JOSM freeses computer completely -> need for hard reset

[schlauchboot99@…]

Symptom:

The computer freezes quite frequently when I work with JOSM. I have to switch off the computer (hard reset), creating all the problems a hard reset usually entails. The failure occurs in 99% (may be even 100%) of the time when I try to add an attribute (key-value pair) to an object (way or node), in particular when I press the "add" button. I cannot remember that the problem occured when I tried to change an attribute. It did not occur when I deleted an attribute, but this is not a strong statement, since I rarely delete something.

Frequency:

Meanwhile (today) with more than every fifth(!!!) edit, which makes it completely impossible to work with JOSM. Remark: I have installed release 4487 of JOSM today, the former release was 43??.

Onset:

Hard to say. My gut feeling says the problem appeared about three months ago and occured rarely, but increased in frequency over time. I regularly install new releases of JOSM from the OpenSuse update site (which may offer only tested (stable) releases). I regularly update JOSM from this site with the hope, that the problem will have disappeared with the new release.

Cause JOSM:

My envirenment (hardware, operating system, Java runtime environment) has not changed over the last three months, so JOSM itself should cause the freeze. Moreover, I do not have any problems with any other application. Furthermore I am intensively using the Eclipse IDE to develop a Java application, which I also use. Both use the same Java runtime environment as JOSM but show no problem whatsoever. They do not, however, use Swing...

Damage:

The frequent hard reset of the computer is quite bad. Although I frequently saved and uploaded my data today I repeatedly got mismatches in the data which lead to duplicate nodes and ways. I did my best to correct these errors but I am not sure everything is ok now.

My environment:

xxx@localhost:~> cat /proc/version

Linux version 2.6.34.10-0.2-desktop (geeko@buildhost) (gcc version 4.5.0 20100604 [gcc-4_5-branch revision 160292] (SUSE Linux) ) #1 SMP PREEMPT 2011-07-20 18:48:56 +0200

xxx@localhost:~> java -version

java version "1.6.0_22"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea6 1.10.2) (suse-4.2.1-x86_64)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.0-b11, mixed mode)

My linux box has 8GB of memory.

[bastiK]

This doesn't look like a problem we can fix in the JOSM code.

Please try Oracle Java version 7. You can simply ​download, untar and run the binary, it won't mess up your system.

You could try the redirect stdout and stderr to a file and see if there is something in it after restart.

Have you checked your RAM for errors?

[xeen]

are you sure the computer freezes or is it just that X hangs? I ran into a similar problem a while ago, where an eclipse (or java?) popup caused X to wait for an event which never came. Thus no redraws and thus the "hanging". To test this, can you switch to a virtual terminal, i.e. hit ctrl+alt+f6 (or f5, f4).

If you get a login prompt, it's probably the problem I described. I forgot all the details, but maybe I can dig something up.

Also I highly doubt Suse does not provide any security updates, or do you simply never update?

[anonymous]

When I say the computer freezes then I mean it. When the error occures I can do nothing but pull the plug... Yesterday I had only the JOSM application started, i.e. only one window was open at all. So there was no popup or other window that could have interfered.

I regularly update from the OpenSuse update-sites, which means dayly (if there is something to update).

One more comment: I had only the licensechange-plugin installed. I have removed it in the meantime, but I have not tested the effect.

Yea, you say it is not JOSMs fault but the JDKs. I guess they will not believe it, in particular since I encounter this problem only with JOSM.

Do you think the error might not occur with the Sun-Java JDK? The JOSM package has it as a prerequisite. It is the only package with this condition, all other packages are using the OpenJDK. Nevertheless JOSM is using the OpenJDK on my system. I could test JOSM with Sun-java JDK...

I can try redirecting stdout and stderr, but I doubt it will help. Switching off the computer will most probably kill the last messages written.

[stoecker]

Yea, you say it is not JOSMs fault but the JDKs. I guess they will not believe it, in particular since I encounter this problem only with JOSM.

JOSM is large application using lots of Java functionality. We triggered a lot of Java bugs in the past and probably still now.

This bugs is 100% sure not JOSMs fault. Java has a sandbox which should exactly prevent what is happening to you. So if the computer crashs it is either a hardware fault or operating system/java issue. The worst what should theoretically happen to a Java application is a crash of the application itself.

Maybe we can workaround this, but this we will do only if there are many people affected and issue cannot be fixed with simply using another java version.

You can install sun-java with yast/zypper easily, so I suggest to try it.

[skyper]

Replying to anonymous:

When I say the computer freezes then I mean it. When the error occures I can do nothing but pull the plug... Yesterday I had only the JOSM application started, i.e. only one window was open at all. So there was no popup or other window that could have interfered.

I regularly update from the OpenSuse update-sites, which means dayly (if there is something to update).

Some of these updates (openjdk and sun) did break my working system (JOSM+Java) sometimes on ubuntu !

One more comment: I had only the licensechange-plugin installed. I have removed it in the meantime, but I have not tested the effect.

Just to make sure: You did try it with an new/empty preference dir ?

Yea, you say it is not JOSMs fault but the JDKs. I guess they will not believe it, in particular since I encounter this problem only with JOSM.

Would not be the first java bug that shows up with JOSM. (#6435 for example)

[schlauchboot99@…]

Since my computer freezes, I unfortunately do not have any information, neither a stack trace nor even something in the system log (I checked that).

In order to narrow the cause down I did some testing today.

(1) I deleted the .josm folder (someone in the forum suggested this) and started josm. Since the default look and feel is quite ugly, I changed it to laf=com.sun.java.swing.plaf.gtk.GTKLookAndFeel, which I had been using all the time. I started to edit something and my second or third pressing on the "add" button caused the freeze again. Note, that I had been using this look and feel all the time, even before I started to encounter any problems.

(2) So I removed the .josm folder again and began anew, this time with the standard look and feel. Guess what: I added about twenty to thirty attributes without getting a freeze again. Although this is no proof it has some significance: as I said before, I usually got a freeze with less than five edits of some attributes.

So possibly (probably?) GTKLookAndFeel is the culprit. I will continue to observe this.

On the one hand, this is plausible, since Swing seems to be responsible. As I said before, I do not encounter any problems with other java applications -- which do not use Swing but SWT.

On the other hand it is strange that the computer only freezes if I use the button to add an attribute... I can create and edit lots of nodes and ways without getting any problems, only if I start to add attributes things fail. If the GTKLookAndFeel was really responsible, I would expect the error to show up randomly and not only with one user function.

So far I did not change anything else, in particular I stuck with openJDK 1.6. Only when I get the error again with the default look and feel, I will change to sun JDK 1.6 and / or JDK 1.7.

[bastiK]

Please reopen, if you have further problems or more information on the bug.