VB-29267 : Vivaldi on mac crashes with video (fixed, sorta)
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I'm posting this here because a) I have no idea whether it's actually possible to follow-up on the issues after reporting them. and b) It might be useful to somebody else facing similar issues.
For some time now I'd been facing crashes in Vivaldi (they started with update to Chromium 58 I think) related to video. i.e. a video would come on screen, or I'd hover over a link to see a video preview, and Vivaldi would crash.
I tried disabling extensions, making a new profile, etc etc and nothing worked. After breaking my head over this for several days, I realized it was in fact a Chromium problem. (Why was it causing a crash in Vivaldi, while in Chrome it just went by silently, though? Not sure)
The reason? The Chromium team apparently found some regression with hardware accelerator and so they had the bright idea to blacklist all Intel and AMD GPUs except for Skylake and Kaby Lake, and a couple of series of AMD cards.
In vivaldi, at least in my case (OSX 10.12.5) running on a 2011 mbp (HD3000/AMD6670) can be solved by enabling software rendering override in vivaldi://flags.
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@Gwen-Dragon said in VB-29267 : Vivaldi on mac crashes with video (fixed, sorta):
@Lord-Kamina said in VB-29267 : Vivaldi on mac crashes with video (fixed, sorta):
can be solved by enabling software rendering override in vivaldi://flags.
Please post the vivaldi URL to the flag.
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@Lord-Kamina Did you include a link to the web page with the problematic video in your bug report? It's absolutely critical that the Vivaldi developers get issues like this fixed. It's annoying when a video cannot play but it's totally unacceptable for Vivaldi to crash... for any reason.
Overriding the blacklist is also really just a temporary workaround because doing so can (and has for some) caused other problems, so I would never advocate this as a solution.
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@xyzzy said in VB-29267 : Vivaldi on mac crashes with video (fixed, sorta):
@Lord-Kamina Did you include a link to the web page with the problematic video in your bug report? It's absolutely critical that the Vivaldi developers get issues like this fixed. It's annoying when a video cannot play but it's totally unacceptable for Vivaldi to crash... for any reason.
Overriding the blacklist is also really just a temporary workaround because doing so can (and has for some) caused other problems, so I would never advocate this as a solution.
I did and it was literally almost everywhere. Facebook, YouTube, Google Video, adult sites, etc.
I know it's a horrible fix but in my case (and probably not JUST my case), it will most likely BE a fix, giving the Chromium blacklist as given in their issue discussion is SO broad (basically all AMD GPUs except for a couple models and all Intel GPUs older than 2 years). This would potentially even be an issue for people with the new MacBook pros with the Polaris Radeon cards.
This having been said, there's certainly something that needs to be solved in Vivaldi, because Chrome, under the same conditions, didn't crash. It just presumably used the software renderer with whatever decline in performance that might have meant.
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@Lord-Kamina Please forgive my (rather strong) comments. They were not directed at you but rather at @Vivaldi-Team. I was primarily thinking about the case of a new Vivaldi user going to their favourite web page and then experiencing a crash; it doesn't make for a good first impression.
FYI, I also experienced a crash with an autoplay video and was asked (by a developer) to report it as a bug. Hopefully they're taking these crashes very seriously.
The Google developers do seem to be blacklisting more and more GPUs these days; NVIDIA GPU's are affected too. (Hopefully this is just a temporary measure. The Chromium team seems to be advocating for GPU drivers that they can trust [...to not cause problems with their code?!?]) Regardless, when new users find that some videos don't play in Vivaldi, they won't be impressed either. It's not as bad as a crash but still not a good thing... and I agree with you wholeheartedly that this needs to be addressed.
I also don't have a problem with anyone informing others of the
#ignore-gpu-blacklist
flag. What I am concerned about is that people are casually treating flags like advanced settings rather than emergency overrides.Lastly, thanks very much for your assistance and helpful advice!
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@xyzzy said in VB-29267 : Vivaldi on mac crashes with video (fixed, sorta):
@Lord-Kamina Please forgive my (rather strong) comments. They were not directed at you but rather at @Vivaldi-Team. I was primarily thinking about the case of a new Vivaldi user going to their favourite web page and then experiencing a crash; it doesn't make for a good first impression.
FYI, I also experienced a crash with an autoplay video and was asked (by a developer) to report it as a bug. Hopefully they're taking these crashes very seriously.
The Google developers do seem to be blacklisting more and more GPUs these days; NVIDIA GPU's are affected too. (Hopefully this is just a temporary measure. The Chromium team seems to be advocating for GPU drivers that they can trust [...to not cause problems with their code?!?]) Regardless, when new users find that some videos don't play in Vivaldi, they won't be impressed either. It's not as bad as a crash but still not a good thing... and I agree with you wholeheartedly that this needs to be addressed.
I also don't have a problem with anyone informing others of the
#ignore-gpu-blacklist
flag. What I am concerned about is that people are casually treating flags like advanced settings rather than emergency overrides.Lastly, thanks very much for your assistance and helpful advice!
Don't worry; if anything, I'm actually glad/hope this topic will be a useful resource for a) Mac users who might be experiencing similar issues and b) Vivaldi developers trying to tackle the issue. For a bit, it made me feel kinda like https://xkcd.com/979/
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@Gwen-Dragon The crash happens when you start with the same pages as last time - and well, the same video as caused the crash.
I have looked at Vivaldi "Content" , and searched here for "gnu". If it is a property list file, Mac comes with an editor for this. WHERE is this set in the amazing file hierarchy /User/Library - /Library or /Applications, how do we find it. It may be easy for "those that know", but to the rest of us that do not live in the code. I have Xcode and Android Studio installed and no novice but when you propose a "fix" - write a small article of how to find these properties and flags, where, tools to use, best just "Texteditor" then rear to this article and start with start Texteditor, search for "xxxx" and replace "yyyyy" with "zzzz".
Then also mortals can use your proposal, and if kudos are deserved, a "Like" is coming.
BTW, I miss the button: "Me Too" -
@Knuthf Try to regain control of Vivaldi by disabling your Mac's network connection before launching the browser. (Either turn Wi-Fi off by clicking on the Wi-Fi icon in the macOS menu bar or unplug your Mac's Ethernet connection.) If the video can't load then Vivaldi shouldn't crash on launch.
You'll now have a few options to fix things up:
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If you don't mind losing your previous session, you can change Vivaldi's Startup settings to load the Start Page rather than resuming the Last Session.
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If these crashes occur constantly on your favourite web pages, you can try the workaround proposed earlier, and that is to override Vivaldi's GPU blacklist by going to a special menu page and setting one of the Vivaldi's internal flags. (This video decoding-related crash doesn't seem to occur when GPU hardware acceleration is enabled.) Go to vivaldi://flags and the first entry there should be an "Override software rendering list" flag; Click "Enable", then click the button at the bottom of the page to restart Vivaldi.
It should now be safe to let Vivaldi connect back to the network again.
Please also file a bug with Vivaldi at https://vivaldi.com/bugreport/ and include a link to the videos that are causing the crash. It will go straight to the developers. This is a REALLY bad bug and they really need to develop a proper fix.
Thanks... and best of luck in getting this resolved.
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I love Vivaldi and it is my favorite browser, but this issue is getting to be ridiculous. I fact, it is even getting worse! For months, I have not been able to view video of any type or gifs on Vivaldi. Gifs would just not appear; there would just be a space where they should be. Video players would just flat out break. Either they would not load properly, or if they did, you would get an error message. Like I said, this has been happening for a few months, perhaps longer, and it is amazing that this type of issue has not been addressed. Like the OP, I've tried various ways of solving this issue like disabling extensions, deleting my profile, etc., but nothing has helped. I've also tried enabling the ignore GPU blacklist flag, but that did nothing for me either.
I understand that this is a Chromium issue involving GPU's being blacklisted, but Chrome manages to work flawlessly even with the blacklist in effect, so something can be done! I also have a vanilla installation of Chromium 59 on my Mac, and I have the same issue with it as I do Vivaldi, so clearly the Chrome team at Google is adding some type of "special sauce" before putting their name on it. I wish the Vivaldi team would invest some time in doing the same. I know that they are focusing on power user features, but what good is that when an extremely basic browser function is fundamentally broken on a platform? Based on all of the horrible bugs and glitches I have on Vivaldi for macOS (this being one of the worst), I have to ask if anyone actually thoroughly tests this browser on the Mac? I have Vivaldi installed at work on Windows and I do not have any issues at all; it works great! It feels like Mac users are last priority. I mean no offense to anyone here who does put in hard work on the Mac. I am just frustrated as I really love this browser and am not happy at the thought of going back to Safari, which is very limited and has a sad selection of extensions, or Chrome (I'm not fond of Google) and losing my wonderful tab hibernation and the ability to save sessions without losing tab history.
As I said at the beginning of my post, this issue has actually gotten worse for me. To elaborate, after the upgrade to Vivaldi 1.10, my browser was just straight up crashing. After I installed the update and went to the first webpage I found with a video, the browser locked up, I got the spinning beachball, and then it unceremoniously crashed. (I thought the whole point of Chromium's sandboxing architecture was to prevent this type of thing from happening!) When I restarted, the same thing happened since it restored my session. I tried a few more times and it was clear I was stuck in a crash loop. I tried turning off WiFi and then restarting it, but it still kept crashing. I did not want to go into the Application Support folder in the Library and delete my Last Session data (had some tabs that I hadn't saved), so I decided to think of another way to get out of that nasty loop. I figured that it might be 1.10, so I ended up dragging Vivaldi.app to the trash. Then I took the old version that was there after the update (1.9.818.50) and put it back into the Applications folder. From there, I relaunched the app and it did not crash on startup. (I know that going backwards like that is not recommended, but other than losing my saved passwords, everything seems to be okay!)
For now, I am back on 1.9 and plan on staying here for the foreseeable future. It has its issues, but at least it doesn't crash on me.
BTW, here is my system info if anyone is interested:
15" MacBook Pro (Early 2011)
macOS Sierra 10.12.5
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 3000, AMD Radeon HD 6490M -
@Shrinra Thanks for the great post. On reading about your issue, my sense is that this might be a different crash from the one reported by the original poster. However, the only way to really know for sure is to file a bug -- and please be sure to include a link to the site crashing Vivaldi. If the developers can't reproduce it, they may ask you to provide excerpts from the crash reports (they're logged and can be seen in Console.app) to show them exactly where in the code that your crashes occurred.
I'll ping my Vivaldi contacts too just to make sure that they are aware.
Thanks.
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@xyzzy It worked - I started Vivaldi from Safari, and switched off WiFi. The flag was the first, and flipped it, and that was all. Since then Vivaldi was restarted and has not given me any problems.
I do not know if it is a video that cause the failure to start, could be Flash since I just upgraded Flash and the previous version has a problem with Chrome.
The Mac I use is "MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008)" - been upgraded a couple of times, not with a 2TB disk and 8GB RAM and a "super" battery made just for me, but is now at 2000 charges.... So, I am looking for "a new one" to replace this. It is running smooth after 8 years on duty. My recommendation to Apple would be to make these to "Personal servers" for use at home and on the road - and then they can make all sorts of integration with the other - iPhone, iPad, television and I have thrown in an Xiaomi router with 6TB of disk storage for the Time Machine and replicate my photos - right off the camera (Nikon). They should liberate the users, and not enslave them in a Marxist network. -
@xyzzy said in VB-29267 : Vivaldi on mac crashes with video (fixed, sorta):
@Shrinra Thanks for the great post. On reading about your issue, my sense is that this might be a different crash from the one reported by the original poster. However, the only way to really know for sure is to file a bug -- and please be sure to include a link to the site crashing Vivaldi. If the developers can't reproduce it, they may ask you to provide excerpts from the crash reports (they're logged and can be seen in Console.app) to show them exactly where in the code that your crashes occurred.
I'll ping my Vivaldi contacts too just to make sure that they are aware.
Thanks.
I think it's the same crash, but manifesting in a slightly different manner. They have the samu iGPU as I do and a very similar dGPU. What might be contributing to it not working with the blacklist override could be if she has dynamic graphics switching turned on in the power settings of the mac. I assume the Chromium decision was rooted in something real. And one of the things they specifically pointed to was HD3000 crashing all the time (one time ages ago, visiting Gmail with my HD3000 on, I even had a kernel panic, not Vivaldi btw)
IMO they should disable that option, to ensure the AMD gpu is being used, and see if that solves the issue for them. Of course, The need to figure out how Chrome averts a crash notwithstanding.
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@Shrinra One other question: did you happen to uncheck the "Use hardware acceleration when available" option in the Chrome settings menu? If so, like the blacklist, that also forces software-based rendering and overrides the #ignore-gpu-blacklist flag.
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@luetage Thanks for the down-vote. FYI, some Vivaldi users with discrete GPU's uncheck "Use hardware acceleration" to extend battery life on their laptops. Doing so forces Vivaldi to use a code path that seems to be prone to crashes these days.
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@xyzzy Disabling hardware acceleration is bad advice. Even using another browser is a better option.
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@luetage said:
Using software based rendering is very bad advice.
Yes, I agree... and perhaps you misunderstood... I was simply asking whether they had disabled hardware acceleration (and perhaps forgotten that they had done so); I was not recommending that they disable hardware acceleration.
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@xyzzy Yeah, I misread that, sorry. But let's be clear about a few things. Most people posting issues over the last months, have an igpu, either the hd3000 or hd4600. Vivaldi can't do anything about it. The blacklisting won't go away. The only way to really get a working Vivaldi is by buying a new computer or exchanging the parts that chromium deems incompatible. That's the sad truth. I'm running a hd3000 myself and have the flag enabled since about a year with no issues whatsoever. Interestingly enough even rasterization started working a few weeks back. If the ignore gpu blacklist flag works for someone, it should never be discouraged. Working video is far more important than a few scrolling issues here and there (which some experience). A browser which can't play videos is completely useless, that's for sure.
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@luetage said in VB-29267 : Vivaldi on mac crashes with video (fixed, sorta):
@xyzzy Yeah, I misread that, sorry. But let's be clear about a few things. Most people posting issues over the last months, have an igpu, either the hd3000 or hd4600. Vivaldi can't do anything about it. The blacklisting won't go away. The only way to really get a working Vivaldi is by buying a new computer or exchanging the parts that chromium deems incompatible. That's the sad truth. I'm running a hd3000 myself and have the flag enabled since about a year with no issues whatsoever. Interestingly enough even rasterization started working a few weeks back. If the ignore gpu blacklist flag works for someone, it should never be discouraged. Working video is far more important than a few scrolling issues here and there (which some experience). A browser which can't play videos is completely useless, that's for sure.
You're wrong on two counts:
- That the blacklist is way more than "iGPUs". And
- Which is rather more important: that blacklist aside, software rendering should not cause a crash loop, like it doesn't on Chrome...
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