Signal-desktop: Signal Desktop freezes PC - no action except a hard reset is possible

[thompsonmj]

• [X] I have searched open and closed issues for duplicates
  

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Bug description

When using Signal Desktop, my Windows 10 laptop will freeze after several minutes of use. This happens regularly (every time I use it for > ~5 minutes for the past couple weeks) and exclusively during use of the Signal app (i.e. my laptop has not frozen when Signal is not open). No combination of keystrokes are responsive, and waiting >10 minutes does not resolve the issue, so a hard reset using a long-press on the power button has been necessary each time.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open Signal Desktop.
2. Message a few times. Work on other open windows as well.
   

Actual result: Computer freezes unexpectedly and Ctrl + Alt + Del does not work. Hard reboot necessary.

Expected result: No freezing.

Screenshots

Platform info

Signal version: v1.12.0

Operating System: Windows 10 Pro v1803

Linked device version: EVA-L09, EMUI 4.1, Android 6.0

Link to debug log

https://debuglogs.org/0060ea1bed35d4b47bdd76c56b12db41f9464d1d253f15ba78906f44cdfb4128

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

Wow, that is a pretty extreme effect. What else can you tell us about your laptop? What have you installed on it since it was new? Also, are there any other applications which cause this to happen when they run - like Slack, VSCode or Spotify (which are similar applications to Signal Desktop)?

[thompsonmj]

Hi Scott, thanks for reaching out. First wanted to say I appreciate the efforts behind Signal and understand the difficulties behind bug squashing. I actually just ran Google Chrome for the first time in a long time this morning, and my laptop locked up as a result. No other programs have caused this except Signal and Chrome so far. I uninstalled and reinstalled Chrome, reinstalled Signal, got as far as pairing my device, and it locked up once again mid-sync.
The computer is ~1 year old and has quite a long list of programs installed. Of those you mentioned, I only have Spotify installed, and it has not yet caused issues.

From: Scott Nonnenberg
Sent: Monday, June 4, 7:52 PM
Subject: Re: [signalapp/Signal-Desktop] Signal Desktop freezes PC - no action except a hard reset is possible (#2442)
To: signalapp/Signal-Desktop
Cc: thompsonmj, Author

Wow, that is a pretty extreme effect. What else can you tell us about your laptop? What have you installed on it since it was new? Also, are there any other applications which cause this to happen when they run - like Slack, VSCode or Spotify (which are similar applications to Signal Desktop)?
—
You are receiving this because you authored the thread.
Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/2442#issuecomment-394536136, or mute the threadhttps://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AePXinCyn_s87jA5kdd6Z3wdlFJsKk92ks5t5cg-gaJpZM4UZPpp.

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

@thompsonmj Okay, now that we have another application causing it, I have a theory. I suspect that it's a driver or hardware problem regarding graphics acceleration. Try starting Signal Desktop from the command line with the --disable-gpu command line argument. It might just keep your computer from freezing!

[thompsonmj]

Interesting. I’ll give that a shot. Will that command disable the gpu from being used by other apps as well?

--
Matthew Thompson
Graduate Student Researcher
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Purdue University

---

From: Scott Nonnenberg [e-mail]
Sent: Tuesday, June 5, 2018 11:12:55 AM
To: signalapp/Signal-Desktop
Cc: thompsonmj; Mention
Subject: Re: [signalapp/Signal-Desktop] Signal Desktop freezes PC - no action except a hard reset is possible (#2442)

@thompsonmjhttps://github.com/thompsonmj Okay, now that we have another application causing it, I have a theory. I suspect that it's a driver or hardware problem regarding graphics acceleration. Try starting Signal Desktop from the command line with the --disable-gpu command line argument. It might just keep your computer from freezing!

—
You are receiving this because you were mentioned.
Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/2442#issuecomment-394747393, or mute the threadhttps://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AePXiibGaXHg9Qby6TYhUK3Yx1l5mJKsks5t5p_3gaJpZM4UZPpp.

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

Nope, that command-line argument will just affect Signal Desktop. Lemme know!

[thompsonmj]

This seems to be working! It’s been running all day and no hiccups.

Is there a way to append that argument to be applied by default when Signal is opened? In an updated release perhaps? I doubt anyone will ever need gpu acceleration for a messaging app!

--
Matthew Thompson
Graduate Student Researcher
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Purdue University

---

From: Scott Nonnenberg [e-mail]
Sent: Tuesday, June 5, 2018 11:54:55 AM
To: signalapp/Signal-Desktop
Cc: thompsonmj; Mention
Subject: Re: [signalapp/Signal-Desktop] Signal Desktop freezes PC - no action except a hard reset is possible (#2442)

Nope, that command-line argument will just affect Signal Desktop. Lemme know!

—
You are receiving this because you were mentioned.
Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/2442#issuecomment-394763226, or mute the threadhttps://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AePXithH-CFRjjS9Gp3hKyJYOxjhPHAdks5t5qnPgaJpZM4UZPpp.

[allonhadaya]

I believe I can confirm related behavior when running on Arch Linux (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Signal/1.12.0 Chrome/61.0.3163.100 Electron/2.0.1 Safari/537.36 node/8.9.3 env/production). The difference is that only signal-desktop is freezing, not any other process, and I am able to stop the process with SIGKILL. Running the process with --disable-gpu avoids the freezing. I seem to be able to reliably reproduce the freeze on the desktop when I access messages for a contact on the app on my phone (android). Let me know if you would find something like an strace output helpful.

[spychodelics]

I believe I can confirm related behavior when running on Arch Linux (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Signal/1.12.0 Chrome/61.0.3163.100 Electron/2.0.1 Safari/537.36 node/8.9.3 env/production). The difference is that only signal-desktop is freezing, not any other process, and I am able to stop the process with SIGKILL. Running the process with --disable-gpu avoids the freezing. I seem to be able to reliably reproduce the freeze on the desktop when I access messages for a contact on the app on my phone (android). Let me know if you would find something like an strace output helpful.

Got the same problem, also on arch linux!

--disable-gpu is not helping

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

All: Please provide as much detail as you can about your graphics card and driver software if you're running into this. Additional data if you think that would be useful too. This is a lower-level bug we may need to take to Electron/Chromium.

[spychodelics]

Sure,
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Ellesmere [Radeon RX 470/480/570/580] (rev e7)

local/xf86-video-amdgpu 18.0.1-2
local/xorg-server 1.20.0-9
local/mesa 18.1.2-1
local/signal 1.12.1-1

If you need more, just let me know.

[spychodelics]

This is happening now in Discord + Signal, so i think you are right, that it is a lower level bug.

[LindyBalboa]

Another data point for Arch Linux. Runs fine at start but then I lose the UI. The window is still open but not visible. I believe electron is the process which is hanging. (I can't recall but I have definitely had to go back and do a kill -9 on signal or electron.)

In my case, --disable-gpu does not help.

Intel HD Graphics 4000

xf86-video-intel 1:2.99.917+831+ge7bfc906-1
xorg-server 1.20.0-9
mesa 18.1.2-1
signal 1.13.0-1

[LindyBalboa]

It is indeed the first of the two electron processes which I have to kill -9.

PIDs are
signal X294
electron X295 << kill -9 necessary
electron X351

Dunno if that helps but it is info.

[AGCaesar]

I had the same crash on Arch.
xorg-server 1.20.0-9
mesa 18.1.2-1
signal 1.13.0-1
No Intel drivers, just mode settings.

I ran signal with the --disable-gpu option and so far it works great! no hang for about 10 hours, before that, 20 min was the maximum possible time.

[thompsonmj]

Sorry for the delay ... here are my specs:
Windows 10
NVIDIA Quadro M520 - driver version 23.21.13.9125

--disable-gpu does work around the issue for me as well.

[protist]

Me too on Arch. --disable-gpu fixes it for me as well.
Intel HD Graphics 630: no driver, just modesetting.

xorg-server 1.20.0-9
mesa 18.1.4-1
signal 1.14.1-1

[corbolais]

Same here.

Ubuntu. First release exhibiting this behaviour was 17.10 to the best of my knowledge. Zotac GPU, nVidia chipset, nouveau driver. Versions: respective versions shipped w/ distribution. Other programs affected: sometimes google-chrome, libreoffice, firefox. By far, signal-desktop is triggering most of the times. Usually at program startup. Desktop freezes sometimes immediately, sometimes mouse ptr is moving, a window is responding but eventually X freezes up completely. Rarely, network login (with very long delay) is possible as a last resort to reboot the machine.

Note aside: There is another proprietary statically linked program that can only be started successfully by setting a Qt-related env variable to disable GLX support. So, it might be GPU driver-related after all.

Not affected: different PC, same Ubuntu versions, MSI GPU, nVidia chipset, distribution graphics driver.

Tested: --disable-gpu flag. signal-desktop working fine for at least half an hour.

Thank you for the hint/flag.

cheers

[benmayne]

happens on my ubuntu laptop (16.04 and after upgrading to 18.04).
Intel® Core™ i7-7600U CPU @ 2.80GHz × 4
Intel® HD Graphics 620 (Kaby Lake GT2)

Chrome and Slack both have a "disable hardware acceleration" option in their settings that solves this problem for those apps. Would it be possible to add a similar option for signal settings?

[fuzzysloth]

I think this one is still relevant, see: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/issues/1899
After upgrading mesa on Arch Linux Signal Desktop (and Atom b.t.w.) are freezing Xorg on mainline kernel (but not on LTS kernel).

More details can be found if you follow the link.

UPD: Output of flatpak info org.signal.Signal:
```Signal - Private messenger for the desktop

      ID: org.signal.Signal
     Ref: app/org.signal.Signal/x86_64/stable
    Arch: x86_64
  Branch: stable
 Version: 1.27.3
 License: GPL-3.0
  Origin: flathub

Collection: org.flathub.Stable
Installation: system
Installed: 292.6 MB
Runtime: org.freedesktop.Platform/x86_64/18.08
Sdk: org.freedesktop.Sdk/x86_64/18.08

  Commit: db2b8cd1ea3df6a5cb9c5cd2b81fafaa8d04829ed990ffd7122bd57a3f38dded
  Parent: c313fe4b753783356aa9964b5d2c875fa7c7f55baf14485c24d0c893c9012620
 Subject: V1.27.3 (#97) (2fcb601b)
    Date: 2019-09-26 07:57:00 +0000

```

[thompsonmj]

I should mention that this issue is no longer present for me.

I'm running Signal v1.27.3 on Windows 10 version 1903.

[Maysi2k]

Still the same problem... --disable-gpu is not really working.

ps aux:

username     7439  1.2  2.0 6813936 250916 ?      SLl  13:09   0:03 /opt/Signal/signal-desktop --disable-gpu --no-sandbox

username     7471  0.2  0.4 267712 51760 ?        Sl   13:09   0:00 /opt/Signal/signal-desktop --type=gpu-process --field-trial-handle=xyz --enable-features=WebComponentsV0Enabled --disable-features=CookiesWithoutSameSiteMustBeSecure,SameSiteByDefaultCookies,SpareRendererForSitePerProcess --no-sandbox --gpu-preferences=xyz --use-gl=swiftshader-webgl --shared-files

signal-desktop is starting with paramenter "--disable-gpu" but the proc is runnung as an gpu-process.