[SOLVED] Object not accessible error

[thesun]

I've always saved my documents on an external hard drive using the "Save As" feature. If the document exists, I can opt to overwrite it. If not, it saves fine. As of two days ago, I'm getting an error message:

"Error saving document...
Object not accessible.
The object cannot be accessed due to insufficient user rights."

I have checked that the file and directory are rwxrwxrwx. What is going on?

[thesun]

I figured this one out but am posting the answer in case someone else has a problem: Somehow, possibly due to the power going out, there was a lock file for the file I was trying to overwrite, even though that file was not in use.

Deleting the lock file solved the issue.

[robleyd]

A lock file is created for each open document by AOO/LO, to prevent multiple access to the same document: on cleanly closing the file, AOO/LO removes the lock file. Due to the power failure, the document would not have been closed cleanly as AOO/LO terminated unexpectedly and didn't perform normal housekeeping on closedown.

[thesun]

Not sure if OpenOffice coders read this forum, but it would have been absolutely HUGE to have a "...possibly due to a lock file" note there in the otherwise cryptic error message. I scoured the internet for days trying to find it, found a post about SELinux "." files being a problem, and did all kinds of sleuthing and command line stuff, all to no avail. Only to realize, when I had no problem saving a test file in the same location, that a lock file existed. I think it's really sloppy to make an error message be so cryptic, and permissions could mean anything. All that was needed was to delete that errant lock file and I was fine. It shouldn't take THAT much time or effort, and just seems needless to not take clear, end user issues into account. It's probably a simple addition to a text file to make that a lot more useful as an error message. Just a thought/suggestion.

[thesun]

(Not singling out OpenOffice either, this is a near universal problem that programmers often overlook, to the frustration of end users. Instead of something human readable, we get "Error 8043: see log file" (and the log file is either not been turned on or has equally opaque information) or "object not accessible" or other such jargon. Just take a few additional moments to ask, "How will a user fix this?" and the level of self-sufficiency will go way up.)