Libreoffice: XAllocID error (arch & linux newbie)

I updated my Arch a couple of days ago and libreoffice apps won't start up. When attempting to run from a command line, the following error appears:
soffice.bin: xcb_io.c: 470: _XAllocID: Assertion 'ret != inval_id' failed.
After spending the last two days trying to figure this out on my own, I am raising the white flag and asking for help!
Incidentally, pacman output the following error during the update:
g_module_open() failed for /usr/lib/gdk-pixbuf-2.0/2.10.0/loaders/libpixbufloader-tiff.so: libjpeg.so.62: cannot open shared object file: No
such file or directory
I don't know if this is related - and I haven't been able to track down any info about this either. If it seems unrelated to the libreoffice problem then please ignore...
Thanks,
Ms. Muss

I'm thinking it may be a mirror problem as well. I got the latest mirror list and did a ranking of all mirrors, following the instructions in the arch wiki article. Still have the problem.
Here are the top 16 mirrors in my mirrorlist:
Server = http://less.cogeco.net/pub/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/archl … o/os/$arch
Server = http://mirror.its.dal.ca/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://cake.lib.fit.edu/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://mirror.rit.edu/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://lug.mtu.edu/archlinux/ftpfull/$repo/os/$arch
Server = ftp://less.cogeco.net/pub/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://mirror.yellowfiber.net/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://mirrors.rutgers.edu/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://mirrors.kernel.org/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://mirror.nl.leaseweb.net/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://archlinux.mirror.kangaroot.net/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://mir1.archlinux.fr/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/ftp.archli … o/os/$arch
Server = http://mirror.ece.vt.edu/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://mirror.lividpenguin.com/pub/arch … o/os/$arch
Can you see a problem with any of these?
Thanks,
Ms. Muss

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    RIPLinux’s e2fsck did find some issues with the Arch partition and I had it repair them all. I checked again afterwards that all the files were still there, and they were. With the partition now known to be clean, and the superblock repaired from one of the backups, all should have been well. However, Arch still wouldn’t (and still won’t) boot.
    RIPLinux has a kind of a chain loader function, so I had it attempt to start up Arch for me. However, this was flummoxed by the fact that Arch addresses all my hard drive partitions as /dev/sdax and RIPLinux addresses them as /dev/hdax. Hence, without a common language, it was hard to get the one to start the other. Still, using this function, I have been able to get a crippled version of Arch running on the machine again. No modules had been loaded, and so it couldn’t do almost anything, but there it was (and is), Arch Linux Duke, at the CLI level. From there, I can see all the files, I can move freely in and out of my user account and the root account, but I can’t make the thing actually boot properly.
    If you have read this far, you are a trooper.  Summarizing what I know, the hardware is good, the file system is clean, the superblock is good, I can mount it cleanly from a live CD and I can chain load a crippled version of Arch. Here is the boot process blow-by-blow. When I try to do a normal boot, the Windows NT 4.0 loader passes control to the Lilo boot sector I have placed on hda1 (sda1 in Duke’s parlance). Lilo takes over, present a menu and when I select Duke, takes off. Arch Linux Duke starts to boot. It gets a good long way along, all the way along to:
    :: Loading udev events                [Pass]
    :: Mount root Read-only
    :: Checking file systems
    This is where it stops.
    The next thing I see is:
    /dev/sda6
    The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else) then the superblock is corrupt and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
        E2fsck –b 8193 <device>
    I then get a sort of character based splash screen that says
    **********FILE SYSTEM CHECK FAILED ****************************
    *   Please repair manually and reboot. Note that the root file system
    *   is currently mounted read-only. To remount it read-write, type:
    *   mount –n –o remount,rw /.  When you exit the maintenance
    *   shell, the system will reboot automatically
    Give root password for maintenance
    At this point, I give the root password and enter the maintenance shell as root. I typed in “mount” and the first entry I got back is
    /dev/sda6 on / type ext3 (rw)
    This is exactly the root partition that the start up complains about. It is clearly there.  I can see it, I can walk around it… it is clearly there. Why won’t it boot? Despite the message, the superblock is fine – it passes every test e2fsck can throw at it.
    At this point, I did a “e2fsck /dev/hda6 (which is how RIPLinux would have passed it into Arch” and it says it is “clean”. I suspect that the Superblock message is because Arch sees root as sda6, while RIP passed it in as hda6...
    Deciding to see what Arch would be seeing as it tried to set things up in the boot sequence, I tried the following next:
    # mknod “/dev/root2” b 3 6   
    (“3” because RIPLinux refers to my hard drive as IDE, while Arch refers to it by major number “8”, which is SCSI. By the way, it IS an IDE drive – not sure why Arch insists on using the sdx nomenclature instead of hdx)
    Then I entered “mount /dev/root2 /mnt/hda6” and “ls /mnt/hda6”
    All was well. I can make the node, I can mount it, and I can see the contents. All is clearly well, but something is clearly wrong enough that Arch can’t boot.
    I am totally out of ideas. I have tried every trick I know and am out of tricks. I would welcome any insights as to what I could try to get this venerable Arch installation back on its legs.
    By the way, the key section of the /etc/lilo.conf file (lest anyone want to know) is:
    image = /boot/vmlinuz26
       root = /dev/sda6
       label = ArchLinux-Duke
       initrd = /boot/kernel26.img
       read-only
    I am stumped. Thanks in advance for any and all pointers you may be able to offer.
    Last edited by mac57 (2014-06-02 17:42:21)

    Folks, thanks for all your helpful comments, and I wanted to report back to you that I finally overcame the issue, and ArchLinux-Duke (2007) is once again executing flawlessly on my old Pentium Pro 200 system. I won't bother reporting here all the blind allies I went down as I tried to figure out what was wrong, but in the end, literally moments before I was about to give up and overwrite my Arch installation with a new Linux variant (antiX seemed well suited for such old and low power hardware), my attention was drawn to a note I had made in my files back in 2007 about a problem with similar symptoms. In that case, I had just deleted ZenWalk Linux from the hard drive (both Arch and Zen had been on the drive), and merged several partitions to make use of the newly free space. This had changed Arch's view of the drive lettering, and what had been its /dev/sddx root device was now /dev/sdcx. Arch failed to boot, throwing off the same errors I was seeing now. I wish I had recalled that note a month or so ago! It would have saved me a lot of work and a lot of frustration.
    At any rate, as a last step, and testing the idea that maybe the drive lettering had changed for some reason, I repeatedly manually booted Arch, specifying root=/dev/sda6, then /dev/sdb6, then /dev/sdd6, and finally, /dev/sdc6. Eureka! Arch now considered itself to be on /dev/sdc6 whereas previously it had been on /dev/sda6. This got me part way there, but the boot failed at the filesystem check stage and threw me into root. I disabled the file system check in /etc/rc.sysinit and got farther. Then I cleaned up /etc/fstab to agree with the new sdc naming, and I was back on the air fully.
    So, what had happened was that Arch had changed its view of the drive it was on from sda6 to sdc6. While I could not understand why this "sudden" change had occurred, at least I had a solution, and had Arch back up and running.
    Trolling through the rest of my notes, I found the answer. In 2012, the Tekram SCSI card in the machine failed, and I ultimately replaced it with an Adaptec card. The Tekram card did not have a BIOS segment on it. The Adaptec card did. My guess is that this caused the two internal SCSI devices I have built into the system (Iomega ZIP and Jaz respectively) to be enumerated first, claiming the "sda" and "sdb". device names. That left "sdc" for the root device, and that is where Arch went next.  This is my guess anyway.
    I should have caught this issue back in 2012, at the time, but from my notes, I can see that I tested the new card thoroughly using the  Windows NT 4.0 side of the machine, but never thought to bring up Arch as well. Hence, this problem lay dormant for two years, before I attempted to fire up Arch last month and blundered right into it.
    It has not all been bad. I have learned more about the ext2 and ext3 file systems and superblocks in the intervening time than I will ever need to use. I have learned how to manually boot Linux on a machine whose BIOS is so old that it cannot address the disk cylinder that the kernel is on and I have completely refreshed the many general Linux skills that used to just flow from my finger tips. It has been a frustrating experience, but ultimately a successful and useful one.
    Just wanted to let everyone know that this is now [SOLVED]. I would mark the post as such, but I don't see any obvious way to do that. Thanks again everyone.

  • [SOLVED] Installing Windows XP after Arch Linux

    I'm not sure at all where to post this, so I've decided to do it here since I have the problem on a laptop... Please move if it should be somewhere else.
    I installed Arch Linux on my new laptop a month ago or so, and am very pleased to have found the very kind of distro I've been looking for. However, I'm having trouble with my graphics (either wine doesn't support it, or the drivers don't have 2D/3D acceleration), and now I want to install Windows XP next to Arch Linux.
    Using a GParted LiveCD, I've repartitioned the harddrive as such: Unpartitioned Space (27GB), Linux (197GB), SWAP (5GB).
    I've also removed the bootable flag from the Linux partition, just to be sure. However, when I try to install Windows XP, it gets stuck after unpacking a bunch of drivers, giving me a bluescreen that tells me to make sure the hardware isn't broken, check my harddrive with CHKDSK /F, or look for viruses. Ofcourse I know none of these are true, since I'm running Arch Linux just fine.
    A friend suggested that maybe my hardware isn't supported by Windows XP, which sounds like the most reasonable explanation so far, but I can't find a list of supported hardware. The M$ homepage basicly says
    "Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)"
    for CPU, which doesn't help me at all.
    My hardware is:
    Processor: Intel Celeron 2.2 Ghz
    Memory: 2GB DDR2
    Graphics: Intel 4500MHD
    And the laptop is called an "eMachines E525", though that doesn't say much since there are very, very many called this.
    Can anyone give me any hints as to what I might be doing wrong?
    Last edited by Noxic (2010-05-29 18:44:32)

    Sounds like something I'll want to do. Where did you download the drivers? Do I have to follow some guide? Thanks for the tip
    EDIT:
    Indeed I will want to install AHCI drivers, otherwise Arch Linux fails to boot quite badly. There is also a problem preventing me from booting when I'm using AHCI though;
    At boot, Arch Linux checks /dev/sda1 (NTFS) for errors, and expects to check an ext2 filesystem. Obviously, however, /dev/sda1 is an NTFS filesystem.
    Since it tries to read the NTFS partition as an ext2 filesystem, it panics. Arch Linux then prompts me for the root password (or Ctrl+D to reboot), but I've disabled root login and can therefore do nothing at this point.
    I have a GParted livecd and the Arch Linux livecd, so editing files on any of the filesystem isn't a problem at all, but I don't know what to do at this point. Help?
    Last edited by Noxic (2010-05-29 12:40:33)

  • Canon PIXMA MP640 WiFi on Arch Linux x86_64

    I have a Canon PIXMA MP640 series multifunctional device connected wirelessly to my home router. On Windows Vista the device works flawlessly, I can print or scan without any problems. Now I decided to configure at least the printer part on my Arch Linux x86_64, which I dual-boot with Vista on the same laptop.
    I went through the Wiki entry for CUPS and SAMBA. I did install all the necessary packages, that is:
    1) cups (ver. 1.4.6), ghostscript (ver. 9.01), gsfonts (ver. 1.0.7pre44) - for CUPS
    2) cnijfilter-mp640 (ver. 3.20) and its dependencies: cnijfilter-common (ver. 3.00), lib32-libcups, lib32-popt - drivers for this particular model
    3) samba (ver. 3.5.6) and gamin (ver. 0.1.10) – for SAMBA
    Then I added cups and samba to DAEMONS section of the /etc/rc.conf file
    DAEMONS=(@syslog-ng !network @netfs @crond hal alsa wicd bluetooth laptop-mode !openntpd @cups @samba)
    copied Samba configuration file
    cp /etc/samba/smb.conf.default /etc/samba/smb.conf
    in which I changed only one entry – name of my workgroup, and then I restarted my system.
    In System Settings as root I went to Sharing→Samba and checked if everything seems fine – see print screen below.
    http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/300/samba1.png
    Then in Printer Configuration I chosed New network printer and I tried to fill all the boxes with information I have about my printer – see below. I also pointed to the specific .ppd file - /usr/share/cups/model/canonmp640.ppd.
    http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/6650/samba2.png
    The printer name and it's localization I got from my router – see below.
    http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/3982/samba3.png
    As you all see on print screen No 2 I'm getting “Bad URI – need printer name” error from CUPS. I “googled” about it, but still haven't been able to solve this issue. What am I doing wrong?
    Last edited by Zibi1981 (2011-03-07 18:13:31)

    No hints??? I believe it's related to Samba. I don't know how to configure it properly, so it can find my WiFi printer.

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