Linux client freezes when Rooms items get slightly dragged

[Mike Ely]

Using current downloaded from Atlassian's (whatever artifactory replacement is called this week), and in previous versions since we got Hipchat. Using the RPM install on OpenSUSE, colleagues report same behavior in Debian-based distros as well as Fedora.

Problem occurs when accidentally dragging one of the Rooms items slightly. Client then freezes hard, and has to be killed. Utterly maddening. Anyone know the fix?

[Mike Ely]

Hey, I will do that simply because it will reduce the substantial memory bloat this application displays, but I don't think that it has anything to do with the problem I reported. When it freezes I don't see leaky memory or high CPU utilization. The app is simply nonresponsive - I think it's blocking on redrawing the room/1-1 order but the redraw never completes.

I'll try to attach gdb to it next time it borks and let you know what I see.

[Mike Ely]

Actually, the control I want most (Animated avatars) is missing:

Now if only the person in charge of the Hipchat downloads page could be convinced (with a foam baseball bat if need be) that "Linux" does not mean "Debian Derived Distros" then it would be less of a pain in the neck to locate current builds for everything not .deb so I could see if I have the current version installed.

[Mike Ely]

Definitely on current:

~> hipchat4 --version
hello 0.779375
PackageLocation: "/opt/HipChat4/share/localweb/package.json"
package.json opened
package.json valid
package.json object
package.json version value =  "4.30.3"
Reading config.ini file
force_server= false  value= ""
HipChat 4.30.4.1672 (Web Core 4.30.3)

 Current version at https://atlassian.artifactoryonline.com/atlassian/hipchat-yum-client/ is:

HipChat4-4.30.4.1672-Linux.rpm   21-Mar-2018 18:2

Wonder why that control is missing?

[AhmadDanial]

Hi, Mike.

The screen shot I provided is from the latest Linux client 4.30.4.1672:

ahmaddanialmohammad@ubuntu:~$ hipchat4 --version
hello 0.693852
PackageLocation: "/opt/HipChat4/share/localweb/package.json"
package.json opened
package.json valid
package.json object
package.json version value = "4.30.3"
Reading config.ini file
force_server= false value= ""
HipChat 4.30.4.1672 (Web Core 4.30.3)

Is there any chance that you are able to remove the current client that you have and re-install a new one with reference to the following steps?

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb https://atlassian.artifactoryonline.com/atlassian/hipchat-apt-client $(lsb_release -c -s) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/atlassian-hipchat4.list'
wget -O - https://atlassian.artifactoryonline.com/atlassian/api/gpg/key/public | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install hipchat4

Let me know if you are still unable to see the option from the Appearance tab after the reinstallation process.

[Mike Ely]

Sigh.

Did you not see what I wrote in my earlier post? Allow me to paste it here for your elucidation:

Now if only the person in charge of the Hipchat downloads page could be convinced (with a foam baseball bat if need be) that "Linux" does not mean "Debian Derived Distros" then it would be less of a pain

I don't know why the Hipchat team seems to be under the illusion that Ubuntu is Linux, or that everybody using Linux on the desktop uses Ubuntu.

[AhmadDanial]

Hi. Mike.

Apologies for the confusion. I am getting in touch with the dev team to get further clarification on this matter.

[AhmadDanial]

Hey, Mike.

I confirmed from my end that when deployed on Fedora, I did not have the Animated avatars option available. Hats off to you for nailing that one down.

Moving forward, I went ahead and have the following bug created to address this concern:

• HCPUB-8238: HipChat Linux: Absence of Animated avatars Option

I encourage you to visit the bug page linked above and click the Watch link near the top right to show support for the feature. By doing this, it will ensure you are proactively informed of progress and updates going forward.

Feedbacks are also appreciated. You can do this by leaving a comment on the ticket as this helps us prioritize the bug better. 

[Mike Ely]

Thank you. I've hit watch and vote on that bug, although it's hopeless as the Hipchat team seems to have a policy of not taking any actions on bugs with fewer than five thousand votes.

[AhmadDanial]

You are welcome. With Stride being released for HipChat Cloud already, we will push this up to the development team to provide us with an update, hopefully soon. For more information on how Atlassian takes on bug fixes, please refer to the Atlassian Bug Fixing Policy. Hope that helps.

[Mike Ely]

Running native, not virtualized, on a Core i7-4790 with 16GB RAM. This is the RPM build running on opensuse, not the Debian build. I hear the same gripes from people on Debian derived distros such as Ubuntu as well as a Fedora user.

Usage is pretty typical. We have a lot of users unfortunately who think it's a good idea to use animated GIFs for their avatars - Atlassian really needs to rethink that capability as it's annoying as heck to literally everyone not using that avatar.

[AhmadDanial]

Hi, Mike.

Gotcha. That could possibly contribute to that problem, especially when it involves a lot of users. Let us try something here to reduce the resources that is being used:

• Enable the Hide inline previews by default & Hide gifs by default. Disable Turn text emoticons into images.
• Change the Chat view to Classic and the Animated avatars to Show as static images

Can you confirm if that helps?

[Mike Ely]

I don't think of it as a tab, more like the left column which indeed does contain rooms and 1-1 conversations. This here:

What happens is if I click-drag very briefly on one of these rooms or 1-1 conversations either by accident or because I simply miss the room I was trying to click on, hipchat hangs hard. It's intermittent, but happens at least once a day to myself and everyone in my department (we're all using various flavors of Linux on the desktop).

I typically have about 20-30 of these open including the 1-1 conversations.

[AhmadDanial]

Thanks for the confirmation. I had the latest version of HipChat Linux client installed on Ubuntu 17.01 on VMware. 50 busy rooms and 1-1 conversations on the left column. While I was not able to reproduce the issue on my end, I have the following amount of processor and memory allocated on my end:

Can you confirm the if you are running Linux natively (non-VM) and share the amount resources allocated on the machine? 

Are the rooms / 1-1 conversations heavily used (constant messages coming in, attachments being uploaded and downloaded, integrations)?

[AhmadDanial]

Hi, Mike.

Can you explain a little bit more on what you mean by dragging the Room items? Are you referring to the reordering of the room / 1-1 conversations on the ROOMS / PEOPLE tab?

Also, can you confirm on the number of tabs that you have open when the problem is reproduced? 

As we do not have any specific bugs reported on this so far, it will be good to have a good understanding of the problem before we dig deeper into it.