Nextcloud Talk clients take long to respond after some time idle

Deployment information

Nextcloud version: 26.0.0
Talk Server version: 16.0.1
Custom Signaling server configured: no
Custom TURN server configured: no
Custom STUN server configured: yes ==> stun.nextcloud.com:443

The deployment is done in a single host, and is docker-compose-based. A deployment diagram generated with pmsipilot/docker-compose-viz follows:

The image versions are:

  • app: nextcloud:26.0.0-fpm
  • web: nginx:1.23.3 (configuration file at the end of this message [1])
  • proxy: nginx:1.23.3 (with client_max_body_size 10G and proxy_request_buffering off)

I’m omiting the information about the rest of the containers because I think that they are not relevant for the problem reported here.

Client side:

  • Web browser:
    • Operating system: Debian 11
    • Browser name and version: Firefox 102.10.0esr
  • Talk Android version: 16.0.1 (from Google Play)

Description of the problem

Sometimes, usually after some time (~30 minutes) without using the Nextcloud Talk client, loading the chats and the chat messages take a long time (> 1 minute, and even more). Many times I end up terminating the Nextcloud Talk client process and launching it again. When restarting the client, the chats and messages load almost instantly.

I’ve experienced this behaviour both in the Android client (all 6 users are reporting the same issue) and web browser client.

For Android clients, disabling battery optimizations for the Nextcloud Talk client app doesn’t seem to make any difference.

Is this the first time you’ve seen this error? Y

Steps to replicate it:

  1. Start a Nextcloud Talk client and send a message or more.
  2. Leave the client in the background for some time. ~30 minutes, sometimes more. There might be network transitions in between (from wifi to mobile and viceversa).
  3. Open again the Nextcloud Talk client.

Diagnosis

I can’t find relevant logs in the server side (app, web or proxy), so I’m unsure on which traces to provide here.

My guess is that one of the nginx proxies (proxy service or web service in the diagram) might be closing the connection and the Talk client remains unaware. Then, when the Talk client is brought to the foreground again, its connection is no longer valid and spends time waiting for a timeout.

Thank you in advance,

Guillermo

[1]

worker_processes auto;

error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;
pid        /var/run/nginx.pid;


events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}


http {
    include       /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;

    log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
                      '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
                      '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

    access_log  /var/log/nginx/access.log  main;

    sendfile        on;
    #tcp_nopush     on;

    # Prevent nginx HTTP Server Detection
    server_tokens   off;

    keepalive_timeout  65;

    #gzip  on;

    upstream php-handler {
        server app:9000;
    }

    server {
        listen 80;

        # HSTS settings
        # WARNING: Only add the preload option once you read about
        # the consequences in https://hstspreload.org/. This option
        # will add the domain to a hardcoded list that is shipped
        # in all major browsers and getting removed from this list
        # could take several months.
        #add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15768000; includeSubDomains; preload;" always;

        # set max upload size
        client_max_body_size 512M;
        fastcgi_buffers 64 4K;

        # Enable gzip but do not remove ETag headers
        gzip on;
        gzip_vary on;
        gzip_comp_level 4;
        gzip_min_length 256;
        gzip_proxied expired no-cache no-store private no_last_modified no_etag auth;
        gzip_types application/atom+xml application/javascript application/json application/ld+json application/manifest+json application/rss+xml application/vnd.geo+json application/vnd.ms-fontobject application/x-font-ttf application/x-web-app-manifest+json application/xhtml+xml application/xml font/opentype image/bmp image/svg+xml image/x-icon text/cache-manifest text/css text/plain text/vcard text/vnd.rim.location.xloc text/vtt text/x-component text/x-cross-domain-policy;

        # Pagespeed is not supported by Nextcloud, so if your server is built
        # with the `ngx_pagespeed` module, uncomment this line to disable it.
        #pagespeed off;

        # HTTP response headers borrowed from Nextcloud `.htaccess`
        add_header Referrer-Policy                      "no-referrer"          always;
        add_header X-Content-Type-Options               "nosniff"              always;
        add_header X-Download-Options                   "noopen"               always;
        add_header X-Frame-Options                      "SAMEORIGIN"           always;
        add_header X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies    "none"                 always;
        add_header X-Robots-Tag                         "noindex, nofollow"    always;
        add_header X-XSS-Protection                     "1; mode=block"        always;

        # Remove X-Powered-By, which is an information leak
        fastcgi_hide_header X-Powered-By;

        # Path to the root of your installation
        root /var/www/html;

        # Specify how to handle directories -- specifying `/index.php$request_uri`
        # here as the fallback means that Nginx always exhibits the desired behaviour
        # when a client requests a path that corresponds to a directory that exists
        # on the server. In particular, if that directory contains an index.php file,
        # that file is correctly served; if it doesn't, then the request is passed to
        # the front-end controller. This consistent behaviour means that we don't need
        # to specify custom rules for certain paths (e.g. images and other assets,
        # `/updater`, `/ocm-provider`, `/ocs-provider`), and thus
        # `try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$request_uri`
        # always provides the desired behaviour.
        index index.php index.html /index.php$request_uri;

        # Rule borrowed from `.htaccess` to handle Microsoft DAV clients
        location = / {
            if ( $http_user_agent ~ ^DavClnt ) {
                return 302 /remote.php/webdav/$is_args$args;
            }
        }

        location = /robots.txt {
            allow all;
            log_not_found off;
            access_log off;
        }

        # Make a regex exception for `/.well-known` so that clients can still
        # access it despite the existence of the regex rule
        # `location ~ /(\.|autotest|...)` which would otherwise handle requests
        # for `/.well-known`.
        location ^~ /.well-known {
            # The rules in this block are an adaptation of the rules
            # in `.htaccess` that concern `/.well-known`.

            location = /.well-known/carddav { return 301 /remote.php/dav/; }
            location = /.well-known/caldav  { return 301 /remote.php/dav/; }

            location /.well-known/acme-challenge    { try_files $uri $uri/ =404; }
            location /.well-known/pki-validation    { try_files $uri $uri/ =404; }

            # Let Nextcloud's API for `/.well-known` URIs handle all other
            # requests by passing them to the front-end controller.
            return 301 /index.php$request_uri;
        }

        # Rules borrowed from `.htaccess` to hide certain paths from clients
        location ~ ^/(?:build|tests|config|lib|3rdparty|templates|data)(?:$|/)  { return 404; }
        location ~ ^/(?:\.|autotest|occ|issue|indie|db_|console)                { return 404; }

        # Ensure this block, which passes PHP files to the PHP process, is above the blocks
        # which handle static assets (as seen below). If this block is not declared first,
        # then Nginx will encounter an infinite rewriting loop when it prepends `/index.php`
        # to the URI, resulting in a HTTP 500 error response.
        location ~ \.php(?:$|/) {
            # Required for legacy support
            rewrite ^/(?!index|remote|public|cron|core\/ajax\/update|status|ocs\/v[12]|updater\/.+|oc[ms]-provider\/.+|.+\/richdocumentscode\/proxy) /index.php$request_uri;

            fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+?\.php)(/.*)$;
            set $path_info $fastcgi_path_info;

            try_files $fastcgi_script_name =404;

            include fastcgi_params;
            fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
            fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $path_info;
            #fastcgi_param HTTPS on;

            fastcgi_param modHeadersAvailable true;         # Avoid sending the security headers twice
            fastcgi_param front_controller_active true;     # Enable pretty urls
            fastcgi_pass php-handler;

            fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
            fastcgi_request_buffering off;
        }

        location ~ \.(?:css|js|svg|gif)$ {
            try_files $uri /index.php$request_uri;
            expires 6M;         # Cache-Control policy borrowed from `.htaccess`
            access_log off;     # Optional: Don't log access to assets
        }

        location ~ \.woff2?$ {
            try_files $uri /index.php$request_uri;
            expires 7d;         # Cache-Control policy borrowed from `.htaccess`
            access_log off;     # Optional: Don't log access to assets
        }

        # Rule borrowed from `.htaccess`
        location /remote {
            return 301 /remote.php$request_uri;
        }

        location / {
            try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$request_uri;
        }
    }
}

I have the same problem. Any news?

I’m trying getting more information capturing server traffic (in front of and behind the proxy). But so far I haven’t managed to find anything suspitious.

Maybe it would be easier to get log traces from the Nextcloud Talk Android app, but I can’t find such feature. Are activity logs stored in the Android device? Where?