# Enabling languages causes 75+ second document loads

**URL:** <https://forum.collaboraonline.com/t/enabling-languages-causes-75-second-document-loads/4813>\
**Category:** Installation & Configuration\
**Created:** [July 4, 2026, 8:22am UTC](https://forum.collaboraonline.com/t/enabling-languages-causes-75-second-document-loads/4813 "2026-07-04T08:22:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![hackin\_adam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@hackin\_adam](https://forum.collaboraonline.com/u/hackin_adam)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2026, 6:42pm UTC](https://forum.collaboraonline.com/t/enabling-languages-causes-75-second-document-loads/4813/3 "2026-07-08T18:42:08Z")

</div>

The en\_{US,GB}.dic files were in `/opt/collaboraoffice/share/wordbook/` as you suggested, but they were only 441 bytes (46 lines). I removed the dict\_path from my config, moved the small dictionaries out of the way and restarted collabora, but it didn’t make a performance difference.

I suspect your explanation as to why it’s slow (1B+ string comparisons) is probably correct and I just need to figure out where the dictionaries are coming from and why. And I’ve made some progress on that front. Time for another deep dive…

According to strace, the dictionary that’s being read is 551806 bytes:

```auto
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/lo/program/../share/wordbook", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_CLOEXEC|O_DIRECTORY) = 14
fstat(14, {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
getdents64(14, 0x33d62f50 /* 3 entries */, 32768) = 80
lstat("/lo/program/../share/wordbook/en_US.dic", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=551806, ...}) = 0

```

And this file size is consistent throughout the entire strace. Here’s the lstat calls for all dictionary files.

```bash
grep lstat .30591 | grep dic
lstat("/lo/program/../share/wordbook/en_US.dic", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=551806, ...}) = 0
lstat("/lo/program/../share/wordbook/en_US.dic", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=551806, ...}) = 0
lstat("/lo/program/../share/wordbook/en_US.dic", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=551806, ...}) = 0
lstat("/tmp/user/user/wordbook/standard.dic", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=45, ...}) = 0
lstat("/tmp/user/user/wordbook/standard.dic", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=45, ...}) = 0
lstat("/tmp/user/user/wordbook/standard.dic", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=45, ...}) = 0
lstat("/lo/program/../share/wordbook/en_US.dic", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=551806, ...}) = 0
lstat("/lo/program/../share/wordbook/en_US.dic", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=551806, ...}) = 0
lstat("/lo/program/../share/wordbook/en_US.dic", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=551806, ...}) = 0
lstat("/tmp/user/user/wordbook/standard.dic", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=45, ...}) = 0

```

**Side note** : the standard.dic seen above appears to be coming from `/opt/cool/cache/` and it is an empty dictionary, having only the header (which is why it’s only 45 bytes). The path seems to indicate that this is my user-specific custom dictionary which came from the Nextcloud server.

But that file size for en\_US.dic does not match up at all with what’s in `/opt/collaboraoffice/share/wordbook/` (I put the small files back after running my test).

```bash
ls -la /opt/collaboraoffice/share/wordbook/
total 20
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 8 10:15 .
drwxr-xr-x 29 root root 4096 Jul 2 17:02 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 441 Jun 14 17:32 en-GB.dic 
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 441 Jun 14 17:32 en-US.dic
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2804 Jun 14 17:25 technical.dic

```

The file size seen in strace almost matches up with the dictionary found in `/opt/collaboraoffice/share/extensions/dict-en/`

```bash
ls -l /opt/collaboraoffice/share/extensions/dict-en/en_US.dic
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 551762 Jun 14 17:32 /opt/collaboraoffice/share/extensions/dict-en/en_US.dic

```

However, the strace data shows that `/opt/collaboraoffice` was overridden by a mount point.

```auto
mount("/opt/collaboraoffice", "/opt/cool/child-roots/30551-8e4abf70/l1s6HHGMp1Dz1vrg/lo", NULL, MS_MGC_VAL|MS_BIND|MS_REC, NULL) = 0
...
mount("/opt/collaboraoffice", "/opt/cool/child-roots/30551-8e4abf70/l1s6HHGMp1Dz1vrg/lo", 0xb6c3ba, MS_RDONLY|MS_NOSUID|MS_NODEV|MS_REMOUNT|MS_BIND, NULL) = 0

```

And the file size does match up exactly with a file on disk under `/opt/cool/child-roots/`

```bash
ls -l /opt/cool/child-roots/30551-8e4abf70/tmp/sharedpresets/shared-https_nextcloud.ucimc.org%2Findex.php%2Fapps%2Frichdocuments%2Fwopi%2Fsettings-6a45ec7bdf7aa696d89c3cf3f4/wordbook/en_US.dic
-rw-r--r-- 1 cool cool 551806 Jul 8 10:35 /opt/cool/child-roots/30551-8e4abf70/tmp/sharedpresets/shared-https_nextcloud.ucimc.org%2Findex.php%2Fapps%2Frichdocuments%2Fwopi%2Fsettings-6a45ec7bdf7aa696d89c3cf3f4/wordbook/en_US.dic

```

The latter dictionary appears to be the same as the former, only with a header added.

```bash
head /opt/collaboraoffice/share/extensions/dict-en/en_US.dic
49568
0/nm
0th/pt
1/n1
1st/p
1th/tc
2/nm
2nd/p
2th/tc
3/nm

```

vs

```bash
head /opt/cool/child-roots/30551-8e4abf70/tmp/sharedpresets/shared-https_nextcloud.ucimc.org%2Findex.php%2Fapps%2Frichdocuments%2Fwopi%2Fsettings-6a45ec7bdf7aa696d89c3cf3f4/wordbook/en_US.dic
OOoUserDict1
lang: <none>
type: positive
---
49568
0/nm
0th/pt
1/n1
1st/p
1th/tc

```

I feel like this is substantial progress, even though it’s not yet solved. I really appreciate the succinct answers on things like why the .aff files weren’t being read, why the CPU was pegged, etc.

Because I found the mount points so confusing, I decided to [disable the jail](https://forum.collaboraonline.com/t/error-logged-after-first-install/3845/2#p-8460-option-1-1) and get a trace of that. **My document loaded in the expected \<= 2 seconds and spell checking was working!** I don’t understand why, and I don’t really want to run it without a chroot, but I’m very excited to have stumbled upon this fact. My straces didn’t capture as much data in this configuration. Apparently this changes the interprocess communications in a way that only gets me a few dozen lines of strace output (no calls to `lstat` nor `open`, just a bunch of polling). That’s not what I expected, but it’s also not terribly surprising.

To be clear, I was only disabling the jail in coolwsd.xml. The restrictions from systemd are still in place.

If you have any pointers to source code for me to take a look at, I’m familiar with C++ (or at least I was until they started adding all sorts of wild new stuff over the past couple decades 😆). I’m also willing to put a custom build of `coolforkit-ns` on the server temporarily to do additional debugging if necessary.

Once I figure this out, the Ansible role will be immediately updated in whatever way is needed, that’s for sure! I plan on destroying and re-building the entire Collabora VM to test it too, because I’ve done a ton of things manually on this VM trying to troubleshoot this issue.

---

_[View the full topic](https://forum.collaboraonline.com/t/enabling-languages-causes-75-second-document-loads/4813)._