Element starts with white screen

[rebastion]

Installed Element from Ubuntu Software on a fresh Ubuntu 20.04.1 installation (snapcraft), but it starts with a white screen....

EDIT (see further down): The reason it seems to start blank because it is indeed already running (but not showing anywhere, including tray - which may thus be the primary bug - on the other hand, it could be more user friendly by showing a message also in the UI that it is already running)

EDIT 2: Occurs with the snap install only.

[t3chguy]

Ctrl Shift I

should bring up the javascript console
Any errors there?

[rebastion]

No javascript console opens.... unfortunately. Any other shortcuts to try? Is there an error log maybe?

[t3chguy]

Is there an error log maybe?

Try run it in the command line

[rebastion]

Interesting. Any ideas?

[t3chguy]

So that just means it is already running in the background. Should be on your tray. Try kill the process and then run in command line again.

[rebastion]

We are getting closer to the root of the issue. So I rebooted my system, just to make sure. Then opened system monitor to check if Element is running. It was not running. Then I open Element, and suddenly Element seems to be running, but nowhere to be seen. Not in the tray, and no app in the task bar.
Assumption: There is a problem with the app showing in the tray. What now?

This is what the terminal says when I launch it:

Error org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Failed: cannot use setting "default-url-scheme-handler": not allowed
(node:6281) [DEP0005] DeprecationWarning: Buffer() is deprecated due to security and usability issues. Please use the Buffer.alloc(), Buffer.allocUnsafe(), or Buffer.from() methods instead.
No update_base_url is defined: auto update is disabled
[6401:0811/120436.993137:FATAL:platform_shared_memory_region_posix.cc(254)] This is frequently caused by incorrect permissions on /dev/shm.  Try 'sudo chmod 1777 /dev/shm' to fix.

[t3chguy]

[6401:0811/120436.993137:FATAL:platform_shared_memory_region_posix.cc(254)] This is frequently caused by incorrect permissions on /dev/shm. Try 'sudo chmod 1777 /dev/shm' to fix. looks like a culprit

[rebastion]

Yea I could try chmodding around my system folders, but it puzzles me that a standard app wouldn't run without chmodding around an Ubuntu system folder, which is already drwxrwxrwt, isn't that 1777 ?

[rebastion]

Anyways, I removed the snap and installed it from the deb archive, and it starts perfectly. Maybe something was wrong with the way it was packaged or regarding the permissions snaps have to access the tray dbus/architecture or whatever (there are some similar issues on that open I think)

[t3chguy]

That is possible, the Snap is unofficial so I recommend you reach out to its community maintainers.