ChimeraX hangs at startup checking for updates

[Tom Goddard]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Tom Ferrin
Subject: very long startup delay if toolshed cannot be reached
Date: April 6, 2023 at 3:56:00 PM PDT
To: Chimera Staff

I thought I should give the release candidate a try on my M2 MacMini so I downloaded it, copied it too my Applications folder (nice feature, Zach!), dragged it to my to my dock and then double-clicked. Then I waited. And waited. And waited some more. Finder claimed the app was not responding and give me the option to force quit. Eventually, about 3 minutes later, it opened it's usual display window and all was fine. But it sure left me wondering before that if it was hung or what. Here's the output from the reply log:

Startup Messages
note available bundle cache has not been initialized yet

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UCSF ChimeraX version: 1.6rc202304050652 (2023-04-05)
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2023-04-06 15:11:00,180 WARNING Retrying (Retry(total=2, connect=None, read=None, redirect=None, status=None)) after connection broken by 'NewConnectionError('<urllib3.connection.HTTPConnection object at 0x1314981f0>: Failed to establish a new connection: [Errno 60] Operation timed out')': /cxservices/api/v1/chimerax/updates?uuid=b344d3dd-46a0-52bc-acab-90286e1890e5&OS=macosx&OSVersion=13.2.1&ChimeraXVersion=1.6rc202304050652
2023-04-06 15:12:15,185 WARNING Retrying (Retry(total=1, connect=None, read=None, redirect=None, status=None)) after connection broken by 'NewConnectionError('<urllib3.connection.HTTPConnection object at 0x125186340>: Failed to establish a new connection: [Errno 60] Operation timed out')': /cxservices/api/v1/chimerax/updates?uuid=b344d3dd-46a0-52bc-acab-90286e1890e5&OS=macosx&OSVersion=13.2.1&ChimeraXVersion=1.6rc202304050652
2023-04-06 15:13:30,189 WARNING Retrying (Retry(total=0, connect=None, read=None, redirect=None, status=None)) after connection broken by 'NewConnectionError('<urllib3.connection.HTTPConnection object at 0x1314dc970>: Failed to establish a new connection: [Errno 60] Operation timed out')': /cxservices/api/v1/chimerax/updates?uuid=b344d3dd-46a0-52bc-acab-90286e1890e5&OS=macosx&OSVersion=13.2.1&ChimeraXVersion=1.6rc20230405065

As you can see it was trying to connect to cxservices during those few minutes of utter silence. If only I had known it was having trouble connecting I would have just been more patient.

Do we note anywhere in the documentation that ChimeraX may appear to hang on startup if it cannot connect to the toolshed? Maybe this only happens the first time you try to start the app after a fresh install? Should we display a alert window warning users to wait while ChimeraX initializes its bundle cache? Seems like we could do a little better in this situation.

--tom

[Tom Goddard]

Ticket retargeted after milestone closed

[Greg Couch]

Fixed. ChimeraX was hanging checking for newer versions. Which it does once a week. The timestamp is updated if the check succeeds or not, so a subsequent invocation of ChimeraX works.