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IDProjectCategoryView StatusDate SubmittedLast Update
0009908ScribusGeneralpublic11-Apr-06 18:1013-Apr-20 15:47
ReporterAbibuch 
Assigned Tojghali 
PriorityimmediateSeverityblockReproducibilityhave not tried
StatusclosedResolutionduplicate 
PlatformOSOS Version
Product Version1.4.0svn 
Target VersionFixed in Version 
Summary0009908: Scribus crashes when opening saved *,sla - File "UNKNOWN EXCEPTION" - unable to open project! NEED HELP !
DescriptionHi!
I've been working on a magazine for my school - everything was fine with Scribus until today - I am not able to open my .sla-project anymore, even though I didn't change anything. I saved it after I have finished working last night and since tomorrow Scribus crashes when I try to open the file. It says "Scribus crashes due to the following exception: UNKNONW EXCEPTION" - then I have to push "Ok" and Scribus closes. No change to open the file. It is around 400MB big and was created with Scribus 1.4. - 300 pages for the magazines; I already made around 180 of them; filled them with texts and images.

I uninstalled Scribus 1.4., downloaded 1.3.8. (wasn't able to open it either) and now I downloaded the 1.4. again (same source, was given to me by the company which will print our magazine).
Tried to open the backup-file of my project, same result :(

Please help me soon, we should send in our pdf's for the magazine next week and now everything we've been working on during the last week(s) is missing (even though the file is 400MB...!)


I'M NOT ABLE TO DO AN UPLOAD, Compressed file is still 300MB tall!
TagsNo tags attached.
Attached Files

- Relationships
duplicate of 0011280closedjghali Saved file will not open. 

-  Notes
(0026013)
cbradney (administrator)
11-Apr-06 21:13

Please try with Scribus 1.4 rc1, 2 or 3 as a test, on a backup file.

Maybe you can provide an ftp or http download link to the file?

Does it do the same on another machine?
(0026022)
Abibuch (reporter)
11-Apr-07 22:51

Here's the file:
http://rapidshare.com/files/456370535/abibuch_kaputt.sla [^]

I tried it on another laptop, same problem (with version 1.4rc1!)
1.4rc1 was also the version I created the file with.

the people in the german scribus forum (who gave me the advise to create an issue here) said my file is way too big!?
(0026025)
ale (manager)
11-Apr-08 09:12

300 pages!

the file is ok, but takes long to open... i could open it with 1.4RC3 on a mac...
you should try to open it on a more "powerful" machine (like my mac mini with OS X tiger?)...

it has put the whole system on his knees for 5 minutes... but i could open it.

(on the other side, i could scroll well through the pages...)

you may split the document in smaller chunks and you should not copy paste the pictures into the document, but link them (you will have a much smaller .sla, then!)

(i'm also marking this bug as private... i'm not sure you want google to index it...)
(0026027)
cezaryece (developer)
11-Apr-08 11:12

While opening that file my RAM occupancy grow from 1,1GB to 3,6 GB. So if you have less than 4 GB your system goes to swap usage.

But I think we can treat this report us bug. Even on low system resources Scribus should warning about that, not crash with "UNKNONW EXCEPTION".
I think it is problem with memory management. Somewhere creation of some new object in memory fails, but pointer is not checked if it is valid.
(0026029)
cezaryece (developer)
11-Apr-08 14:29

I have been made some test on virtual Kubuntu 10.10. I set 1GB virtual RAM for it and try to run Scribus under dbg, and while opening your big file once Scribus eat 100% of free memory (RAM and swap) system kills Scribus process without any warning. Only in syslog is stamp what was happen.

It is not good situation. On machine with not enough memory for opening some files Scribus should control amount of available memory and break reading of file with warning for user.
For me best will be if on opening document fail user will have a choice what to do - stop opening at all, creating doc with items already read or (the best part) automatically split document into parts.
(0026031)
Abibuch (reporter)
11-Apr-08 16:53

Hey guys!
Someone in the german scribus forum opened my file on a mac with 4gb ram and deleted all the pictures and sent it to me! :)
Now it's fine, it's only 1 MB big and I only have to create the images again, but this time without copy and paste but with adding them the normal way, right?

Where can I delete the file? I don't think that my mates like it having all their data in the internet ;-)

But if I understood it the right way, you want to keep the issue here because the developers of the software should add a more undertsandable error message ;-)
(0026032)
cbradney (administrator)
11-Apr-08 18:16

The message is not the problem - that one we cannot control. We need to make it work differently.
(0026455)
garryrobbins (reporter)
11-Jun-22 20:13

Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB memory, Windows 7 64-bit, 200+ page document, heavy on images.

Added another image, received fatal "Unknown Exception" error. Priceless.

I've increased the boot parameter "increaseuserva" to 3072 (a.k.a. /3GB switch) to no effect. (Apparently only effective on 32-bit Windows).

Note here that 64-bit systems can expand the memory allocation, but the program must be linked with the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE option:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff556232.aspx [^]

Are the Windows versions compiled with this option?

Really frustrating to work 4 months on a book, buy a new computer just to run Scribus, and then find such a fundamental restriction.

It's already difficult enough to search for text when you have multiple text blocks. Dividing into several small files throws out page numbering, TOCs and indexes.

Wouldn't be so bad to edit smaller sections if one could process sections together at the end, such as FrameMaker book building.
(0026456)
chappa-ai (reporter)
11-Jun-23 05:48

Question - In order for the file to have gotten that big, it would have had to already been open in Scribus while it was being created. If the file was too large while being created, why did Scribus "allow" it to "go over the edge"? You are allowing users to create documents that, after saving and closing, they will not be able to open the next time they start up Scribus? That seems wrong.

Agreed, an interception dialog should be displayed, in the event a user opens on a less powerful machine a "large" doc that was created on a more powerful machine. However, Scribus should warn about exceeding memory limits during the creating of a document.
(0026461)
garryrobbins (reporter)
11-Jun-23 14:07

I can't speak for the student who had this problem back in 2006, but virtually all of my "unknown exception" crashes happened while adding images.

Perhaps a draft version was made / saved, then the images enlarged / enhanced resulting in higher memory use on open.
(0026462)
chappa-ai (reporter)
11-Jun-23 15:00

"Unknown Exception" is something that's always bugged me (no pun intended) with Scribus. It's similar to the "Microsoft Excel has encountered an unexpected problem and needs to close" error in MS Office. At work, we nearly always include error handlers into all of our code. This way when something goes "bad" code execution jumps to the handler to parse and format an error message for the user. Code has the capability to almost always know what (would have) caused a crash and prevent it, if care is taken to do so when authoring.

File size is a readable file attribute. Scribus should be able to read that attribute for determining whether there is sufficient memory available to complete the requested task, BEFORE actually opening the image file. Same goes for documents.
(0026581)
fluorflu (reporter)
11-Jul-11 00:08
edited on: 11-Jul-11 00:09

Scribus crashes when I save. Save impossible. The processor runs at 100% for a long time. Forcing the software to crash.

Ubuntu 10.4.
Scribus 1.4 rc 5

Thank you

(0026585)
ale (manager)
11-Jul-11 10:41

hi fluorlu,

if you need help you should give us some more information.

basically, if we don't know how mnay pages, images and text you have in your document it will be hard for us to give more hints.

sharing the file you're using, will help us get a more exact figure of what happening.
(0026587)
cezaryece (developer)
11-Jul-11 11:45

Try to copy SLA file to different location and open it. Image files will not be loaded and maybe you will able to open file. If so problem is in images you try to load into your document. Try to crop and resample them to proper lower values of dimensions and resolution or you can split your document into 2 or even more parts.
But if even without images document dont load properly there may be problem with wrong data in it. Then you can upload it somewhere and somebody from developpers will try to fix it.
(0026591)
fluorflu (reporter)
11-Jul-14 14:58

Hello

sorry for my basic English.

Problem : impossible to save document, export and assembly.The processor runs at 100% for a more time. Forcing the software to crash...
...and kill "process scribus-ng" for stop processor.


My document :
A3, one page, 3 layers, svg inside (import), no images bitmap include.
French location

Fonts :
liberation : https://fedorahosted.org/liberation-fonts/ [^]
Arvo : http://www.google.com/webfonts#QuickUsePlace:quickUse/Family:Arvo [^]


tested on 2 pc:

Laptop (amd64) ubuntu 10.4. Scribus-ng 1.4 rc5 (with depot Scribus)
impossible to save

pc (i386) ubuntu 10.10 scirbus-ng 1.4 rc5 (depots ubuntu + maj)
impossible to save

...and 1 mac intel (10.5)
scribug-ng 1.4 rc3 (domwnload from scribus.net)
no problem

my document is here :
http://www.bardelli.fr/telecharger/Formats_ouverts/bug/formats_ouverts_POSTER_A3_b.sla [^]


document (old version rc3 or rc2) here :
http://www.bardelli.fr/telecharger/Formats_ouverts/sources%20formats%20ouverts.tar.gz [^]
(0029108)
ale (manager)
12-Oct-28 10:40

all the referenced files are not there anymore.

it looks like that the bug is about memory issues with big files, which is something well known.

i suggest to close this bug, without forgetting that it could be a good idea to better handle memory problems when loading a file!
(0030099)
jghali (administrator)
13-Apr-20 15:47

This issue has been fixed in 1.5.0svn with issue 0011280 by making loading of such document more memory efficient.

- Issue History
Date Modified Username Field Change
11-Apr-06 18:10 Abibuch New Issue
11-Apr-06 21:13 cbradney Note Added: 0026013
11-Apr-07 22:51 Abibuch Note Added: 0026022
11-Apr-08 09:12 ale Note Added: 0026025
11-Apr-08 11:12 cezaryece Note Added: 0026027
11-Apr-08 14:29 cezaryece Note Added: 0026029
11-Apr-08 16:53 Abibuch Note Added: 0026031
11-Apr-08 18:16 cbradney Note Added: 0026032
11-Jun-22 20:13 garryrobbins Note Added: 0026455
11-Jun-23 05:48 chappa-ai Note Added: 0026456
11-Jun-23 14:07 garryrobbins Note Added: 0026461
11-Jun-23 15:00 chappa-ai Note Added: 0026462
11-Jul-11 00:08 fluorflu Note Added: 0026581
11-Jul-11 00:09 fluorflu Note Edited: 0026581 View Revisions
11-Jul-11 10:41 ale Note Added: 0026585
11-Jul-11 11:45 cezaryece Note Added: 0026587
11-Jul-14 14:58 fluorflu Note Added: 0026591
12-Oct-28 10:40 ale Note Added: 0029108
13-Apr-20 15:47 jghali Note Added: 0030099
13-Apr-20 15:47 jghali Relationship added duplicate of 0011280
13-Apr-20 15:47 jghali Status new => resolved
13-Apr-20 15:47 jghali Resolution open => duplicate
13-Apr-20 15:47 jghali Assigned To => jghali
13-Apr-20 15:47 jghali Status resolved => closed



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