Joplin Portable White Screen error

[Madcliff]

Operating system

• Windows

Application

• Desktop

When using the portable version of Joplin, I seem to semi-regularly have the screen become like the image I attached.

[laurent22]

Could you enable debug mode and see if you have any error or warning on the console? https://joplin.cozic.net/debugging/

[Madcliff]

How do I run as such on the portable edition?

[laurent22]

It should work if you put the flags.txt file next to the portable executable.

[Madcliff]

There is no errors or anything showing in the console. There seems to be no problem with the application, just none of the material is displaying.

[Madcliff]

Sometimes on a computer restart, the bug will go away. I cannot for the life of me work out what is occuring

[laurent22]

Does it happen on any note, or just some of them? Are there particularly large notes? Are there math formulas in them? Just trying to understand what could be triggering this.

[animationista]

Had the same problem on linux.
Happened suddenly, don't know what caused it.
Deleted the ~/.config/Joplin folder and it worked again.

[laurent22]

Not enough info to fix at this point.

[cls-nebadje]

I have the same problem on ubuntu 16.04 regularly. If I let it sit for some time it will blank. I have to kill and restart to restore it. So this bug is still present/not resolved, why don't you leave the issue open until it's resolved? If closed people get the impression that the problem has been fixed.

This issue doesn't seem to be related to the note I'm currently editing it happens with any note. The window is not redrawn and white but the menu is still present.

[animationista]

Some more info to go on.
Same as for cls-nebadje, white window with menu. None of the entries worked though. At least the ones bringing up a dialog or window.
Don' know what caused it , I think it just started that way one morning.

Also using it on one Android telephone and one windows laptop without this issue (yet).
Dropbox synced.

Don't think kill/restart worked for me. Not sure if I tried it but I usually do when something is not working.
The linux machine having white Joplin is running Ubuntu 18.4.

[cls-nebadje]

I'm synching w/ nextcloud - so sync target doesn't seem to matter. I suspect some refreshing after app was in background. I usually keep it on a dedicated workspace. Joplin is white/not refreshed/redrawn when I change to the workspace.

I'll collect more info the next time it happens. I was to lazy to report up to now but now it begins to annoy me.

[laurent22]

@cls-nebadje, could you enable debug mode and let it run for some time until your get the white screen? Then could you check if you get any error in the console or log file?

[cls-nebadje]

Ok,

echo "--open-dev-tools --log-level debug" > ~/.config/joplin-desktop/flags.txt

brought up a huge bunch of tools. I switched the console to verbose. Let's see what happens...

Btw: would be nice if the menu items would at least be accessible by Alt+<key/letter>.

[cls-nebadje]

Finally Joplin had a white out again.

It seems that Joplin hangs and isn't able to refresh at all. Even the debugging console hung and I wasn't able to scroll to the top.

The menu is still there but the event loop seems to be pretty dead, therefore no callbacks for menu actions as well.

Is there any possibility to let Joplin print debug messages to stdout? Then I can run Joplin from the command line without losing the log when the whole thing freezes up.

[laurent22]

Was there anything in the log file by any chance? I'm going to check if it's possible to redirect the console output to file.

[laurent22]

By the way, does it do this on a particular note?

[cls-nebadje]

Ah, there's a log - great! I already found it. With the log the stdout logging isn't necessary. I'm currently running Joplin with tail -f on the log. I removed the --open-dev-tools from the flags.

No, this happens regardless of the note.

[cls-nebadje]

Joplin hung up again. Here are the last log lines before it froze:

2018-12-03 00:55:39: "Reducer action", "SYNC_REPORT_UPDATE"
2018-12-03 00:55:39: "mkdir .sync"
2018-12-03 00:55:40: "mkdir .resource"
2018-12-03 00:55:40: "delta "
2018-12-03 00:55:41: "Sync: fetchingTotal: Fetching delta items from sync target"
2018-12-03 00:55:41: "Reducer action", "SYNC_REPORT_UPDATE"
2018-12-03 00:55:41: "Reducer action", "SETTING_UPDATE_ONE"
2018-12-03 00:55:41: "Sync: finished: Synchronisation finished [1543794939051]"
2018-12-03 00:55:41: "Reducer action", "SYNC_REPORT_UPDATE"
2018-12-03 00:55:41: "Operations completed: "
2018-12-03 00:55:41: "fetchingTotal: -"
2018-12-03 00:55:41: "Total folders: 5"
2018-12-03 00:55:41: "Total notes: 27"
2018-12-03 00:55:41: "Total resources: 0"
2018-12-03 00:55:41: "Reducer action", "SYNC_COMPLETED"
2018-12-03 00:55:41: "Reducer action", "SETTING_UPDATE_ONE"
2018-12-03 00:55:41: "Setting up recurrent sync with interval 300"

[peter-sc]

I'm getting this error on a non-portable version on Windows 10 too.
The content of note is not displayed at all, but if the layout is changd to source view (edit), then the content in plaintext is displayed. If layout is changed again, no content is displayed (white screen instead of rendered markdown note).

There is no error before or after the blank note is displayed in the console.
If I go the the General options menu, don't change anything, and going back - the note is displayed.

I can simulate it (get the error), if I click or doubleclick fast betwen notes. After 30s - 1minute, note is not rendered.

[laurent22]

@peter-sc, could you post here the Markdown text that is causing this bug?

[peter-sc]

Sorry @laurent22, but can't post them. It is not just one note causing this bug. It is selecting one note from 10 notes, then selecting second, and repeating this 10-30times.
Are there any more debug flags that can be enabled which would be helpful?
The bug happens, when the layout is selected to "note viewer". After it happens, it is also present when layout is changed to to "editor + viewer". Note editor displayes the content, but not the viewer.

[laurent22]

@peter-sc, I cannot replicate this bug and it doesn't seem to affect many people, so I'm wondering if it's something to do with certain notes you have. Maybe it's many images, or links, or text encoding, etc. that triggers this. It's hard to know so if you could share one or more notes which caused the bug that could help.

[peter-sc]

@laurent22, Understand, pls see the note. In the end, it was only this note causing the bug.
Just copy the content and insert it into new note, or rename to .md. You can leave the layout on "editor + viewer". After few seconds, the viewer gets blank. Opening any other note (also with pure text) means blank viewer. Hope this helps.

test_blank_bug.txt

[laurent22]

Perfect, thanks, I'll give it a try.

[ajacobs-isp]

One more clue on this one. I was able to reproduce this on Windows 10 with portable 0.165. I set the debug flags, etc. but each time I would start the app it would just show a white screen with the menu, no editor, nothing. No logs were generated at all for these instances of the app.

I tried relocating the portable files and realized the .exe was being used by a running process "Joplin for Desktop". When I killed all Joplin-related processes in task manager then started the app again, everything worked fine again.