Near disaster in Writer

[Ryan]

Hi,

Not sure if this is the right place to be posting this. Maybe I should file a bug report? But here is what happened. I downloaded an application form for a job in RTF. When I was nearly finished completing it I renamed the file, and saved it as ODT, ready to export to PDF. I had an important appointment and it was also important to get this application off asap (i.e before I left the house). When I was finished I exported to PDF, but I decided to tweak the formatting. So I deleted the PDF and went to open my document again. But then, all of a sudden...I hear a 'beep' from my computer. I look up to see an 'Error reading file' message, just before I was about to send it! Luckily, I managed to retrieve the PDF from the trash bin, and sent it before I went out. By then I was unsure whether this was the finished article (pun intended), but had to sent it anyway.

When I got home, I decided to have one last attempt at rescuing the file. I booted into my Windows partition and manged to open the file with Writer (OOo 2.1, I think), no corruption or anything. I saved copies of the file in ODT, RTF and DOC formats, then booted back into Suse 10. All three files opened perfectly in OOo 2.3 (Novell Version 2.1). But the original document will still not open.

Sorry for rambling on. But I am not sure whether to file a bug report or not. OOo didn't crash and I can't really send the file because it contains personal information (i.e. my national insurance number, etc). But it seems like a pretty big deal, if something like this happens to anyone else they might not be so lucky.

Edit: Just to clear, the problem was: at the point where I received the 'Error reading file' message; I, all of a sudden, had absolutely no access to the file with Writer. The error message was from Writer not Suse.

[r4zoli]

Hi Ryan,
Not fully clear me, you downloaded RTF document into your home directory, right?
Under ext3 or riserfs file system? or into FAT driver used for data exchange betwen XP and linux?
You use openSuSE 10.0 on 32 or 64 bit system?
It seems to me that you have some file rights problem.

On x86_64 suse used 64bit version of OOo and it freezes several times, and it use FSF Java - it caused on my machine several problems.

If you find bugs on Novell version of OOo, report bugs on http://bugzilla.novell.com,
if on version of vanilla OpenOffice.org report on http://qa.openoffice.org/issue_handling ... ssion.html

[Ryan]

Hi r4zoli,

Thanks for your response.

you downloaded RTF document into your home directory, right?

Correct.

Under ext3 or riserfs file system?

From reading the info when Suse boots. I'm pretty sure it's reiserfs.

You use openSuSE 10.0 on 32 or 64 bit system?

I use the commercial version of Suse 10, 32 bit. I have java 1.5 and 1.6 installed but I don't run java with OOo. All the other files in my home directory open fine. And I can open files from my Windows FAT 32 partition too. I suppose my main questions are:

1) What do you think happened to the file? Do you still think it is likely a file rights issue?
2) Is there any point in submitting a bug report if I can't send the file?

[r4zoli]

I just checked issues list on qa.openoffice.org and found 75 issues regarding .rtf file, and lot of them connected only linux version.
Some causes crash. I think your file in this light, not file system problem, its OOo rtf handling problem.
In the bug report you could upload file.