:11 UTC
It’s Windows 7 SP1 French.

Previous versions of LO work. Other than LO-dev, I currently use LO 4.1.1.1.
Comment 7 Eike Rathke 2013-08-20 16:28:46 UTC
@Stephan:
In LanguageSelection::prepareLanguage() and below are several places where LS_STATUS_CONFIGURATIONACCESS_BROKEN is set if an exception is caught from the configuration access. None of the surrounding code was changed during the last months. Only LanguageSelection::setDefaultLanguage() now uses LanguageTag::convertToLanguageType() since July, but that doesn't throw an exception that could lead to this status being set. None of the code that may set LS_STATUS_CONFIGURATIONACCESS_BROKEN accesses the Windows settings, only our own configuration.

@Olivier:
Are your Windows Regional Settings standard French (France)? Or set to something different? Does the behavior change if in Regional Settings you select English (USA) before starting LO? I assume it does not change and the error persists.
Comment 8 bfoman (inactive) 2013-08-20 18:54:19 UTC
(In reply to comment #2)
> It’s been two weeks that I can’t launch Master builds downloaded from here:
> http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/master/Win-x86@6-debug/

Checked with:
Version: 4.2.0.0.alpha0+
Build ID: 73c02c20b19702dbe662fe0d80601049f015d8ac
TinderBox: Win-x86@6-debug, Branch:master, Time: 2013-08-13_21:26:14
Windows 8.1 Enterprise Preview 64 bit

Could not reproduce. English Windows. Parallel install.
Comment 9 Olivier R. 2013-08-21 16:00:49 UTC
(In reply to comment #7)
> Are your Windows Regional Settings standard French (France)? Or set to
> something different?

Everything is set to French language.
The only thing which is not standard is my keyboard layout.

> Does the behavior change if in Regional Settings you
> select English (USA) before starting LO? I assume it does not change and the
> error persists.

I have to install the English language pack. I’ll answer once it’s done.
Comment 10 Olivier R. 2013-08-21 17:55:17 UTC
With Windows set to English, I still get the same error message.
Comment 11 Stephan Bergmann 2013-08-23 14:46:28 UTC
I'll rework that LanguageSelection::prepare code on master so that it hopefully gives us better information on what is going wrong for Olivier.
Comment 12 Olivier R. 2013-08-26 07:27:23 UTC
I tried to launch this version:
http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/master/Win-x86@6-debug/2013-08-26_05.05.19/
and it worked.

Version: 4.2.0.0.alpha0+
Build ID: d06e5adc21f29c8954021a60445a5c0810731d9e
TinderBox: Win-x86@6-debug, Branch:master, Time: 2013-08-26_05:05:19
Comment 13 Stephan Bergmann 2013-08-26 07:52:40 UTC
(In reply to comment #12)
> I tried to launch this version:
> http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/master/Win-x86@6-debug/2013-08-26_05.
> 05.19/
> and it worked.

That's funny, given that I had not yet come around to "rework that LanguageSelection::prepare code on master so that it hopefully gives us better information on what is going wrong" (comment 11).  But I notice that Eike pushed quite a number of changes for i18nlangtag on Friday, maybe they fixed the problem for good after all.  Anyway, I'll still do that rework, in case this or something similar hits us ever again.
Comment 14 Eike Rathke 2013-08-26 10:02:03 UTC
(In reply to comment #13)
> Eike pushed quite a number of changes for i18nlangtag on Friday, maybe they
> fixed the problem for good after all.

I doubt it, but who knows ;-)
Comment 15 Olivier R. 2013-08-26 10:19:35 UTC
The other difference this time is that I uninstalled LO-dev before reinstalling. I also deleted what remained (python cache folder of Lightproof-en and the profile).
Comment 16 Stephan Bergmann 2013-08-26 12:33:01 UTC
(In reply to comment #0)
> If I delete the profile, same error, same message.

(In reply to comment #15)
> The other difference this time is that I uninstalled LO-dev before
> reinstalling. I also deleted what remained (python cache folder of
> Lightproof-en and the profile).

Just to clarify, with "profile" you mean <https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/UserProfile>, right?
Comment 17 Commit Notification 2013-08-26 13:44:49 UTC
Stephan Bergmann committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=37e36eca17563b2580abf97f4f46a470387e5b70

Related fdo#68240: Rework langselect to provide better error messages



The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds
Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 18 Stephan Bergmann 2013-08-26 13:49:43 UTC
Olivier, since you were the only one who was apparently able to reproduce this, and claim that it works for you again, I tentatively set this to WORKSFORME for now.  Feel free to reopen when there is new information.

Also, with the above commit in future nightly builds, the "The program cannot be started. A general error occurred while accessing your central configuration." message box, should it ever occur again, will contain additional information.
Comment 19 Olivier R. 2013-08-26 15:29:41 UTC
(In reply to comment #16)

> Just to clarify, with "profile" you mean
> <https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/UserProfile>, right?

Yes.

Thanks for having a look into this.
Comment 20 Lucas B. 2013-09-07 16:49:48 UTC
I had this same problem (same symptoms). So, I wanted to let you guys know of my experiences with it.

The problem happens with en-US/LibreOffice_4.1.1_Win_x86.msi.

This version, however, works for me, as it did for Olivier:
http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/master/Win-x86@6-debug/2013-08-26_05.05.19/

My copy of Windows was installed from a DVD marked as:
WIN PRO 7 64-BIT ENGLISH 1PK DSP OEI DVD

I live in the US and use English for everything.

One difference between my computer a lot of people's [Windows] computers is that my user account is a Standard account rather than an Administrator account. But that didn't seem to be a factor here, because I tried installing 4.1.1 with the administrator account, too. (Didn't work.) There are some programs out there, though, that don't get along with Standard accounts. So, that's why I mention this, and also because I don't see many people complaining about this problem, which I find strange.
Comment 21 Lucas B. 2013-09-07 16:55:22 UTC
Why do you guys have email addresses public here? (Mouse over user names.) All a spam bot has to do is look for mailto's in the HTML.
Comment 23 Stephan Bergmann 2013-09-09 11:38:37 UTC
(In reply to comment #22)
> If you google the error message ("The program cannot be started. A general
> error occurred while accessing your central configuration"), you see that
> this issue occurred regularly for a long time.

One of the first "substantial activities" LO does during startup is determine the locale to use, via querying its configuration machinery.  If anything goes wrong there (and there's very many very different things that could go wrong), the result is always the same "The program cannot be started. A general error occurred while accessing your central configuration" message box.  That is the reason for the commit mentioned in comment 17, to get more detailed error messages in the future, to be better able to distinguish the various ways things have actually gone wrong.