Introducing LibreOffice SafeMode
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Mehrbrodt, Samuel
Safe Mode was developed to investigate and fix problems with the userconfiguration in LibreOffice. This talk will present several use cases where LibreOffice's Safe Mode helpsusers and admins to fix problems with their LibreOffice.
 Yeah, hello, my name is Samuel Niepelt. I'm working for CIB and I'm presenting the LibreOffice Safe Mode. That's a new feature in the 5.3 release. And first of all, what is Safe Mode and why do we need it? You may say no Safe Mode from Windows. When you have a broken driver, you start the Safe Mode to fix things. It disabled some drivers and some other things. Or Thunderbird and Firefox have a Safe Mode which disables their add-ons and other stuff. And yeah, we had similar problems in LibreOffice. Users were reporting problems that we couldn't reproduce and often they were related to their user profile containing some broken settings. There is an example of a bug report, writer crashes on startup because it fails to parse the registry modifications which contains the settings the user changed. Yeah, and for users it was the only solution often was to find the folder which contained the user profile and deleted. There was no real method to restore such a broken system. And so, TDF published a tender last year to implement such a Safe Mode and as CIB we did that. And yeah, the goal was to allow the user to identify and fix issues with the user profile. Yeah, how do we access the Safe Mode? There are three options. LibreOffice has a in the menu and a command in the help menu restarting Safe Mode. Then you have a start menu entry in Windows, LibreOffice Safe Mode and a command line option that should be minus minus. This is auto correction made it into a long dash. Yeah, you can use that on macOS or Linux. Yeah, what are the features? It uses a temporary clean user profile and it also disables hardware acceleration like OpenGL and OpenCL temporarily because there were some users experiencing crashes due to OpenGL on startup and when you can't start LibreOffice you also cannot fix that only by manually editing the configuration files. So this is one thing we made easier with that. Yeah, and when you start it you get that dialogue which has some options to restore and reset several things. I will show it later and I will show some use cases what you can do with that. And also it allows to create a CIB file from the user profile which helps if you want to send it to someone or upload it on the bug tracker for the developers to analyze it. Yeah, okay the first use case LibreOffice doesn't start what should I do? And before we told users try deleting the folder containing user profile. Yeah, whereas that folder it differs on different operating systems so they needed to find that and rename it or delete it. That means all their settings are gone or their extensions are gone and also their word book is gone, the words they added to their own word book and stuff like that. Another thing that could be broken is that it doesn't start because OpenGL has a crash and in that case the users need to put some setting in the Windows registry or edit the configuration manually. Yeah, and now we tell them start LibreOffice in safe mode with one of the methods I mentioned and then you already see it will hopefully start up again then it was an issue with the user profile and then yeah you have some options to disable hardware acceleration or to reset certain parts of the user profile or the whole profile. Okay, another use case I changed option X-Ypsilon and now LibreOffice doesn't work anymore or it works different than before and before the solution was yeah delete your user profile and now we can tell them go to the safe mode and restore the last configuration backup. Yeah, there is a backup functionality included it is not yet enabled by default in 5.3 but you can enable it by setting some any options I will explain that later. Hopefully it will be enabled for the next release, yeah? You've got an auto save for configuration because no one I know has configuration backup except in the normal system backup. Yeah, there will be backups created when you change something you can configure what will be included in that backup I will explain that later. Okay, the next use case I broke everything I want to reset LibreOffice factory settings before the solution was delete your user profile with the same problem where is it now they can go to safe mode and select reset entire user profile. The next use case my extensions my extension don't work or my extensions don't work anymore okay right or they are breaking things before you could go to the extension manager and disable or remove them one by one that's fine now you can disable or reset them with one click or even remove them the user extensions at least there are three types of extensions bundled the extensions we deliver with LibreOffice then you can install them shared for all users and for these two types you can only disable them and for your own extensions which are only for the current user you can remove them okay another use case I was requested to send my user profile to some bug tracker or some support support system where do I find it and before we had a nice wiki page with instructions and windows it is an update LibreOffice for user and linux it is in the home directory that config LibreOffice for user etc and now you can find that folder by going to the safe mode and there is an advanced section there you can can either click a button to show the user profile folder or directly create a zip file out of it and yeah do whatever you want with that zip file okay that's the part of the configuration for the backups yeah there are various any properties and the default values are what is given here default means in current master hopefully 5.4 so secure user config means it the backup is enabled yeah false means it's disabled it's clear then secure user config compress is whether it will be compressed or not number of copies the next item is how many copies are kept the default is 2 and then there is a num an item secure user config mode there are three numbers you can give zero one and two zero means it backups only the registry modifications um yeah like the changes you did to the settings then one is the default it also backups auto correction auto text basic scripts configurations databases registry scripts templates and the word book um yeah we excluded certain parts like the gallery because that might become too big and two means the whole user profile whatever is in there because extensions can also put content there maybe you want to backup that too secure user config extensions is the feature that remembers the last state of extensions that worked so if you install a new extension and LibreOffice doesn't work afterwards you can restore the last working state of the extensions meaning that extension will be disabled at the next start okay how to customize the default values the these values are defined in the installation directory program as office.ini or as office rc on linux i don't know what is in macOS then you can use the minus nth command line parameter to give each of these options a different value or a normal environment variable okay now the demo okay so um i just start by customizing my toolbar and somehow i managed to remove all the icons there yeah and now i have a missing very lots of icons for my toolbar um then i can go to restart and save mode restart just giving some java warnings because java isn't configured anymore and then i get this dialogue um yeah i can restore the last known working configuration from the backup configure is um can disable our user extensions i don't have an extension so that's disabled or disabled hardware acceleration extensions can de install uninstall or user extensions or reset the state of shared extensions or of bundled extensions i mentioned all of that what it means or i can reset to factory settings there is an option reset settings and user interface modifications uh that might be helpful for such a case as now it resets toolbar customizations menu bar customization and also everything you change in tools options you might want to do that if a new release contains an updated menu bar or an updated toolbar um if you customize it before you won't get the update so you can reset it here um yeah or in my case i could restore the toolbar as it was before right changes and restart and there it is as it used to be okay now once again in safe mode i can use the start menu and treat to show that there it is LibreOffice safe mode um yeah or no safe mode try again okay we found the back um okay so there's the advanced section um says if you experience problems that cannot be resolved by using the safe mode you can get help that leads to the LibreOffice site where you can report it back or whatever or has links to forums then there is show user profile which opens the folder with the user profile um the folder safe mode contains the backed up user profile um yeah because this is the clean user profile now and then there is create zip archive from user profile and then you can you have it there yeah that was the LibreOffice safe mode are there any questions yeah uh because there is no java configuration anymore i might have something that uses java is able for example your your room extensions in safe mode and there wouldn't be any need except if you have some some bundled extensions that you want yeah probably i have something that requires java it was flashing that um start splash screen that shows some lines of doing something with its attention so you probably have lots of yeah yeah yeah set uh um backup is to add uh database to this backup system yeah and i would be afraid of large database and how about the calculation of size in order to uh get the users have it exceed some value or to see the disk of the patient goes below 10% I had to go? Yeah, that's one reason why it is only enabled in master. We have some time frame until the 5.4 release to hopefully find those corner cases. Databases, I don't really know what it contains, but it doesn't contain your base databases because you save them somewhere wherever you want. They are not, but you've saved in the user profile, as far as I know. It just contains the configuration stuff, and it's all a Z-compress. So when I test the Z-stuff, you might have about self-backups, which have the same size, but some users can do that, but usually you have just one backup. So it's one for us to consider of the user configuration. No danger for this one. It was just a negative. You always have danger that the heart is maybe full with the end of the heart. By the way, what happens in case of the disk is full? Normally, you can go to the supermarket and see. I'm confused. OK, my time is over. So I was wondering, normally when you edit a document, you make a mistake. You have an undo button, and it has a nice label saying what changes that you would like to revert. The dialogue you just showed for an average user, I think, look very scary. And if it just had a label undo the removal of the icons, I think that would be more user-friendly. I mean, a user is quite panicky in a situation like this, where he has to go to Safe Mode. So any type of scary dialogue, this comfort of more, do you think it's feasible to have nice labels like with undo for what you are going to reset? Yeah, one could list the configuration options. They usually have labels. It feels scary. Yeah, it won't be so nice like undo, but maybe there is some room for improvement. Yeah, good idea. OK, thank you. Thank you.
 Yeah, hello, my name is Samuel Niepelt. I'm working for CIB and I'm presenting the LibreOffice  Safe Mode. That's a new feature in the 5.3 release. And first of all, what is Safe Mode  and why do we need it? You may say no Safe Mode from Windows. When you have a broken  driver, you start the Safe Mode to fix things. It disabled some drivers and some other things.  Or Thunderbird and Firefox have a Safe Mode which disables their add-ons and other stuff.  And yeah, we had similar problems in LibreOffice. Users were reporting problems that we couldn't  reproduce and often they were related to their user profile containing some broken settings.  There is an example of a bug report, writer crashes on startup because it fails to parse  the registry modifications which contains the settings the user changed. Yeah, and for users  it was the only solution often was to find the folder which contained the user profile and deleted.  There was no real method to restore such a broken system. And so, TDF published a tender  last year to implement such a Safe Mode and as CIB we did that. And yeah, the goal was to allow  the user to identify and fix issues with the user profile. Yeah, how do we access the Safe Mode?  There are three options. LibreOffice has a in the menu and a command in the help menu restarting  Safe Mode. Then you have a start menu entry in Windows, LibreOffice Safe Mode and a command line  option that should be minus minus. This is auto correction made it into a long dash. Yeah,  you can use that on macOS or Linux. Yeah, what are the features? It uses a temporary clean user  profile and it also disables hardware acceleration like OpenGL and OpenCL temporarily because there  were some users experiencing crashes due to OpenGL on startup and when you can't start LibreOffice  you also cannot fix that only by manually editing the configuration files. So this is one thing we  made easier with that. Yeah, and when you start it you get that dialogue which has some options to  restore and reset several things. I will show it later and I will show some use cases what you can  do with that. And also it allows to create a CIB file from the user profile which helps if you  want to send it to someone or upload it on the bug tracker for the developers to analyze it.  Yeah, okay the first use case LibreOffice doesn't start what should I do? And before we told users  try deleting the folder containing user profile. Yeah, whereas that folder it differs on different  operating systems so they needed to find that and rename it or delete it. That means all their  settings are gone or their extensions are gone and also their word book is gone, the words they added  to their own word book and stuff like that. Another thing that could be broken is that  it doesn't start because OpenGL has a crash and in that case the users need to put  some setting in the Windows registry or edit the configuration manually. Yeah, and now we tell them  start LibreOffice in safe mode with one of the methods I mentioned and then you already see  it will hopefully start up again then it was an issue with the user profile and then  yeah you have some options to disable hardware acceleration or to reset certain parts of the  user profile or the whole profile. Okay, another use case I changed option X-Ypsilon and now  LibreOffice doesn't work anymore or it works different than before and before the solution was  yeah delete your user profile and now we can tell them go to the safe mode and restore the last  configuration backup. Yeah, there is a backup functionality included it is not yet enabled  by default in 5.3 but you can enable it by setting some any options I will explain that later.  Hopefully it will be enabled for the next release, yeah?  You've got an auto save for configuration because no one I know has configuration backup  except in the normal system backup. Yeah, there will be backups created when you change something  you can configure what will be included in that backup I will explain that later.  Okay, the next use case I broke everything I want to reset LibreOffice factory settings  before the solution was delete your user profile with the same problem where is it now they can  go to safe mode and select reset entire user profile. The next use case my extensions my extension  don't work or my extensions don't work anymore okay right or they are breaking things  before you could go to the extension manager and disable or remove them one by one that's fine  now you can disable or reset them with one click or even remove them the user extensions at least  there are three types of extensions bundled the extensions we deliver with LibreOffice  then you can install them shared for all users and for these two types you can only disable them  and for your own extensions which are only for the current user you can remove them  okay another use case I was requested to send my user profile to some bug tracker or some support  support system where do I find it and before we had a nice wiki page with instructions and windows  it is an update LibreOffice for user and linux it is in the home directory that config LibreOffice  for user etc and now you can find that folder by going to the safe mode and there is an advanced  section there you can can either click a button to show the user profile folder or directly  create a zip file out of it and yeah do whatever you want with that zip file  okay that's the part of the configuration for the backups  yeah there are various any properties  and the default values are what is given here default means in current master hopefully 5.4  so secure user config means it the backup is enabled  yeah false means it's disabled it's clear then secure user config compress is whether it will  be compressed or not number of copies the next item is how many copies are kept the default is 2  and then there is a num an item secure user config mode there are three numbers you can give  zero one and two zero means it backups only the registry modifications  um yeah like the changes you did to the settings then one is the default  it also backups auto correction auto text basic scripts configurations databases registry scripts  templates and the word book um yeah we excluded certain parts like the gallery because that  might become too big and two means the whole user profile whatever is in there because extensions  can also put content there maybe you want to backup that too secure user config extensions  is the feature that remembers the last state of extensions that worked so if you install a new  extension and LibreOffice doesn't work afterwards you can restore the last working state of the  extensions meaning that extension will be disabled at the next start okay how to customize the default  values the these values are defined in the installation directory program as office.ini  or as office rc on linux i don't know what is in macOS then you can use the minus  nth command line parameter to give each of these options a different value  or a normal environment variable okay now the demo  okay so um i just start by customizing my toolbar and somehow i managed to remove all the icons there  yeah and now i have a missing very lots of icons for my toolbar  um then i can go to restart and save mode restart just giving some java warnings because java  isn't configured anymore and then i get this dialogue um yeah i can restore the last known  working configuration from the backup configure is um can disable our user extensions i don't have  an extension so that's disabled or disabled hardware acceleration extensions can de install  uninstall or user extensions or reset the state of shared extensions or of bundled extensions  i mentioned all of that what it means or i can reset to factory settings  there is an option reset settings and user interface modifications  uh that might be helpful for such a case as now it resets toolbar customizations menu bar  customization and also everything you change in tools options you might want to do that if  a new release contains an updated menu bar or an updated toolbar um if you customize it before  you won't get the update so you can reset it here um yeah or in my case i could restore the  toolbar as it was before right changes and restart and there it is as it used to be okay now once again  in safe mode i can use the start menu and treat to show that  there it is LibreOffice safe mode  um yeah or no safe mode  try again  okay we found the back um okay so there's the advanced section  um says if you experience problems that cannot be resolved by using the safe mode you can get  help that leads to the LibreOffice site where you can report it back or whatever or has links to  forums then there is show user profile which opens the folder with the user profile um  the folder safe mode contains the backed up user profile  um yeah because this is the clean user profile now and then there is create zip archive from  user profile and then you can you have it there yeah that was the LibreOffice safe mode are there  any questions yeah uh because there is no java configuration anymore  i might have something that uses java  is able for example your your room extensions in safe mode and there wouldn't be any need except if  you have some some bundled extensions that you want  yeah probably i have something that requires java  it was flashing that um start  splash screen that shows some lines of doing something with its attention so you probably  have lots of yeah yeah  yeah  set uh um backup is to add uh database to this backup system yeah and i would be afraid of large  database and how about the calculation of size in order to uh get the users have it exceed some value  or to see the disk of the patient goes below 10%  I had to go?  Yeah, that's one reason why it is only enabled in master.  We have some time frame until the 5.4 release  to hopefully find those corner cases.  Databases, I don't really know what it contains,  but it doesn't contain your base databases  because you save them somewhere wherever you want.  They are not, but you've saved in the user profile,  as far as I know.  It just contains the configuration stuff,  and it's all a Z-compress.  So when I test the Z-stuff, you might have about self-backups,  which have the same size, but some users  can do that, but usually you have just one backup.  So it's one for us to consider of the user configuration.  No danger for this one.  It was just a negative.  You always have danger that the heart is maybe full  with the end of the heart.  By the way, what happens in case of the disk is full?  Normally, you can go to the supermarket and see.  I'm confused.  OK, my time is over.  So I was wondering, normally when you edit a document,  you make a mistake.  You have an undo button, and it has a nice label saying  what changes that you would like to revert.  The dialogue you just showed for an average user,  I think, look very scary.  And if it just had a label undo the removal of the icons,  I think that would be more user-friendly.  I mean, a user is quite panicky in a situation like this,  where he has to go to Safe Mode.  So any type of scary dialogue, this comfort of more,  do you think it's feasible to have nice labels like with undo  for what you are going to reset?  Yeah, one could list the configuration options.  They usually have labels.  It feels scary.  Yeah, it won't be so nice like undo,  but maybe there is some room for improvement.  Yeah, good idea.  OK, thank you.  Thank you.
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