Compiz/Gnome-shell crashes due to libreoffice plugin

svictor

Hi,

I think this is a bug: on ubuntu with gnome-shell, when hovering over zotero citations, compiz/gnome-shell crashes.

Details:
- Ubuntu Precise on AMD64
- Zotero 3.0.3 standalone (or firefox, makes no difference)
- Zotero Libreoffice integration 3.5.2
- Libreoffice 3.5.2.2

Steps to reproduce:
1. Open zotero
2. Open Libreoffice
3. Load some text with author-date citations. Choose a citation with several references. E.g.: Gell (2002, 2006, 2009)
4. Hover over it several times.
5. Compiz/Gnome shell crashes. It receives a "X Window System error" (see report below). Window decorations disappear, taskbar disappears, no more "Activities" corner, no more switching desktops, Alt-tab is unfunctional to switch between windows.
6. To get out of this: close libreoffice through its File menu. In a terminal enter : gnome-shell --replace.

Additional information:
- Report submitted from zotero: 1977259542
- Probably more useful: X server error, after restarting gnome-shell from terminal and reproducing the bug. See http://pastebin.com/mXcmyQJZ

Hints:
- This seems to happen only with citations with several references.
- Disabling tips in Libreoffice's "General" options prevents the problem from happening.
--> Maybe some "tip" boxes generated by zotero are too long? They do not wrap: there is just one line, extending over the limits of the screen.
- The bug started after upgrade from Ubuntu Oneiric to Precise, with new versions of libreoffice, compiz, gnome-shell. No problems on Oneiric, with same doc and same citations.

My system is otherwise stable. It only crashes when hovering over zotero citations. This is why I report here in the first place.

adamsmith

This is known. Your diagnosis is exactly right - it's the tooltips that cause the crash - but showing them is not a Zotero feature, but a LibreOffice feature - I don't see why you shouldn't turn them off, though?
Here is the thread:
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/16250/unintelligibly-long-tooltips-crash-compiz-ubuntu/

svictor

Hi! Thanks for replying!

The other post is indeed about the same problem. I understand how it depends on Libreoffice rather than Zotero to solve it.

It would be nice however if Zotero could make this info more visible. I'm used to search the net for troubleshooting, but this time the other post didn't come up. I actually spent a substantial amount of time (1) figuring what the problem was exactly (2) finding the workaround and (3) gathering information to report it.

Maybe I didn't feed google the right keywords... But I would have expected the problem to be mentioned at least here: http://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_troubleshooting

Cheers,
Victor

adamsmith

it probably should be - it's a wiki, so please feel free to do it yourself, that would be much appreciated
http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/documentation#editing_the_wiki
otherwise, someone will probably get to it eventually, but the documentation is 80% community driven.

svictor

Ok. Added to the wiki.

adamsmith

awesome, thanks!

robertknight

I've filed an upstream bug for this at https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55546

dstillman

Thanks, Robert.