Signal Desktop freezes PC - no action except a hard reset is possible #2442

thompsonmj · 2018-06-04T14:56:50Z

I have searched open and closed issues for duplicates

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

Open Signal Desktop.
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 · 2018-06-04T23:52:25Z

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 · 2018-06-05T14:40:11Z

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 GitHub<#2442 (comment)>, or mute the thread<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AePXinCyn_s87jA5kdd6Z3wdlFJsKk92ks5t5cg-gaJpZM4UZPpp>.

scottnonnenberg-signal · 2018-06-05T15:12:45Z

@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 · 2018-06-05T15:20:17Z

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 <notifications@github.com> 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) @thompsonmj<https://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 GitHub<#2442 (comment)>, or mute the thread<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AePXiibGaXHg9Qby6TYhUK3Yx1l5mJKsks5t5p_3gaJpZM4UZPpp>.

scottnonnenberg-signal · 2018-06-05T15:54:47Z

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

thompsonmj · 2018-06-05T19:42:57Z

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 <notifications@github.com> 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 GitHub<#2442 (comment)>, or mute the thread<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AePXithH-CFRjjS9Gp3hKyJYOxjhPHAdks5t5qnPgaJpZM4UZPpp>.

allonhadaya · 2018-06-06T19:20:47Z

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 · 2018-06-23T17:12:44Z

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 · 2018-06-25T16:25:43Z

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 · 2018-06-27T19:11:40Z

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 · 2018-06-29T18:20:41Z

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

LindyBalboa · 2018-07-03T18:09:06Z

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 · 2018-07-03T19:54:13Z

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 · 2018-07-06T23:55:16Z

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 · 2018-07-17T17:35:41Z

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 · 2018-07-19T04:52:34Z

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 · 2018-11-03T21:26:18Z

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 · 2018-12-15T03:48:06Z

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 · 2019-10-09T15:54:57Z

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:


          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 · 2019-10-09T17:01:08Z

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 · 2021-03-24T12:22:56Z

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.

z4lem · 2021-06-30T10:32:38Z

Chrome and Slack both have a "disable hardware acceleration" option in their settings

I had this issue on my Arch with both, Chrome and Signal. After deactivating hardware acc. on Chrome's settings, the isue was solved.
If I start Signal using signal-desktop --disable-gpu --force-cpu-draw its working fine as well.
Since Signal uses Electron, I assume the issue be the same (at least on Intel devices).

I agree on deactivating hardware acc. per default would be a good idea..

stale · 2021-09-28T11:45:25Z

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

protist · 2021-09-28T12:19:33Z

Feeding the bot with spam…

scaronni · 2021-11-21T09:32:57Z

Same issue here, Intel drivers and Fedora. Works only with --disable-gpu being set.

stale · 2022-02-19T09:44:15Z

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

protist · 2022-02-21T02:13:49Z

This works fine for me now without --disable-gpu (although there are plenty of different systems and comments represented in this thread). My system details are above, but my versions are now:

xorg-server 21.1.3-6
mesa 21.3.6-1
signal 5.31.1-1

n1t4y · 2022-03-20T13:10:39Z

Can confirm this is still happening with Pop!_OS.
Had to uninstall Signal for now unfortunately.
Edit1: no special flags used as described above
Edit2: GPU is Intel integrated graphics chip

scottnonnenberg-signal · 2022-03-21T18:07:52Z

@n1t4y Have you tried it with --in-process-gpu or --disable-gpu?

n1t4y · 2022-03-22T12:28:40Z

@n1t4y Have you tried it with --in-process-gpu or --disable-gpu?

Without flag, stright up fired it from the quick menu, hence the default option

scottnonnenberg-signal · 2022-03-22T16:37:00Z

@n1t4y I understand that you are reporting problems without using the flags. But have you tried it with the flags? Does it change things for you?

stale · 2022-06-20T17:32:47Z

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

stale · 2022-06-27T17:43:05Z

This issue has been closed due to inactivity.

ramenspazz · 2022-09-01T19:55:06Z

This issue is still present in fedora 36. I cant get a stack trace, but if someone could help me with getting one, I can freeze my system and post one.

Reproduce:
Do anything and it eventually crashes. No single specific identifiable cause.
Right clicking to open a context menu. This also is blank and all drop down menus are also blank.
Symptoms:
Hard freeze.

Maysi2k · 2022-09-02T09:10:30Z

Yes... Is a sh*t...
i purged this software from my Mint and do no future donations to Signal again. :(

Sylvanas-1977 · 2023-02-08T10:15:38Z

I just had my system freeze and came across this i used the arguments and it no longer froze my PC, ofcourse i have AMD gpu with driver issues on windows trying to avoid driver hell on windows by using Linux but then this happens during screensharing a game usually no problem for discord.

naddeoa · 2023-04-18T17:54:44Z

I'm getting this still. When I used Plasma desktop with Ubuntu 22.04 it used to crash my entire desktop, but after switching to Gnome (42.5) it just crashes the signal app. I tried to run this in a terminal to get some output but there is nothing explicitly error-looking.

(signal-desktop:508774): libnotify-WARNING **: 10:48:32.740: Failed to connect to proxy

(signal-desktop:508774): libnotify-WARNING **: 10:48:57.765: Failed to connect to proxy

(signal-desktop:508774): libnotify-WARNING **: 10:49:07.694: Failed to connect to proxy
[508774:0418/104932.716924:ERROR:libnotify_notification.cc(49)] notify_notification_show: domain=797 code=24 message="Error calling StartServiceByName for org.freedesktop.Notifications: Timeout was reached"
{"level":30,"time":"2023-04-18T17:49:57.978Z","msg":"System tray service: setting unread count to 2"}
{"level":30,"time":"2023-04-18T17:49:57.978Z","msg":"System tray service: rendering no tray"}
{"level":30,"time":"2023-04-18T17:49:58.977Z","msg":"System tray service: setting unread count to 4"}
{"level":30,"time":"2023-04-18T17:49:58.978Z","msg":"System tray service: rendering no tray"}
{"level":30,"time":"2023-04-18T17:49:59.281Z","msg":"Approving request for permission 'notifications'"}

(signal-desktop:508774): libnotify-WARNING **: 10:50:07.691: Failed to connect to proxy

(signal-desktop:508774): libnotify-WARNING **: 10:50:32.716: Failed to connect to proxy

(signal-desktop:508774): libnotify-WARNING **: 10:50:57.739: Failed to connect to proxy
[508774:0418/105107.690973:ERROR:libnotify_notification.cc(49)] notify_notification_show: domain=682 code=25 message="Error calling StartServiceByName for org.freedesktop.Notifications: Process org.freedesktop.Notifications exited with status 1"

Those libnotify warnings definitely only happen after it gets into this pseudo-crashed state but I'm not sure if its just a coincidence. I got this output by running signal with /opt/Signal/signal-desktop --no-sandbox --disable-gpu. It just freezes and stops responding to user input/showing new messages after a minute or so. Can't be used at all from Ubuntu 22.04, at least for me.

indutny-signal · 2023-04-19T14:19:06Z

@naddeoa sorry to hear that. When this happens - does signal process use lots of CPU?

naddeoa · 2023-04-20T18:26:55Z

It's ironically stable since my last restart so I can't repro anymore. I didn't change anything on purpose to make that happen though. I guess I'll report back next time.

scottnonnenberg-signal added the Need Information label Jun 4, 2018

ejmg mentioned this issue Jul 24, 2018

[v3.0.0-beta.1] gpu acceleration stopped working electron/electron#13415

Closed

This was referenced Nov 13, 2018

Some Electron apps (Xwayland) freeze mysteriously and randomly swaywm/sway#2508

Closed

Electron apps freezes / hangs with GPU acceleration enabled electron/electron#15696

Closed

This was referenced Aug 28, 2019

Should GPU acceleration be off by default? electron/electron#13368

Closed

使用 ssh -x 连接，无法正常显示 kooritea/electronic-wechat#60

Open

kenpowers-signal mentioned this issue Oct 14, 2019

Unusually high CPU load on Linux #3650

Closed

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stale bot closed this as completed Jun 27, 2022

ramenspazz mentioned this issue Sep 1, 2022

Dupe of: Signal Desktop freezes PC - no action except a hard reset is possible #2442. Issue still presistant #6102

Closed

Signal Desktop freezes PC - no action except a hard reset is possible #2442

Signal Desktop freezes PC - no action except a hard reset is possible #2442

Comments

thompsonmj commented Jun 4, 2018

Bug description

Steps to reproduce

Screenshots

Platform info

Link to debug log

scottnonnenberg-signal commented Jun 4, 2018

thompsonmj commented Jun 5, 2018 via email

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AGCaesar commented Jul 6, 2018

thompsonmj commented Jul 17, 2018

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benmayne commented Dec 15, 2018

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thompsonmj commented Oct 9, 2019

Maysi2k commented Mar 24, 2021

z4lem commented Jun 30, 2021

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protist commented Sep 28, 2021

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Maysi2k commented Sep 2, 2022

Sylvanas-1977 commented Feb 8, 2023

naddeoa commented Apr 18, 2023

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