App Causes Dashboard Hang Due to Blocking Network Request When LocalAI Server is Unreachable

[davidk747]

Which version of integration_openai are you using?

3.7.1

Which version of Nextcloud are you using?

31.0.9.1 (Nextcloud AIO)

Which browser are you using? In case you are using the phone App, specify the Android or iOS version and device please.

Brave & Firefox

Describe the Bug

The integration_openai app appears to perform a synchronous network request to fetch OpenAI models during the loading of the Nextcloud dashboard. If the configured LocalAI server is crashed or otherwise unreachable, this request times out after an excessively long period (observed as 160+ seconds), causing the entire web interface to hang post-authentication. This makes the dashboard and subsequent pages unresponsive until the timeout resolves or the app is disabled.

This behavior is problematic because it blocks the core Nextcloud UI functionality, even for users not actively using AI features.

Disabling the integration_openai app resolves the issue immediately, confirming it's the source of the hang.

Additional Context:

The issue appeared after the LocalAI server crashed; prior to that, everything functioned normally.

Desktop sync, API endpoints, and WebDAV continue to work fine during the hang, indicating the problem is isolated to the web UI/dashboard load.

This was first observed on September 26, 2025, with up-to-date Nextcloud AIO components and has taken me several days to isolate.

Expected Behavior

The model fetch should ideally be asynchronous, fail gracefully with error handling, or be deferred until relevant action is initiated, rather than running on every dashboard load.

To Reproduce

1. Install and enable the integration_openai app in Nextcloud.
2. Configure it to use a LocalAI server (e.g., via the app's settings with a custom base URL for LocalAI).
3. Ensure the LocalAI server is running initially and verify that models can be fetched successfully.
4. Crash or shut down the LocalAI server to make it unreachable.
5. Log into the Nextcloud web interface.
6. After successful authentication, attempt to load the dashboard (/apps/dashboard).
   7.Observe the hang/delay of 160+ seconds before the page loads or times out.

[gonzalo]

Same problem here, not in AIO but directly installed instance. Our nextlcoud installation became almost unresponsible after and network incident with our private IA server. Even with nextcloud assistant disabled, we observed this plugins blocks the entire site. We agree also that the synchronous network request to fetch OpenAI models is the responsible.

[kyteinsky]

thanks for the report!

[davidk747]

thanks for the report!

Your most welcome. Great effort on the fix and thank you and the rest of the contributors for all your hard work!