what is happening: any openoffice app starts to load, displays the splash screen, however the progress bar is never displayed and the app hangs indefinitely. A strace ends in: <blockquote>read(255, "\n# set path so that other apps c"..., 4800) = 264 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_SETMASK, [], NULL, 8) = 0 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, [INT CHLD], [], 8) = 0 _llseek(255, -58, [4742], SEEK_CUR) = 0 clone(child_stack=0, flags=CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID|CLONE_CHILD_SETTID|SIGCHLD, child_tidptr=0xb7f48a28) = 5264 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_SETMASK, [], NULL, 8) = 0 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, [CHLD], [], 8) = 0 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_SETMASK, [], NULL, 8) = 0 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, [CHLD], [], 8) = 0 rt_sigaction(SIGINT, {0x80760d4, [], 0}, {SIG_DFL}, 8) = 0 waitpid(-1, </blockquote> what seems to have precipitated it: this was a test, the home directory was originally local in /home/ajn, then I was experimenting with automounting via nfs4 gss/krb5 for a while I was running with a local home directory /ahome/ajn and automounting on /home/. I did notice some openoffice apps attempting to open files in /home/ajn when I had changed my home directory to /ahome/ajn. It looks to me like openoffice is storing some state information as absolute paths - which seems wrong to me, it certainly bites you if you move your home directory. Currently the home directory is the automounted /home/ajn and I cannot run any openoffice apps. Does anyone have any pointers as to what dotfiles I need to blow away? thanks Alastair