Black screen of death w/ waydroid

killclique

@gpatel-fr Sorry it took So long for me to get back to you, i thought i had a simple fix where i would just put waydroid as a background app and leave a native UT app in the foreground. this worked for a while until i tried to get microg working on waydroid. The problem i think we are having is waydroid not releasing the screen and keeping the screen off if we were to turn the screen off while waydroid is active and let it rest for a while this will happen. Another thing is this seems to come up whenever i use Signal, normal resting and its fine. im not sure whats going on but it seems there some incompatibility with waydroid and Ubuntu touch when idling or sleep mode.

this hurts compatibility for me because i would love to have my waydroid running while my screen is off as i can get notifications and such. What do you think or would recommend as an alternative to waydroid? especially for android apps? Not running Waydroid and just getting a seperate device for that? this is troubling

killclique

@gpatel-fr oh yeah that waydroid stop app thing doesn't work lol, i found that out awhile ago. running the commands like waydroid stop definitely doesnt work. so i resort to killing the Pid

gpatel-fr

@killclique said in Black screen of death w/ waydroid:

The problem i think we are having is waydroid not releasing the screen and keeping the screen off

It looks like that. I think now that it is a known problem and the 24.04.1 stable version still misses this fix.

killclique

@gpatel-fr yep, i just found out by ssh into the phone and running this command

sudo systemctl restart repowerd

turned my blackscreen back on. So this is the main culprit but also the bug you just referenced stated repowerd could be the problem or waydroid with both leading to crashes and black screens. i think me and you have been experiencing both on and off with each giving a seperate edge case to start but nonetheless the same result.

so whats next? how can we fix this problem? i would love for my waydroid application to be on all the time lol

killclique

i will also say that when i ran the command it took a good 2 minutes before the screen turned back on. it was hung up for a bit but once it finished the screen was on. so yeah thats interesting. my waydroid crashes sometimes but im going to fix that later, and if i cant... e/os it is

gpatel-fr

@killclique

well, 24.04.1.1 is not there for ever, there will be at some point a 24.04.1.2 and it should get the fix.
For me, the problem is way too fleeting for me to take action, but you can try to fix it yourself by applying the change - I think that you'll need to turn the rootfs read/write for that.

Maybe a workaround could be to disable the screen saver in Waydroid ? I have no idea if this could help (@fredldotme could you have a word on this ?)

fredldotme

Best you can do is update to the daily channel of your current baseline Ubuntu Touch version, and not update it for a while. It would have been to risky including the workaround that late in the release process. But yeah, the problem has been identified as being partially caused by opportunistic auto suspend of the phone.

Sander

I think I might have a similar problem with my Fairphone 5. Today, I received a call, after which I couldn't turn the screen off anymore. The phone wouldn't respond to the power button. I wasn't too bothered by this since I needed to send a message after the call, so I continued using the phone.

I started up Waydroid to send the message. After that, I tried to force reboot the phone since the power menu didn't pop up. Unfortunately, the phone booted to a black screen. I could still hear the screenshot sound, though. Now this happens every time, and I can't see anything on the screen. Touch inputs are recognized, and I briefly see the screen lighting up when I run:

sudo systemctl restart repowerd

However, it doesn't turn the screen back on. I've also tried reinstalling Ubuntu Touch (stable, RC, and daily channels, even 24.04-2.x/daily), but that hasn't made a difference either. I'm aware that a full wipe (including userdata) could help, but I'd prefer to explore other solutions first if possible. Any help is appreciated!

Sander

This problem is solved! It turns out the brightness level was set to 0 percent. This explains why rebooting or reflashing didn't fix it. I used the brief moments when I could see the screen after restarting repowerd to locate and adjust the brightness slider.

sixwheeledbeast

I have had this experience maybe once or twice on 24.04-1.x stable, I use the device daily.
I have never used Waydroid only native apps and Libertine.
When it happens the back of the device is very warm, so I'm thinking some watchdog is kicking in?
Battery settings charge level graph shows a little dip around the time it does it as well.
The seemingly unresponsive device eventually reboots itself in around 3-5 minutes and all is then back to normal.

Sander

I just received another call, and I experienced almost exactly the same behavior. The phone didn't respond to the power button, and the screen wouldn't turn off. However, after a reboot, the brightness level was normal, and everything is functioning as expected now. I'm currently on 24.04-1.1.