I have a number of documents created by OpenOffice.org and libreoffice which I cannot edit. When I try to open them, I get a message saying they are locked by an unknown user. These documents have been created by me, and saved and closed properly. I cannot find anything that looks like a lock-file.

Today I created a file, closed it, and exited libreoffice.
I moved the file to a different directory, and *could not edit it*.
I moved it back to the original directory and could!

What's going on here? Is it some sort of security measure? A while back I reorganized my disk structure which resulted in all my word-processing documents getting moved.

Annoyed,
Jim

Where have you looked for lock files ?
There may be one in the same directory or there may be some under ~/.config or ~/.libreoffice/3

They will be dot files anyway (hidden).

Here's something similar - http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/.../msg19547.html

I use 'updatedb' and 'locate', which displays the paths of hidden files. I would think that if there were a lockfile, that the document would not be editable in either location.

I have checked again. While editing the document a lockfile is present in the doc's directory. When I closed and quit libreoffice the lockfile was removed. Once again the file was not editable in a different directory. No lockfile is present in the new directory.

Breaking news! The problem only occurs if the new directory is on my Buffalo NAS drive. The file is editable on other directories on the same computer.

The problem appears to be permissions related. I tried to save a copy of the file to the NAS drive and it failed. I'm not sure why I can copy a file to the remote directory but cannot save a file to the same location from within a program. I looks like libreoffice's attempt to create a lockfile fails and that is interpreted as another lockfile already exists. If that's the case, it's bad programming.

In any case, I think I'll call this problem solved.