Unsolved Recurring freeze on startup

szczurnik

Every few days/weeks Vivaldi freezes on startup. The main (?) process eats the whole core, keeps writing to disk at a constant rate of 23MB/s or something ...and keeps doing this for several minutes, even 15 or longer. Browser is inaccessible in that time. Killing it does not matter, next startup will be likewise affected. After I let this mysterious activity complete, Vivaldi stays operational between restarts until... well... too many days pass again. I tried to find the files written to for such a long time (this has to be even up to 20 GB of data written in total), but no luck.

What is this/what triggers this behavior? How I can avoid these freezes?

A possible hint: the same happens with Opera, so maybe Chromium is at fault, but nothing has turned up in search so far.

Earliest Vivaldi version with the problem - unknown; I did not record it, was many months ago. Windows 10, currently 22H2 19045.4412

szczurnik

Just had another occurrence, Vivaldi frozen for ~25 minutes; what is weird, I tried doing something in Opera and it froze as well. Is this an engine thing? Opera is still stuck as I'm writing, which means that at random moments I could be deprived from any access to internet because sh1t happens to both browsers and there is nothing that could save me from this.

mib2berlin

@szczurnik
Hi, I guess you get no answers because nobody ever had this with Vivaldi.
I would check if something else is running in the task manager if this happen, maybe a third party security software.
Do yo use the same extensions in Opera and Vivaldi?
How many tabs you have open?
We have users with 1000-4000 tabs open and nobody knows how a browser reacts with such a setup, for example.

Cheers, mib

sgunhouse

@szczurnik How soon after startup? Before it loads open tabs, before it checks for new mail/feeds (if you use those), etc.? That may give us a clue.

If other browsers are also freezing (but not programs that don't access the internet), one would presume it is some sort of network issue, possibly something to do with a firewall ... does it only occur right after an update? If not, then it might not be the firewall, but some external network issue.

szczurnik

@sgunhouse no "loaded" tabs in the current workspace, only basic Quick Dial; 10 tabs in other workspaces I just forgot they are there (similar amount is in Opera as well). Either immediately after the start or when I try to load the first page.

I did not observe network problems when using other applications during this period - it's a good opportunity to take care of stale links in JDownloader, for example... Pale Moon is working as usual during that time, but being slightly legacy I don't consider it a viable replacement.

@mib2berlin several extensions are shared: Webtime Tracker, Block Site, Unhook; not very helpful, as it's not like I can disable them and wait for weeks IF the problem will repeat or not.

Even if there is interference from another application, it's not using resources enough to make to the top 25% of processes, I guess, so is rather well hidden - no idea how I could make a match. I don't know as well if this is related to updates, unless there is something in logs I could filter to see a connection (GUI is trying its best to obscure updates). I think I was prompted to update today, but I possibly restarted Vivaldi later more than once before being hit.

mib2berlin

@szczurnik
I am sorry but your issue is so unique I have no idea what can cause this.
If you use Opera for testing with no extension but Vivaldi use 20 if were maybe a hint where to search, therefor I asked.

Cheers, mib

szczurnik

Is there a way for me to find the target of these disk writes on Windows? This could be the best hint, why Vivaldi considers spending >20 minutes writing data there a reasonable use of my time as well.

DoctorG

@szczurnik Use ProcMon
Activate only button "File System Activity"
Select Vivaldi window "Include Process from Window" button to filter only this process

Beware: gives long list.

Pathduck

While Process Monitor is great for details on what goes on in the system, it is quite tricky to understand and filter the huge data it generates. There are simpler methods.

For instance, one can use Process Explorer with the IO Delta read/write columns to find the process/es causing the IO. For instance, here's Vivaldi download a file from a very fast server:

For Vivaldi it will often be the main browser process or the App process, possibly the network service. Use the Task Manager (Shift+ESC) inside Vivaldi to find what process each PID is.

Once one knows the process, one can use tools like ProcessActivityView or FileActivityWatch.
https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/process_activity_view.html
https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/file_activity_watch.html

That said, the only times I've seen massive IO operations from Vivaldi is when either downloading something very fast, or when testing for users that have either a lot of bookmarks (before the 6.6 release) or a lot of browser history (hundreds of MB History file).

szczurnik

Another round of freezes: both Opera and Vivaldi synchronously at the same time. How it went with Process Monitor?

It got nothing. Both applications had a writer process, which is the main and uses quite a bit of memory, but also a reader process. The rate at which reader process did I/O was basically the same as I/O for the writer. CPU usage was only on the writer process, I think?

So I gave PIDs of both readers and writers to Process Monitor, turned off all other filters and tried to find anything: not a trace. These processes have claimed "transfers" in gigabytes, yet there was no reading or writing to/from filesystem that could match this volume. A ghost activity. It is possible that handles have been opened before Process Monitor has started tracking and kept in continuous mode, so that no system events have been created during the entire time of the freeze, this sounds rather ...confusing, I would say. What kind of event would allow continuously dumping something like 10GB in total to a handle (or set of handles) without reopening, rewinding, flushing - not even a single break for several minutes?

Next step for me would be to guess that freeze is going to happen and start monitoring BEFORE the application is started, so that everything on boot would be visible.

sgunhouse

Mail? (Including calendar and feeds) Sync? Mail is usually delayed until after sync and session/tabs, and mail should show state in status bar. Of course Opera has no mail, but both do have sync if enabled. Some Opera users have indicated their firewall blocks sync, perhaps yours only slows or delays it.

szczurnik

@sgunhouse no mail, no sync, I basically use "dumb" browsers, ignoring such integrations.

Maybe a small hint at History and Favicons could be taken from Process Monitor, a far-fetched hint nonetheless, though the weird part is that both Chrome-based browsers went into this state at the same time. Some kind of trigger?

szczurnik

I'm still tortured by these freezes, they even happen on instances running for some time even. Using approach from another thread, I have noted process parameters from a recent freeze:

Reading process:
vivaldi.exe --disable-features=UseEcoQoSForBackgroundProcess

Writing process:
vivaldi.exe --type=utility --utility-sub-type=network.mojom.NetworkService --lang=en-US --running-vivaldi --service-sandbox-type=none --field-trial-handle=2316,i,5488425031375090882,1398175502133087548,262144 --disable-features=ResponsiveToolbar,UseEcoQoSForBackgroundProcess --variations-seed-version --mojo-platform-channel-handle=2184 /prefetch:3

So this looks like Browser chats with NetworkService aggressively about something.

szczurnik

Another freeze, so I checked, which processes were talking this time. According to PIDs, I have confirmed later in Task Manager that these were Browser (yes, the main process again) and "Background Page: Vivaldi", which has an --extension-process flag, whatever this means

I had in recent days browser unusable so frequently, that I'm getting annoyed by this inability to nail down the reason...

szczurnik

Instead of a freeze once every few weeks, I have now a permanently useless browser. All it does is doing reads from main browser and writes in the Network Service. There is nothing in disk activity, no files, so it seems that these might be done in-memory - but heavy enough to forbid other uses.

I have noticed one thing - this activity goes away, when I'm on this forum (https://forum.vivaldi.net , literally), but other sites like https://www.empik.com make Vivaldi go crazy.

Edit after further tests: which process is responsible for internal Task Manager? It froze on me when reloading tabs, is this allowed? I had to restart the app.

This insanity is pushing me to migrate to another browser, that will perform well for the user, not for itself.

szczurnik

Another round: considering how easy it is to reproduce the current variant of the problem, I did a round of enabling/disabling extensions and the problem seems to be isolated to Flag Cookies 3.6.0; I'm still concerned, why the activity was entirely offloaded to the internals of Vivaldi, as it made the debugging a pain in 455.

DoctorG

@szczurnik said in Recurring freeze on startup:

the problem seems to be isolated to Flag Cookies 3.6.0

Please report issue to Vivaldi bug tracker. Once that is done, share the bug number (beginning with VB-) you got by bug report mail.
Thanks for helping us making Vivaldi better.

And please report to author of the extension.

szczurnik

Done. Vivaldi tracker knows this issue as VB-110453.

Maybe I should request splitting the thread, as initial problem (startup freeze) has appeared before I have installed Flag Cookies, so possibly I have two unrelated performance bugs.

szczurnik

Flag Cookies disabled, UseEcoQoSForBackgroundProcess disabled - and another startup freeze. Looking at PID of "vivaldi.exe" --type=renderer --extension-process --disable-gpu-compositing --video-capture-use-gpu-memory-buffer --lang=en-US --device-scale-factor=1.5 --num-raster-threads=4 --enable-main-frame-before-activation --renderer-client-id=5 --time-ticks-at-unix-epoch=-1729182539338845 --running-vivaldi --launch-time-ticks=2787072999 --field-trial-handle=3336,i,10796072065735539078,49116657980369597,262144 --disable-features=ResponsiveToolbar,UseEcoQoSForBackgroundProcess --variations-seed-version --mojo-platform-channel-handle=3332 /prefetch:2 process, internal Task Manager knows it as Background Page: Vivaldi

My question is - how can I disable this extension to test, how Vivaldi works without it? These freezes last more than half an hour and are NOT interruptible by kills, they just "resume".

(Edit four hours later) I had two freezes today

DoctorG

@szczurnik Open Vivaldi Extension Manager (Ctrl+Shift+E)
At entry Flag Cookies click the Delete button
Restart Vivaldi