App closes from time-to-time due to an issue with the Paddle licensing service when Squid, SSL proxy etc is being used

[exceedsystem]

Repeated sleep and resume operations will cause BetterDummy to exit after a few days.

• Mac mini (M1, 2020) 16GB

• macOS Monterey 12.4

• Dell S3221QS(HDMI)

• BetterDummy(Pro license activated) version 1.2.4-beta build 6915
  ※This problem has also occurred in earlier versions.

  

  • Two dummy displays are used, other functions are unused.
  • The display is turned off during system sleep.

How can I find out the cause? For example, is there a log file?

Best regards.

[waydabber]

Hi there - sorry about the issue.

You can take a look a the console output of the app to see what is going on inside - #445

But if the app suddenly crashes, you might have a crash log in Console under Crash Reports which can be useful for me to find out what happened.

[exceedsystem]

@waydabber

Thanks for the reply.

I found 2 crash reports of BetterDummy in console.

Here is the part of the crash log.

Crashed Thread:        6  Dispatch queue: com.apple.NSURLSession-delegate

Exception Type:        EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes:       KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000010
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000001, 0x0000000000000010
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Termination Reason:    Namespace SIGNAL, Code 11 Segmentation fault: 11
Terminating Process:   exc handler [609]

Should I send the full crash report to you via email?
Even though the logs are anonymized, I hesitate to paste them here.

[waydabber]

Yes, I need the full crashlog in order to analyze it. You can contact me on Discord and send it over in a private chat if that is all right with you. If not, I'll provide an email address. Thank you!

[exceedsystem]

@waydabber

Unfortunately, I do not use Discord, so could you please contact me at my public email of GitHub?
And if you are worried about attachments, I'll put crash logs directly in the body of the email.

Thank you.

[waydabber]

I did just that, thanks!

[waydabber]

Well @exceedsystem , I examined the logs. Bad news is that the Paddle framework is crashing apparently at the same place. This is a black-box stuff as the licensing and payment provider (Paddle.com) provides the framework in a secured and heavily obfuscated binary (for obvious reasons). I'll try to contact them to figure out if they know about the issue or can help with this.

Thanks for the report!

For future reference, the relevant stuff:

Thread 8 Crashed::  Dispatch queue: com.apple.NSURLSession-delegate
0   Paddle                        	       0x10329504c invocation function for block in R69n2aPQ8Uv7rqkIoxmPIFsjGiSQycnRW9KS2faREXkbq19RI2::BLdLuHaL8VQJf2xm0vwFXUKJqWeYcfIP2rXxTIqrgqJUqbYWWc(NSString*, NSString*, NSString*, l0cUj0RBBbf1sLFI46YWyGbNLO2sLIesu3AIkFssm15QOtiFHq, void (XDVoYxaXBzOa3qkNsIet8HP4amlpHHqMqMuIabNxtvsgtkrnXk, NSDate*, PaHjdj99vUtQeaqYsg6ItAZ0Z1WOwqly5MiwRJTViDaOMa9p1E, NSDictionary*) block_pointer) + 72
1   Paddle                        	       0x103295028 invocation function for block in R69n2aPQ8Uv7rqkIoxmPIFsjGiSQycnRW9KS2faREXkbq19RI2::BLdLuHaL8VQJf2xm0vwFXUKJqWeYcfIP2rXxTIqrgqJUqbYWWc(NSString*, NSString*, NSString*, l0cUj0RBBbf1sLFI46YWyGbNLO2sLIesu3AIkFssm15QOtiFHq, void (XDVoYxaXBzOa3qkNsIet8HP4amlpHHqMqMuIabNxtvsgtkrnXk, NSDate*, PaHjdj99vUtQeaqYsg6ItAZ0Z1WOwqly5MiwRJTViDaOMa9p1E, NSDictionary*) block_pointer) + 36
2   Paddle                        	       0x103293a74 invocation function for block in Znd6d7Volx3OWv9BtVGseIcWepupnyCAIaRuCyEyC337uZoYCo::PdziRSe4YBhaZillei4piYJIT4bTFFB58p1agPNdtgiICGJr49(NSString*, NSDictionary*, void (CV8n9Epwan1O4Py4uOJT7k19Jmt315WWmiKYnfJjxZ30olbqzq*, NSError*) block_pointer) + 432
3   CFNetwork                     	       0x18d7ba958 0x18d6f5000 + 809304
4   CFNetwork                     	       0x18d74c914 0x18d6f5000 + 358676
5   libdispatch.dylib             	       0x1888da5f0 _dispatch_call_block_and_release + 32
6   libdispatch.dylib             	       0x1888dc1b4 _dispatch_client_callout + 20
7   libdispatch.dylib             	       0x1888e38a8 _dispatch_lane_serial_drain + 668
8   libdispatch.dylib             	       0x1888e4438 _dispatch_lane_invoke + 444
9   libdispatch.dylib             	       0x1888eec98 _dispatch_workloop_worker_thread + 648
10  libsystem_pthread.dylib       	       0x188a9c360 _pthread_wqthread + 288
11  libsystem_pthread.dylib       	       0x188a9b080 start_wqthread + 8

and

Thread 6 Crashed::  Dispatch queue: com.apple.NSURLSession-delegate
0   Paddle                        	       0x10465104c invocation function for block in R69n2aPQ8Uv7rqkIoxmPIFsjGiSQycnRW9KS2faREXkbq19RI2::BLdLuHaL8VQJf2xm0vwFXUKJqWeYcfIP2rXxTIqrgqJUqbYWWc(NSString*, NSString*, NSString*, l0cUj0RBBbf1sLFI46YWyGbNLO2sLIesu3AIkFssm15QOtiFHq, void (XDVoYxaXBzOa3qkNsIet8HP4amlpHHqMqMuIabNxtvsgtkrnXk, NSDate*, PaHjdj99vUtQeaqYsg6ItAZ0Z1WOwqly5MiwRJTViDaOMa9p1E, NSDictionary*) block_pointer) + 72
1   Paddle                        	       0x104651028 invocation function for block in R69n2aPQ8Uv7rqkIoxmPIFsjGiSQycnRW9KS2faREXkbq19RI2::BLdLuHaL8VQJf2xm0vwFXUKJqWeYcfIP2rXxTIqrgqJUqbYWWc(NSString*, NSString*, NSString*, l0cUj0RBBbf1sLFI46YWyGbNLO2sLIesu3AIkFssm15QOtiFHq, void (XDVoYxaXBzOa3qkNsIet8HP4amlpHHqMqMuIabNxtvsgtkrnXk, NSDate*, PaHjdj99vUtQeaqYsg6ItAZ0Z1WOwqly5MiwRJTViDaOMa9p1E, NSDictionary*) block_pointer) + 36
2   Paddle                        	       0x10464fa74 invocation function for block in Znd6d7Volx3OWv9BtVGseIcWepupnyCAIaRuCyEyC337uZoYCo::PdziRSe4YBhaZillei4piYJIT4bTFFB58p1agPNdtgiICGJr49(NSString*, NSDictionary*, void (CV8n9Epwan1O4Py4uOJT7k19Jmt315WWmiKYnfJjxZ30olbqzq*, NSError*) block_pointer) + 432
3   CFNetwork                     	       0x18d7ba958 0x18d6f5000 + 809304
4   CFNetwork                     	       0x18d74c914 0x18d6f5000 + 358676
5   libdispatch.dylib             	       0x1888da5f0 _dispatch_call_block_and_release + 32
6   libdispatch.dylib             	       0x1888dc1b4 _dispatch_client_callout + 20
7   libdispatch.dylib             	       0x1888e38a8 _dispatch_lane_serial_drain + 668
8   libdispatch.dylib             	       0x1888e4438 _dispatch_lane_invoke + 444
9   libdispatch.dylib             	       0x1888eec98 _dispatch_workloop_worker_thread + 648
10  libsystem_pthread.dylib       	       0x188a9c360 _pthread_wqthread + 288
11  libsystem_pthread.dylib       	       0x188a9b080 start_wqthread + 8

[exceedsystem]

@waydabber

Thanks for the analysis of the issue.

I see.

Certainly, I think there is something wrong with the behavior around the license activation as it seems to lose the license from time to time.

[waydabber]

Hmm. That should not happen either. There was one other similar report so far.

Btw is your computer's date properly set and synchronized to a time server? I heard that Paddle might have issues when it isn't, but not really sure to be honest. An other thing that might cause issues if loss of network connectivity even though Paddle should work off-line and issues related to this are supposedly fixed in the 4.3.1 Paddle SDK.

[exceedsystem]

@waydabber

Yes. My compter is synchronizing with ntp server but my network is filtered by Squid for security reason, that may be having an affecting network communication.

However, in any environment, I think it is not good if the calling application crashes due to an unhandled exception raised by the library.
Can't BetterDummy handle the exception?

Anyway, this problem seems to be a rare case, and caused by black boxed library, so you can have this issue pending.

Thank you.

[waydabber]

Tried symbolicating the crash log but the BetterDummy relevant threads where just not doing anything at the moment - this seems to an asynchronous background process of Paddle so there is not much to do about that I think.

I'll leave it open for now but classify it as a known issue for now as there is no known fix and I don't seem to be able to fix it right now. I'll forward the relevant parts to Paddle on Monday, they might respond back.

Thanks for reporting the issue!

[waydabber]

A similar issue:

#1025

@waydabber it happened also in the 1.2.9.

Here we go:

betterDisplayError.txt

---

follow up:

Hmm. I could not devise anything useful from the crash log, except that it seems like it has something to do with Paddle (the payment/licensing API), but that is a black box as only the binary is available and things are purposefully obfuscated (for obvious reasons). :(

Thread 5 Crashed::  Dispatch queue: com.apple.NSURLSession-delegate
0   Paddle                        	       0x10286504c invocation function for block in R69n2aPQ8Uv7rqkIoxmPIFsjGiSQycnRW9KS2faREXkbq19RI2::BLdLuHaL8VQJf2xm0vwFXUKJqWeYcfIP2rXxTIqrgqJUqbYWWc(NSString*, NSString*, NSString*, l0cUj0RBBbf1sLFI46YWyGbNLO2sLIesu3AIkFssm15QOtiFHq, void (XDVoYxaXBzOa3qkNsIet8HP4amlpHHqMqMuIabNxtvsgtkrnXk, NSDate*, PaHjdj99vUtQeaqYsg6ItAZ0Z1WOwqly5MiwRJTViDaOMa9p1E, NSDictionary*) block_pointer) + 72
1   Paddle                        	       0x102865028 invocation function for block in R69n2aPQ8Uv7rqkIoxmPIFsjGiSQycnRW9KS2faREXkbq19RI2::BLdLuHaL8VQJf2xm0vwFXUKJqWeYcfIP2rXxTIqrgqJUqbYWWc(NSString*, NSString*, NSString*, l0cUj0RBBbf1sLFI46YWyGbNLO2sLIesu3AIkFssm15QOtiFHq, void (XDVoYxaXBzOa3qkNsIet8HP4amlpHHqMqMuIabNxtvsgtkrnXk, NSDate*, PaHjdj99vUtQeaqYsg6ItAZ0Z1WOwqly5MiwRJTViDaOMa9p1E, NSDictionary*) block_pointer) + 36
2   Paddle                        	       0x102863a74 invocation function for block in Znd6d7Volx3OWv9BtVGseIcWepupnyCAIaRuCyEyC337uZoYCo::PdziRSe4YBhaZillei4piYJIT4bTFFB58p1agPNdtgiICGJr49(NSString*, NSDictionary*, void (CV8n9Epwan1O4Py4uOJT7k19Jmt315WWmiKYnfJjxZ30olbqzq*, NSError*) block_pointer) + 432

[waydabber]

I sent a note about this to Paddle, hopefully they'll respond.

[waydabber]

I got a response from Paddle:

Thank you for your patience here :)

My colleagues have had a look at this for you, and they noticed that you seem to be using a network filtering service called Squid? They believe that the issues you are seeing might be due to an issue with this caching service. In order to find out, could you please try to stop squid from caching the paddleapi.com domain? Something like the below (depending on their version/setup):

acl paddleapi dstdomain .paddleapi.com always_direct allow paddleapi

​I am looking forward to hearing back from you about this, and whether or not this fixed the issue.. Thank you!

---

I am not sure if this is really relevant. Are you guys using Squid by any chance? :)

[exceedsystem]

Thanks for the follow-up report.

I use a squid proxy server, but I do not use cache features.
However, SSL proxy feature may affect this issue.

It seems to difficult to reproduce this problem, but in any case, I think there must be some problem on the paddle library side.

I don't use my Mac much these days and will let you know if I encounter same problems again.

[waydabber]

Thanks for the response @exceedsystem!

[waydabber]

Update: Paddle confirmed the issue on their end, they said they'll work on a fix for future SDK versions:

​> ​My colleagues are also looking into how to make sure that Squid is not going to interact with the functioning of our SDK in future versions.

[waydabber]

There is a new SDK version, hopefully this will fix this: #1139

[exceedsystem]

@waydabber

Hi waydabber, It seems that the problem has not occurred since then.

Thanks.

[waydabber]

Nice! Thanks for the feedback! :)