2011-05-24

OpenOffice and LibreOffice starts slow

Sometimes there can be even annoying problems with Open Source software.

A few days ago I got annoyed by OpenOffice starting slow. Then I decided to switch to LibreOffice and first thought it helped. Then a day after it was slow again.

Finally I found out that it starts slow whenever I have the VPN connection open (using SonicWall NetExtender).

After searching the internet a lot without finding anything that helped I landed at LinuxQuestions at this thread: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/double-clicking-on-open-office-files-leads-to-very-slow-opening-808048/

Running
sudo tcpdump -nnl -i any -s 1536 dst port 53

on the commandline discovered that LibreOffice was searching for .(none) via DNS and the VPN inserts it's DNS servers right in front of every other DNS entry in /etc/resolv.conf - grmpf!

So similar to what is mentioned in the thread above, I had to add
127.0.0.1    myhostname.(none)

to the file /etc/hosts - done. This and some other small, but annoying changes in reality need to be done at each install of a new system. - Of course, there are even more of those annoyances on Windows, but it seems you can't get rid completely of those... :-(

Related posts: Ubuntu 10.04 & docking station part 1 + part 2, Locale configuration on Ubuntu, Firefox change default page format.

5 comments:

Vogt said...

Thanks a lot! I had the same problem.

Anonymous said...

Thank you very much! Problem solved.
MM

Anonymous said...

Wow, you save my day. Brand new computer, solid state drive, everything is lightning fast. On the second day, LibreOffice is as slow as on my 6 years old laptop and I don't know why. This very small fix just solve my problem :) Cheers

Anonymous said...

Thank you! Works perfectly on xubuntu 11.04

Anonymous said...

This problem was sucking the life out of me!! THANK YOU for the fix. I only see it at work for some reason. When I am at home and connected to the same VPN, this does not occur.