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IPFS Desktop stuck on "IPFS is Starting"

See original GitHub issue

It never gets past IPFS is Starting for me, unless I run ipfs daemon in a terminal window first…

This error also happens when pressing Check for Updates, while in this “IPFS is Starting” stuck state…

Specifications

OS: win32
IPFS Desktop Version: 0.13.2
Electron Version: 9.3.2
Chrome Version: 83.0.4103.122

Error

TypeError: ctx.manualCheckForUpdates is not a function
    at click (C:\Users\jjv36\AppData\Local\Programs\IPFS Desktop\resources\app.asar\src\tray.js:198:30)
    at MenuItem.click (electron/js2c/browser_init.js:65:1624)
    at Function.executeCommand (electron/js2c/browser_init.js:73:1102)

Issue Analytics

State:
Created 3 years ago
Reactions:2
Comments:24 (10 by maintainers)

Top GitHub Comments

2reactions

UnKnoWn-Consortiumcommented, Jan 24, 2021

Okay further investigation suggests it is a rather complicated matters as there are a couple of things interleaving with each other…

Before the start method of the ipfsd-ctl controller instance is called, a checkPorts function is called to determine if the ports required by ipfs are available.

https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/ipfs-desktop/blob/6dbfa13bfa0f80c490696818bbb5c4c42aeb22fe/src/daemon/daemon.js#L72-L75

Things was first stuck at this checkPorts function defined at config.js.

https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/ipfs-desktop/blob/6dbfa13bfa0f80c490696818bbb5c4c42aeb22fe/src/daemon/config.js#L216-L231

The culprit is the checkIfAddrIsDaemon function. What it does is to make a POST request to the previously identified API address (which is usually 127.0.0.1:5001) with a specific path /api/v0/refs?arg=/ipfs/QmUNLLsPACCz1vLxQVkXqqLX5R1X345qqfHbsf67hvA3Nn and see if there is a daemon already running that would reply with 200. Simple but not so elegant.

https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/ipfs-desktop/blob/6dbfa13bfa0f80c490696818bbb5c4c42aeb22fe/src/daemon/config.js#L156-L175

The request has no timeout explicitly set. There is supposed to be a default timeout value of 120,000ms (i.e. 2 minutes) in Node 12.14.1 that comes with Electron 9 where the request can resort to (P.S. This default value was dropped in Node 13. So it is no longer the case in Electron 10 which comes with Node 14. See: https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/27558).

If there happens to be any service other than ipfs that listens to the API port (5001) but not replying to the request (properly a la HTTP). It should take the whole 2 minutes before the request timing out. But in my case the promise never gets resolved. The startup process is stuck there.

So I tried to get this fixed by adding back the timeout property at the request option and the listener for timeout event. But this is not the end. Continue next.

1reaction

jessicaschillingcommented, Jan 25, 2021

Apologies - you got there before I did. Thanks for the tidy summarization. Issue is https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/ipfs-desktop/issues/1749.