[wiki] Freezes on init without internet connection

[BobbyWibowo]

Source

OBS

Environment

$ albert --report
        Albert version: 0.16.1
            Build date: Dec 31 2018 19:22:07
            Qt version: 5.12.0
  QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME:
       Binary location: /usr/bin/albert
                   PWD: /home/bobby
                 SHELL: /bin/zsh
                  LANG: en_GB.utf8
      XDG_SESSION_TYPE: x11
   XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP: KDE
       DESKTOP_SESSION: /usr/share/xsessions/plasma
   XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP: KDE
                    OS: Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS
     OS (type/version): ubuntu/18.04
             Build ABI: x86_64-little_endian-lp64
  Arch (build/current): x86_64/x86_64
 Kernel (type/version): linux/4.15.0-45-generic

Actual behavior

Disconnect from internet. Start albert. Albert will freeze right after loading applications (as in desktop files, I believe) and before starting to load python modules.

> disconnect from internet
$ albert
22:46:27 [DEBG:default] Initializing application
...
22:46:29 [DEBG:applications] Indexing desktop file: xscreensaver-properties.desktop
22:46:29 [DEBG:applications] Indexing desktop file: yelp.desktop
> frozen here, so I had to re-connect to the internet
> but then it would still remain frozen, so I had to send Ctrl + C
> only then would it resume loading, though it would then exit immediately due to Ctrl + C
22:46:39 [DEBG:python.modulev1] Reading metadata of python module: atom_projects.py
22:46:39 [DEBG:python.modulev1] Reading metadata of python module: base_converter.py
...
22:46:39 [DEBG:default] Quit

Expected behaviour

Works as is even without internet connection.

To me this is a rather critical issue. I'm always behind VPN and I've setup my firewall as a kill-switch, so the first 5 seconds or so after login I won't have internet connection until VPN logins. Since I've got albert to start on login, it will immediately have the freezing issue since I won't have internet connection by then yet.

[BobbyWibowo]

For the time being I opted to disabling python plugin altogether. Unsurprisingly not getting the said issue after that.

[ManuelSchneid3r]

I dont think its the python extension itself. If you are willing to help it would be nice if you could find the python extension(s) which block(s).

[BobbyWibowo]

@ManuelSchneid3r Yeah, it appears to be Wikipedia extension. From the looks of it, it's due to the fact that it requests online data on initialization. It doesn't gracefully fail the request when internet connection isn't available, but instead it just hangs indefinitely.

Similar thing happens with other online extensions apparently, such as Dango Emoji and Dango Kao. They won't block initial launch of albert since they don't have any online request on initialization, but once you enter any query with their trigger words, albert will just hang indefinitely (assuming you don't have internet connection, of course).

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.