← Back to team overview

desktop-packages team mailing list archive

[Bug 817326] Re: Previously-saved LibreOffice document lost by power outage (became 0 bytes long) - LibreOffice should call fsync

 

Should not this bug be set to Importance: High?

Everyone is affected by it, it's just that most of the users will not know it before they lose all what they have written.
Using a office suite that can at any time,  with a little bad luck, erase all you have written is not a reliable office suite.

I guess this is not just the libreOffice Writer, but the entire suite,
that does not do this fsync when saving.

I read on internet that a girl had saved  her document and then just
turned off here computer by holding in the power button because she was
in a hurry... It also triggered this error and here document was now a 0
byte file...

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop
Packages, which is subscribed to libreoffice in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/817326

Title:
  Previously-saved LibreOffice document lost by power outage (became 0
  bytes long) - LibreOffice should call fsync

Status in LibreOffice Productivity Suite:
  Confirmed
Status in “libreoffice” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  I was working on a document in LibreOffice today while my battery was
  low and so I was frequently saving, which I thought would help me if I
  lost power. However, when I eventually did lose power and later
  rebooted, the document had become 0 bytes long. LibreOffice was not
  able to restore the auto-saved copy either. As a result, I have lost a
  whole week of notes for one of my courses.

  After researching online, it seems that this is caused by the
  application not calling fsync() (or fdatasync()) when saving files.
  Due to delayed allocation in modern filesystems, there is no guarantee
  that the new file's data has actually been written to disk unless the
  application calls fsync. So if an app writes a new file and replaces
  the old one with it without fsync'ing the new one first then there is
  a window of opportunity during which a power failure will result in
  the loss of BOTH versions of the file. In ext4 this window is also
  much larger than in ext3.

  Theodore Tso blogged about this at http://ldn.linuxfoundation.org
  /blog-entry/delayed-allocation-and-zero-length-file-problem and
  http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-
  media/blogs/browse/2009/03/don%E2%80%99t-fear-fsync. He strongly
  recommends to call fsync in this situation.

  Please update LibreOffice to fsync() saved files so that other users
  do not lose their data like I did.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
  Package: libreoffice-core 1:3.3.2-1ubuntu5
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
  Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic x86_64
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Wed Jul 27 21:37:02 2011
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100429)
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=en_US:en
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: libreoffice
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-04-29 (89 days ago)

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/df-libreoffice/+bug/817326/+subscriptions