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by ncmncm 1936 days ago
The Element desktop app SEGFAULTs on startup when I run it on Debian (partly "unstable", like everybody). Curiously, a prior version used to work, and then recently started crashing with no apparent changes, and still crashes apparently the same way after upgrading to the latest release. It is possible that one of its 100+ library dependencies updated, and Element depends on behavior not retained.

I have not dug into where it crashes, yet. Element rooms have got so slow, lately, I hardly use it anymore. Nobody will say who is responsible. The room owner? My homeserver? Others' homeservers? Matrix.org? All I ever see is the spinner, with no hint as to what or who it is waiting on, or any way evident to ever find out.

On the Android app, meanwhile, rooms have taken to keeping a series of one or more very old messages always displayed at the bottom where current messages are supposed to be, taking up as much as half the screen, thus far.

It also makes a noise every 30 seconds that I cannot turn off, spamming my notifications log to tell me it has polled its server again. I have found that force-killing the app makes this go away. I don't know if this makes it unable to alert me to timely messages from others on my homeserver. The constant noises make it hard to care.

Fluffychat has the same noise problems, so the notification spam is probably in the client library. The sticky ancient message problem is only in Android Element.

1 comments

Strace says Desktop Element crashes after a series of calls to recvmsg; one returns 32 bytes, then four fail with EAGAIN. Gdb says SIGSEGV at 0x000055555a03b652, which points into /usr/bin/element-desktop, v1.7.21 from packages.riot.im/debian/. So, probably not a dependency.
Looking on Element Web/Desktop's issue tracker: https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues?q=is%3Aissue... there are no open issues concerning segfaults currently. If you file a bug report with the details requested in the template then we'll be able to investigate and fix it, just as we did for https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/13553 (for instance). Otherwise, expecting us to be aware of this and to fix it without a bug report is not going to happen.

In terms of "slow rooms" - we'd need more details to advise. A bug report on github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues would give us something to go on.

In terms of stuck messages on Element Android - this sounds like a bug which was fixed months ago. Please upgrade.

In terms of getting a notification every time the app syncs - I have no idea what would cause that, nor have I heard of it. Please file a bug at https://github.com/vector-im/element-android/issues.

Thank you, that saves me time searching for dups. You'll have to forgive me, in 30 years I have only ever seen one bug fixed in response to a report I filed online.

But hope springs eternal: <https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/16599>.

The stuck messages are still there, in a newly upgraded Android Element 1.1.0, same as in the last two upgrades to 1.0.14 marked (2021-01-30) and 1.0.17 (2021-02-14). Other people report the same: <https://github.com/vector-im/element-android/issues/2494>

Android Element 1.1.0 seems to spam the notifications log with "Listening for events", "parcel size: 992", a bit less often than previous versions. I see it now at 22:16, 22:17, 22:18, 22:20, 22:35, 22:43, 22:49, 22:51, 22:53, 22:56, 23:00, 23:21. Better than 2x/minute.

I can imagine that the slowness (endless spinner when scrolling back in a room transcript) might be a consequence of delays in my homeserver -- privacytools.io -- but the app offers no hint as to where the stall is. Does my homeserver have anything to do with slowness of rooms ? I also don't see any way to check the version of Synapse running on the homeserver. Should I be able to find that?

An example of a very slow scrollback room is #_oftc_#mobian:matrix.org.