Community-edition: GUI frozen after receiving a notification

[seza443]

Steps to reproduce

1. Open rambox
2. Receive a notification from any tab
   a. To receive a notification, either put the app in background or be in another tab than the one receiving new message

Expected behavior

It should simply show the notification

Actual behavior

It shows the notification and then it freezes.
Rambox is not "not responding". It still plays the sounds.
But the GUI is frozen.

ENVIRONMENT

Rambox: v0.4.5
OS: Windows 10
Arch: x64

[seza443]

Hu weird but today it works just fine.
I don't know if I should let this issue open ?

[seza443]

Ok today it freezes again 😭

[fjacobi]

Can confirm the issue today. Fresh install.

ENVIRONMENT

Rambox: v0.4.5.
OS: Windows 10
Arch: x64

[Sudiukil]

Same problem here but I made a few tests on two different machines.

Fresh Rambox 0.4.5 install and config on all machines and OS.

Machine 1 and 2 are quite similar in environment, only hardware differs. Machine 1 has two monitors though.

Machine 1, Debian 8 x64: Rambox does not freeze.
Machine 1, Windows 10 x64 (with anniversary update): Rambox does freeze.

Machine 2, Debian 8 x64: Rambox does not freeze.
Machine 2, Windows 10 x64 (without anniversary update): Rambox does not freeze.

[saenzramiro]

Interesting... Did you test disabling GPU acceleration in Preferences?

[Sudiukil]

I think I have tried that yes but I'm not completely sure.

I'll try that but I can't before the week-end, I'll keep you posted.

Although, FYI, I updated Rambox to 0.5.3 on the machine where the freeze occurs and it's still freezing (clean 0.5.3 install + services restored from account).

[nmat]

I tested it with removing the accelerator but the app does indeed freezes from time to time. (very random)

[nmat]

What I did now was to test not using zoom in some of the services. Using standard layout and no zooming then the client seems stable. @Sudiukil did you use zoom when testing?

[nmat]

....followup...this still happens on windows 10 at least. Seems the interface freezes when notifications are getting sent to the system. Really annoying. :/

[Sudiukil]

@nmat No I don't use zoom.

I also tested without GPU acceleration but the freezes are still here.

I don't use Windows 10 much these days but if I have time by the end of the week i'll try to do some extensive testing on the machine where the app freezes.

[FallenKN]

I disabled GPU acceleration and its working without freezing now

EDIT: Freezes still occur randomly

[Sudiukil]

Ok, so I did a few tests and it's quite interesting because freezes seems completely random:

Env

Rambox 0.5.3
Windows 10 x64 (with anniversary update)
Five services: MySMS, TweetDeck, Messenger, Discord, Steam
Hardware acceleration enabled

Tests, in that order (manual notification = new Notification("title", {body: "Body"}); in dev console):

• Manual notification, freeze
• MySMS notification (many), no freeze.
• Discord notification, freeze
• Discord notification, no freeze
• Manual notification, no freeze
• Discord notification, freeze
• Discord notification, freeze

And so on...

I tried many things like disabling and enabling services, restarting Rambox, etc... but I could not find any pattern, freezes really seem random.

[nmat]

@Sudiukil I start to wonder if it could have something to do with calculation of unread messages?......or even....if it could have to do with sending the notification to the system itself?

I get the same effect here but I can't really figure out at the step of when the problem occurs.

[Sudiukil]

@nmat To be honnest, I even think it might come from Electron itself, since manual notifications from the console can make Rambox freeze.

[FallenKN]

to confirm seems to crash randomly thats why I thought Hardware Acelleration fixed it.

[Gittyperson]

Using only Skype and FB atm, and the freezes always occur when receiving Skype messages, it doesn't happen with FB. Disabling acceleration seems to help but not solve entirely. It always un-freezes automatically after a minute or so. Using 125% custom DPI btw, W10 x64.

[saenzramiro]

Like @Sudiukil said, I think is related with Electron. We have to keep investigating to solve this problem, and I really appreciate your help folks.

[ajgassner]

This issue occurs with Hipchat and WhatsApp on Windows 10 x64 on my machine. Each notification freezes the app for about 1-2 minutes.

I have disabled notifications for all services, this seems to be a temporary workaround.

Also tried to profile the application with dev tools to find the root cause for the issue. No success for now...

[FallenKN]

@ajgassner did you update your Rambox installation yet?

_Sent from my ZUK Z2 Plus using FastHub_

[ajgassner]

Version: 0.5.10
Platform: win32 (x64) - Windows 10 Enterprise with Creators Update
Electron: 1.7.4
Chromium: 58.0.3029.110
Node: 7.9.0

[saenzramiro]

@ajgassner Is this happening also with latest release?

[ajgassner]

With version 0.5.12 it's still occurring.

[wheelsofsteel]

Hey all, I was also experiencing this problem and switched to a Whatsapp Electron app in the AUR and I still had the same problem. Therefore, I think it could be related to Whatsapp (I don't believe I had problems with Messenger etc). I had the same problem on both Ubuntu and Manjaro (both KDE) and when I turn off the notifications then it works.

It only froze when I received a few messages at once; could be related.

[heitorPB]

@saenzramiro This problem appeared to me a faw days ago and I just found out it is related to the notification stuff

> Rambox 0.5.13
> Electron 1.7.8
> linux x64 4.13.8-1-ARCH

If i disable notifications, works like a charm. But when I enable notifications, it freezes for a while. Hardware acceleration is enabled.

I use Telegram, Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp now. But Messenger did not freeze rambox, the other two froze when I got a notification.

I use ArchLinux with dwm as window manager. So this bug not a KDE/GTK/Qt/bla related.

[fungs]

I'm also having problems with some messengers like Skype and sometimes Telegram freezing. I have to reload the tab to make them work again. Lately, it has become so bad that I had to disable Telegram in Rambox.

[paco3346]

Similar issues here- I have 2 slack windows, 5 gmail windows, telegram, google voice, pushbullet, whatsapp, and messenger.

The issue only started happening today (been running Rambox for about 2 weeks now).

Running Arch Linux w/ KDE.

Also, I've noticed it only freezes if the notification comes from a service other than the one I'm currently on.

[ghost]

I have the same problems and I'm using following services

• Telegram
• WhatsApp
• Messenger
• Skype
• Mattermost
• o365
• GMail
• Protonmail

I'm running arch linux with i3wm and have the following versions:

• rambox 0.5.13-2
• electron 1.6.15-1

Also, I've noticed it only freezes if the notification comes from a service other than the one I'm currently on.

Can confirm this

[paco3346]

After paying attention for a few days I wonder if this is related to a third party library. My entire window manager freezes along with Rambox. I can continue using whatever programs are open but can't switch between programs for 10 to 15 seconds.

[AllanWang]

Having the same issue using Antergos. For me, I can freely minimize/resize Rambox and use any other program, but the contents of Rambox freezes for a solid few seconds. This is with slack.

[phaazon]

I have a problem very similar with slack and gitter. Has anybody pinpointed the third-party library causing the harm?

[MurzNN]

As descibed in https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/7831#issuecomment-257564038 and https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/7831#issuecomment-260876386 (issue on Electron thread is closed) - seems this is happens because of using user's code hacking. Can Rambox try to remove hacky code and rewrite notifications in recommended way?

[gponickjw]

I found a solution that seems to resolve this for me, though it was intermittent enough I can't be 100% sure.

My config: Kubuntu with SDDM -> i3 WM.

I found that my /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.freedesktop.Notifications.service file was pointing to notify-osd, but I wasn't actually running notify-osd. I added it to my i3 config with an exec --no-startup-id and so far I haven't had Slack or Rambox hardlock on me as @paco3346 and others have mentioned.

Can anyone else comment on if this helps the issue for them?

[heitorPB]

I found a solution that seems to resolve this for me, though it was
intermittent enough I can't be 100% sure.

My config: Kubuntu with SDDM -> i3 WM.

I found that my
/usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.freedesktop.Notifications.service
file was pointing to notify-osd, but I wasn't actually running
notify-osd. I added it to my i3 config with an exec --no-startup-id and so far I haven't had Slack or Rambox
hardlock on me as @paco3346 and others have mentioned.

Can anyone else comment on if this helps the issue for them?

I'm running ArchLinux with dwm as window
manager. I do not have notify-osd. But sometime ago I unstalled
dunst and I don't remeber raving Rambox
freezing anymore.

Can someone without a notification daemon confirm that the problem is
the notifications?

Or even better, fix the hacky code as @MurzNN mentioned.

[gponickjw]

@heitorPB

I actually switched to using Dunst overnight as it can fit better visually with my i3 setup. I'm like 80-90% certain this was it, because even nm-applet has stopped locking up periodically.

[paco3346]

I'm running plasma which has its own notification server built in so I don't have anything else like dunst installed. From the link @MurzNN shared back in July (https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/7831#issuecomment-257564038) I see that this is a pretty common issue with Electron.

There was a new issue opened https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/14006 that tracks the Linux problems. My suggestion is that this issue be closed and we can help out on 14066.

[fvulich]

I'm gonna close this ticket due to inactivity, feel free to open another ticket if the problem persists.

[lock[bot]]

This thread has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity after it was closed. Please open a new issue for related bugs.