Unsolved Recurring freeze on startup

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

szczurnik

@DoctorG ? Flag Cookies is already disabled, I still need it, but once few days, not the whole time, so disabling it was an easy workaround. Now I want to get rid of Background Page: Vivaldi!

DoctorG

@szczurnik said in Recurring freeze on startup:

Now I want to get rid of Background Page: Vivaldi!

Needed, that is the browser.

szczurnik

Why is the process running with the --extension-process flag then and causing so much trouble?

Is there something I can do to debug and report this? Process Monitor fails, as it doesn't capture pipe transfers, and there is no file activity that would indicate what exactly Background Page and Browser are chatting about. Process Explorer just shows the flags and CPU or I/O load and it's done.

DoctorG

@szczurnik Let me check with Process Monitor.
I see in procmon for Network only a few DNS requests.

Pathduck

Vivaldi's "App" process is running with that flag because Vivaldi is an extension - it's a web app running on top of Chromium - makes sense?

You can get more info in ProcExp going into the process properties, and going to the different tabs.

as it doesn't capture pipe transfers

Why do you think this is "pipe transfers"?

DoctorG

@szczurnik Vivaldi main process has some of its own important subprocesses as a extension
Open vivaldi:system and check Extensions.

szczurnik

@Pathduck because the activity is recorded as I/O, yet there is nothing in disk, nothing in network, so needs to be a different type of I/O. Moreover, I/O of writing process corresponds in volume to the one reading, which usually means there is a pipe between them doing the "balancing". It looks like Browser tries to process some data in loop, but instead of keeping its own in-memory cache, requests it over and over from Background Page.

How much that could be? Freeze can last for 35 minutes at 27MB/s I/O rate, which means over 50GB transferred over pipe with full CPU load processing whatever this is.

Pathduck

@szczurnik True, Chromium browsers use a lot of inter-process communication.

My guess if you can't tell from the task manager (Shift+ESC) which process it is, then it's possibly Mail or RSS feeds, as they are known to cause CPU problems.

Might be trying to download a bajillion mails for local cache from an IMAP server. In that case you would of course also see network IO from the browser's Network Service process.

I can't help much with that though, as I don't use the Mail/RSS client and my very minor testing has not shown such problems.

szczurnik

@Pathduck Mail disabled, Calendar disabled, Feeds disabled since forever. I don't know the trigger, usually happens once few weeks (the only smaller gap was yesterday with two freezes in a single day), so might be a browser update.

I can try with logging, is --enable-logging --v=1 from https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6271282 the good set of flags and with good-enough verbosity? Will it include Vivaldi-specific chatter as well?

Pathduck

@szczurnik Yes, you could try logging, from my notes what I have for most verbose logs:

vivaldi --enable-logging=stderr --v=3 > log.txt 2>&1

https://www.chromium.org/for-testers/enable-logging/

You could possibly do a capture with Process Monitor too, but if it's IPC I don't think it captures that.

Also things to think about:

Do you have an insane amountof open tabs?
Have you set session tabs to lazy load?
Do you have an insane amount (i.e. 10k+) of bookmarks?
Do you have a insane amount of history (i.e. stored "for ever")?
Do you have a lot of other data types?
Have you enabled Sync?
What does chrome://sync-internals say about data?

szczurnik

@Pathduck Logging flags added (is --v=3 the better value?), replying to the following:

11 tabs in three worspaces total, current worspace has 1.
should be lazy - confirmed, Always Load Pinned Tabs is set as well, and while I don't have any in the current workspace, some might still be in another ; loading disabled for Pinned Tabs now.
bookmarks seem to be between 100 and 150, many of them default.
history is my thing, guilty of a 212MB file (though I don't recall disk I/O on its file during freeze, it could be that Browser is locked down before it can reach the history loader).
dunno.
no Sync, no account.
nothing seems to be in chrome://sync-internals (though I'm running an instance from a "quick start", as the current run has not been affected by freeze), not sure how I'm supposed to work with this tab.

Current flags: vivaldi.exe --disable-features=UseEcoQoSForBackgroundProcess --log-file=D:\Vivaldi.log --enable-logging --v=3