Ubuntu – Ubuntu crashes when I open LibreOffice

A possible way to solve this is to update the source from which the Libreoffice update is triggered. To automatically get the latest stable Libreoffice, you may need to add the following repository:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa 
sudo apt-get update sudo
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Cheers,

I get on the right track.

After another crash, I examined /var/log/syslog and turned up this:

Oct 17 20:01:14 azed-H270N kernel: [38304.615927] [drm] GPU HANG: ecode 9:0:0x85dffffb, in Xorg [969], reason: Hang on render ring, action: reset
Oct 17 20:01:14 azed-H270N kernel: [38304.615958] drm/i915: Resetting chip after gpu hang
Oct 17 20:01:14 azed-H270N kernel: [38304.616003] [drm] RC6 on
Oct 17 20:01:14 azed-H270N kernel: [38304.632462] [drm] GuC firmware load skipped
Oct 17 20:01:26 azed-H270N kernel: [38316.580869] drm/i915: Resetting chip after gpu hang

This suggested to me that the problem was indeed this bug. Post #6 in the above thread refers to the tendency of systems using the i915 driver to hang as "a well-known problem with the i915 driver".

For purposes of comparison, if anyone else has this problem, here's my kit:

azed@azed-H270N:~$ sudo lshw -C video
[sudo] password for azed:
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: Sky Lake Integrated Graphics
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 2
bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
version: 06
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pciexpress msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
resources: irq:132 memory:f6000000-f6ffffff memory:e0000000-efffffff ioport:f000(size=64) memory:c0000-dffff

OK, so what to do?

Post #12 in the above thread recommended installing xserver-xorg-video-intel as a fix:

But when I tried doing this with Synaptic, the system wouldn't let me. Another package, xserver-xorg-video-all-hwe-16.04, had to be uninstalled first. Unfortunately, my system wasn't keen to do the uninstall.

A little research revealed that the above was installed at the time of a 16.04 point-release earlier in the year. This info was consistent with the behaviour of my system, which ran OK last year.

Solution:

Found a possible solution here. Following the advice given at the above w/page, I did this:

sudo apt remove xserver-xorg-core-hwe-16.04 xserver-xorg-input-all-hwe-16.04 linux-generic-hwe-16.04 xserver-xorg-video-all-hwe-16.04
sudo apt install xserver-xorg-core
sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-input-all

Note: I omitted libgl1-mesa-dri:i386 libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 from the version of this last command given in the link above, as the 64-bit versions of these packages seemed to be already installed in my system.

Having made the above changes, I rebooted. The system came back fine.

Result:

That was a week ago. I haven't had a single "hang" since. My 16.04 system now seems to be working fine.

By the way, I don't think the hang-problem has anything much to do with Libreoffice. I am still getting /var/log/syslog-warnings like:

Oct 24 09:52:57 azed-H270N gnome-session[1684]: (soffice:2017): Gdk-WARNING **: gdk_window_set_icon_list: icons too large
Oct 24 09:53:05 azed-H270N org.gtk.vfs.Daemon[1548]: ** (gvfsd:1619): WARNING **: dbus_mount_reply: Error from org.gtk.vfs.Mountable.mount(): Failed to mount Windows share: Invalid argument
Oct 24 09:53:07 azed-H270N org.gtk.vfs.Daemon[1548]: message repeated 2 times: [ ** (gvfsd:1619): WARNING **: dbus_mount_reply: Error from org.gtk.vfs.Mountable.mount(): Failed to mount Windows share: Invalid argument]
Oct 24 09:54:26 azed-H270N gnome-session[1684]: ** (soffice:2017): WARNING **: Unknown event notification 36

but these don't seem to be causing trouble. I think my problem was a problem with Xorg. I made the association with LibreOffice because I tended to be using it (I use it a lot) whenever the system crashed.

Hope all this helps someone.

Note: if the above solution doesn't work for you, the changes can be reverted with:

sudo apt-get install --install-recommends linux-generic-hwe-16.04 xserver-xorg-hwe-16.04

I think that's it, anyway. See here:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack