Mac App UI is freezed most of the time, with no active peers #29293

1. 
   gentlee commented at 11:42 pm on January 22, 2024: none

   Is there an existing issue for this?

   • I have searched the existing issues

   Current behaviour

   App is not responding most of the time, mouse is spinning. It is totally unusable. And also there is no stable active peers - there is almost no progress for 2 weeks.

   Seems that “connecting to peers” and the beginning of “synchronizing with network” operation block UI thread.

   

   If start loading from the beginning, progress is going but also pretty slow, and slows down with time.

   Expected behaviour

   1. App never freezes UI and is always responsive.
   2. There are active working peers without the need of manually adding them.

   Steps to reproduce

   Run the app while having 80.78% progress, on HDD.

   Relevant log output

   

   How did you obtain Bitcoin Core

   Pre-built binaries

   What version of Bitcoin Core are you using?

   v26.0.0

   Operating system and version

   MacOS 13.6 (22G120)

   Machine specifications

   Macbook Air M1 16Gb External HDD 2Tb

   Advice for developers

   Never block threads in the app’s code, it is an antipattern, especially the main thread when doing IO operations. It shows a very low level of competence.

   1. Use non-blocking synchronization when needed - like serial queues, instead of mutexes. Check Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) lib (not sure if it can be used in C++, or what is its analog).
   2. Use non-blocking apis for IO operations.
2. 
   fanquake commented at 2:19 pm on January 23, 2024: member

   cc @hebasto
3. hebasto added the label GUI on Jan 23, 2024
4. hebasto added the label macOS on Jan 23, 2024
5. 
   furszy commented at 2:30 pm on January 23, 2024: member

   I briefly started working on this in the past but stopped because of the new GUI development. Depending on the new GUI progress, I could (slowly but steady) start improving this situation.
6. 
   fanquake commented at 2:31 pm on January 23, 2024: member

   Shoudn’t this be closed and marked as a duplicate of one of the existing issues in the GUI repo, and or moved to the GUI repo?
7. 
   hebasto commented at 2:40 pm on January 23, 2024: member

   Closing this a the former of reported problems

   App is not responding most of the time, mouse is spinning

   is a duplicate of https://github.com/bitcoin-core/gui/issues/299.

   And the latter

   there is no stable active peers - there is almost no progress for 2 weeks.

   seems better to ask elsewhere, for instance, on https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/.

8. hebasto closed this on Jan 23, 2024

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Contributors
gentlee fanquake furszy hebasto

Labels
GUI macOS