Collaboration slows unity to a halt?

So lately after I downloaded version 5.5.2f the 2D unity editor has been running so slow it's unusable, like, I literally cannot use it. I couldn't figure it out until I created a new project, it ran completely fine until I enabled collaboration, anyone have an idea why? And this new project has ZERO files, brand new, nothing in it.

Please help!

And yes, I have been trying everything to fix it.

 

Hi @Presmus! I'm so sorry that Unity is lagging for you when you turn on Collab . There's normally a bit of a delay when launching a project for the first time with Collab enabled if it's a large project (greater than 4GB) but this isn't the case with this empty project.

What OS are you running on? Would you say that you have a decent Internet connection? Do you have any unique firewall restrictions? Did you try turning off your firewall? Are you using the Cache Server at all? (Sorry for the flood of questions)

 

Right now I'm on windows 10, my internet connection is completely fine, I've disabled my firewall on Norton and other protection services that come with it, nothing different happens.. I'm not exactly sure what a cache server is, so i'm pretty positive i'm not using one.

My PC specs are also not the problem.

 

Gotcha. Thanks for double checking all that for me.

When you get a chance, launch Unity using the following flag `-enableCollabEventLogs`. Then go through the same steps of creating a new project, turning Collab on, and letting it sit for a couple minutes so that we can gather some info in the Editor logs. After that, DM me your logs located here.

 

I can concur.
There are so many blocking threads in collaborate that render Unity useless for me up to 6 minutes at a time.
1) It constantly loses my project settings and I have keep refreshing my access (2-3 times a day)
2) launching unity takes 6 minutes as soon as Collab takes over (Im a DSL user)
3) viewing checkin history (5-6 minute wait) locks unity
4) try to play a scene after getting latest, locks unity 10-15 minutes and normally just crashes.

Im on Windows 10
5.5.1f1

 

@JohnRossitter
1) By losing your project settings, do you mean that your ProjectSettings.asset file gets lost or that your project gets unlinked and you need to refresh it in the Services window?
2) You're right, this is a known Collab issue when opening large projects . We can't implement a fix yet for 5.6 but we will add a progress bar to let you know that how much time is left before Collab finishes.
3) How many total commits do you have in your history? Are you not able to switch tabs to a different window and keep working?
4) Have you submitted a bug report after this crash happens? This compilation bug is based on race conditions that are hard to track down so any projects that we can look at which run into this problem will help us out a ton.

 

1) Im not sure what is getting lost, but I have to constantly "wake up" collaborate. I'm never signed out of Unity, so my login is still remembered, but all of the services will be listed as off, and Unity wants me to refresh my access.
3) we are in like the 280s with our history, no Unity is completely locked
4) our project is too large to send to you in a bug report especially from my DSL connection

 

1) I gotcha. This can happen with the Services window when the Editor is open for a few hours or after waking up from putting the computer to sleep. The session token expires and needs to be renewed. 5.6 minimizes the frequency of them but refreshing your project's link should not negatively impact your project.
3) We are shifting more of our testing focus towards seeing how Collab behaves for projects that have been worked on for a long time. Clearly it can use improvement so thank you for letting us know.
4) I totally understand. I know it would still take a long time but perhaps you can try uploading a zipped copy of your project on Dropbox and share it with me in a DM? (Make sure to leave out the Library folder)

 

If i may ask, how do i launch using that flag?

 

No problem. You'll find instructions on how to do that here. When you're about to open Unity from the command line, just add the `-enableCollabEventLogs' flag at the end of the command before you hit Enter. Let me know if you are still having trouble getting that to work.

 

I got the log for it, how do I DM you? Very new at this whole thing sorry about it haha
Just start a conversation and copy paste the whole thing? hmm, lmao

 

Same Problem Here.
- Unity 5.5.2f
- OSX 10.11.6

Unusably slow
- saving / closing a project can take up to 30 minutes.
- dragging to inspector, etc. almost not possible.

Possibly related to collab, I enabled it for one project that has the symptoms now but I kept it disabled for a new test project which shows the same bad behavior.

activity monitor - unity 100% cpu time on quitting unity, 50 threads --- for last 10 minutes...and counting...

and it crashed the whole system. _windowsserver was something i noticed in the activity monitor as well, could this be related?

 

I dont think its anything like mine, mine only happens when collab is enabled, sounds like yours is all of the time, and my cpu doesnt get maxed out. Sure does suck to have all of this happen haha

 

No worries. If you click on my username next to this post it should open a little box. Inside you should see the option "Start a Conversation". That will let you send me direct message.

 

Hi @sngdan! Would you mind doing the same thing I asked of Premus, using the -enableCollabEventLogs argument when turning on Unity, running through the slow down again and then DMing me your logs? You can also do the same thing by reporting a bug through Unity. Whichever is easier for you.

 

I have the same problem and have been having this problem since January. Collab loses its connection several times a day and each time I refresh it and log on again, I have to wait several minutes, even though my specs are very high and my Internet connection is 120mbit up and 50mbit down. I might turn on the collabeventlog if you still need logs for this. I must have spent hours waiting on this now. Sometimes I even had to restart Unity. Now I am using Unity 5.6 and its still a major problem. I am considering just turning it off, since I am guessing without Collab this would take less than 2 minutes each time.

 

After trying collab once, then seeing its not very good and just slows down unity, I disabled it. This meant that almost every time I edit a script and come back to unity, it freezes. Every second time I play test, it freezes. This only happened after using Collab. Now I am forced to go back to collab and try again. Its taken an hour to restart it. Still frozen, waiting to test. Its like my poor project is held hostage.

 

Hi @kblood! I'm sorry you're running into this issue too. If you could run Unity with -enableCollabEventLogs too and submit a bug report, that would be really helpful. Are you using any plugins? How large is your project?

 

I can confirm that once you enable Collaberate, you are in for a lot of waiting. Disabling the service doesn't help, I assume it's still doing things under the hood.

 

Hi @BigBite! Thanks for letting us know about the slow down too. Are you using 5.6 as well? How big is your project? What plugins, if any, are you using?

 

Awe man, that's a lot of questions. Ok, here goes:

Unity: 5.6.0f3
Project Size: 3.0 GB
No Plugins(?): I assume you don't mean editor extensions at what not.

Edit 1:
Ok so I had a crash earlier and had to restart Unity... after restarting it seems that everything is good now? No slow downs so far, will keep an eye on it and report anything.

Edit 2: Spoke too soon. Slow down is still present.

 

Sorry for all the questions but thank you for the reply! Are you seeing slow down each time you open the Collab Toolbar or when doing other operations in Unity?

Collab should not be doing any major operations outside of logging a couple events when it's disabled, so I'm surprised to hear that you're still experiencing slow down even when it's turned off.

 

Some of the issues are:

• Editor freeze when you save the project. It will freeze for 2-3 seconds.
• Opening Collab menu is really slow.
• Sometimes the publish operation loses connection to the server mid publish and hangs, it ends up notifying you about the error only after you click the Collab menu or if you do something with the Services tab (it seems to refresh something)

 

I'd like to take a look at your project, if that's alright. Can you submit a bug with your project so that we can take a look at it on our end? If you could post here the bug number that you get in your email then that would help me to find it and go over it more closely.

 

Oddly enough, I shut the machine down at the end of the day, started up this morning and everything is back to normal. Project saving seems to be OK. The Collab menu is mostly working, it can be slow, but not annoyingly so. Still loses connection from time to time, but regains it when I quickly enough. Other than that, the only thing I can think of is that when I launch Unity, the Collab service is disabled. Doesn't seem to stay enabled when I close the project. Maybe that's intended? Or maybe I'm turning it off and not remembering? I will notify if anything starts acting up again, and I'll try to document it. This is the first project that I've used it in, so I'm not used to it fully.

 

When opening a project there can be a small delay while Collab is initializing where it'll seem like it's not enabled. But Collab should stay enabled even after closing the project. I'm glad to hear that it's working better for you. Do let us know if anything else comes up.

 

Thanks, have been busy with the project and forget to check back here. I will try using that log setting. I am using quite a few plugins and such. Its 13 gb with cache files, metadata and everything, so the whole folder. I am using several plugins and assets... UFPS, Inventory Pro, ProCore, Quest System Pro. I have also begun using URG and UMA now. Oh, and if you mean plugins that are not editor extension, then I do not think I am using any. I am Visual Studio 2015. My work is often very slow now, because I have to expect Unity taking like 5-10 min+ every startup before it stops being frozen.

I am guessing it might help moving it to an SSD, but then I would be risking running out of space.

 

If it is doing this, then I think one thing that could work, is exporting everything in the project to a package, then make a new project and important it all. Pretty sure that if you want to get rid of Collab, this ought to help.

As for Collab sometimes running fast... I am pretty sure it depends on the server load at Unity, where ever it is the Collab server is running.

@ryanc-unity I have gotten the log. I have submitted an error report and added the log to ensure it was part of the report.

 

Thank you so much for submitting your bug report. Would you mind telling me your bug number so that I can more easily find it? You should have had it emailed to you.

And thank you for the info on what plugins you are using. Does Unity only freeze for you on startup but then work fine afterward or does it continue to have moments of lag every few minutes or so?

 

@ryanc-unity yes, I got the number on the bug report. Its: 911591

It freezes when it starts up, but while Unity is running it periodically freezes as well. When playing the project it usually lags a bit, sometimes also when stopping it, but that might just be the game. But it might also log me out of the Unity services, and then when I sign in again, I get pretty much the same freeze as when I boot up Unity. Otherwise the freezes seem to mainly be less than a minute I think, but I have gotten pretty used to just go away from Unity when it freezes that I am not really sure anymore.

 

I'm afraid that your log wasn't included in your bug report. I'm so sorry since I'm sure you made extra sure that it was. Do you happen to still have your log available? You could try sending it to me via a direct message here.

Could you try flushing your DNS to see if that helps?

You can flush your DNS by:
Pressing Win + R, typing in "cmd", right clicking and selecting "run as administrator"

Then typing the following commands (enter in this order):
ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /renew
ipconfig /registerdns

 

Strange... the log file is like 25mb, and it took several minutes to send the bug report. Maybe it was too big? I hope that is not it, since I am pretty sure its not an uncommon log size.

I tried timing this time, after flushing the DNS and such, how long it takes for Unity to open. I started opening it 12:52. 12:54 Unity was open, but frozen. Then I am guessing it is scanning the whole project and maybe comparing it to the Collab project or something? I notice my hard disk is working quite a bit while Unity is frozen like this. I notice its disk usage is 3-12mb/s. 13:01 it seemed to have finished loading. I must have clicked something, because now my Windows 10 is showing all apps on the bottom bar. Even processes and such that should not show up there, anything minimized to the tray as well. I guess I have to log off, and log back in and hope it helps.

I have included a zipped version of the editor log. That is the log you need, right? I guess there might be a separate log for Collab and other services. Its the log from yesterday though, I will make a zipped version of todays log as well.

 

Here is todays log. It did help to log off and log back on again. Not sure what just happened, my whole Windows got messed up, showing as if I had more than 50 apps open, but many of them were stuff you can usually only see in the task manager, and some of them might not even have shown up in the task manager either. I could not click on things in browsers and such, so the post above I could not post before having logged off, and back in again. Seemed to happen just as Unity had finished loading. Will try opening Unity again now.

 

Started Unity 13:12. 13:15 Unity opens, but is frozen. Disk is loading between 8 and 22mb/s it seems.

Pretty sure what just happened was that my Windows 10 had for some reason made all background processes into apps. About 110 background processes, so that gets pretty messy. I guess I clicked some hidden shortcut or something. Damn it. 13:21, it finished loading, the same thing happened. My Unity seems pretty broken right now, as it messes up my whole Windows when it finally stops being frozen. All my background processes became apps. Seems I can at least click stuff this time.

 

I took a screenshot. Guess I have to relog again. Any tips on how I might stop this from happening? I was hoping to get some work done today, and I cannot use Windows like this. I will try googling the problem.

I tried opening a different Unity project. It opens in less than a minute, but its also a very small project, but most importantly, it does not cause the error that I had the two last times. I cannot find much on Google about background processes becoming apps in Windows 10. I will try opening the project where I use Collab again, if it does the same I will try restarting the computer instead of just logging off and back on.

edit: It worked This time it did not cause this bug. I suspect it might be because I did not open the task manager. Strange bug. I hope the logs will help. I am using Unity 5.6.0 btw, I can see there is a 5.6.1 now.

 

Sorry for the delayed response, was out sick yesterday.

I'm confused by how seemingly all of your Windows apps seemed to turn on at the same time, even ones that are just meant to be background processes. I have never heard of that happening and have no reason to believe that it's Collab or even Unity related, but I will definitely keep an eye out for anything like that. Thank you for letting us know about this and for sending all these logs. We'll be going over them to see what information we can glean from them.

I'm glad to hear that you're not experiencing the bug now. Please let us know if it comes back and if it persists even after restarting your computer.

 

Well, twice it happened at the exact time Unity had finished loading. I actually thought the problem had gone away, but just now it happened again while I was just using Unity and it was this time again just finished being frozen.

I do agree that it makes no sense that Unity should affect my Windows this way, but it has now happened 3 times, every time Unity was open, every time Unity had just been frozen for a few minutes and every time it happened the exact moment Unity stopped being frozen. The logs were mostly to help with why Unity even freezes in the first place. I have just begun using UMA, a character plugin, so I figured the freeze this time was related to UMA, but it could be that it was logging back into Collab. That it happened again also shows that it is not because of having the task manager open, since this third time it happened, I did not have the task manager open. I do have a bunch of background apps, stuff that changes my desktop (Stardock), Razer apps for my keyboard and mouse, and other things. Not sure if its one of these things that might conflict with Unity. Maybe they use the same port for a server or something... because again, I do agree Unity should not be causing this to happen, at least not on its own.

Oh, and yes, this was after having restarted my computer at least twice.

 

I found a thread talking about the Windows issue that you're running into: https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/importing-a-package-causes-windows-to-open-all-my-programs.183993/

I'm asking around on my end to see if anyone has any context on this issue to come up with a solution. It seems to happen after importing certain asset packages. Could you try closing some of your background apps that aren't necessary and seeing if it still causes Unity to lag?

 

Collab made my Editor hang a few seconds whatever I clicked. It was a nightmare until I deleted it from projectSettings.asset.

 

Hi @zhuchun! I'm sorry that you ran into that annoying issue. Did you try disabling your firewall? Have you tried troubleshooting your network connection? Some users have had problems with certain network connections, like connecting to both a wired and wireless network.

 

Sorry, I was busy working on my project, I have been very busy working on getting some last thing to work, and now I am writing my report which is to be turned in next Wednesday.

Interesting that others have had this same problem. I was hoping a bit that this was something only I had experienced. It seems to be random. I had to eventually work on a system I was developing for the project in a different project, since Unity is so much faster and opens so much faster as well, without Collab, and last time this error happened I ran out of patience for it.

But I finished that part of the project, and have been using the Collab project again for a few days, without having that error yet... but I still have the major amounts of lags and freezes. I think I already mentioned it, but writing to the disk I have Unity and the project on also spikes every time this happens. I just tried again clicking on Unity and the disk activity on that drive just jumps to 100% for a while, I suspect its because Collab might be checking for changes, and Unity is probably also scanning the assets to see if something has been added. It dies down again pretty fast, unless Collab has lost its connection, then its the 10 minute+ freeze while it logs on to the Unity services again, the disk activity constantly being high.

My background apps are: Opera, Steam, uTorrent, Discord, GoG, Steam, Nvidia GeForce Experience, Logitech Gaming Software and this computer is using Windows Defender as its anti-virus. I can try experimenting with stopping these and see if there are any changes. I am hoping that error wont happen again, it seems if it happens, it happens when logging on to the Unity services. I will share my experiences in that other thread. Thanks for finding it.

 

Thanks. If firewall is the problem, it could be caused the famous GFW. So I guess there's nothing we can do before Unity setup CDN in China.

 

@kblood No worries about the late reply. I'm sorry you ran into these issues during a time sensitive moment. Thanks again for all the additional information.

Would you mind telling me how big some of your scene files are? There is an asset import pipeline fix in 2017.1 that drastically reduces the time it takes to open larger scenes, which Collab exacerbates. I'd like to rule that particular issue out.

 

@zhuchun I'm sorry to hear that. I'll get in contact with other Unity users in China to see if they have issues using Collab too. We have found a bug where Collab can cause the Editor to lag when the number of packets dropped is pretty extreme for an extended period of time. How stable would you say your connection is, along with its speeds?

 

Avg bandwidth is about 10Mbs in my office, but the connection to Asset Store w/o VPN is horrible. I guess its bandwidth has only 1Mbs and unstable in general.
I tried Collab before but it didn't make the first commit, it took a few hours before I canceled it.
After that, I suffered from the Editor lag for a half year until I removed those lines from the settings file.
BTW, I suggest Collab print summary or something like that to EditorLog, it helps.

 

That's odd that it tried for so long on the first commit. How large of a commit were you publishing? Also, which version of Unity are you using? If you were trying a very large publish and that wasn't going through then you could try partial publishing a smaller selection of files at a time but using the right click Collaborate->Publish menu option on any asset that you have selected.

 

I have been pretty busy lately, but now I have installed Unity 2017.1. The startup time is still about 10 minutes, but now Unity seems to be much better at not losing the connection to Collab or Unity services overall... although it could also just be that I had my Internet connection fixed recently, so I might have been losing my connection to the Internet overall.

But the size of my scenes? Well, in this project my scenes are generally small, because I use "load scene additively" quite a bit as an attempt to save ressources. So my scenes usually consist of a bunch of smaller scenes. No matter which scene the project starts up in though, it takes the same time to load and once loaded its not a big problem opening new scenes. My full project is now about 1.5gb big.

The biggest scene in my project is almost 14 megabyte. The rest are below 4 megabyte in size. The big scene is most likely that big because it has a terrain.

 

@kblood I'm glad you have started using 2017.1. I want to make sure I'm all caught up, since it's been a while since we last talked about your issue. You have a 1.5GB project that takes 10 minutes from opening the project to when the Editor can be interacted with. And you don't see any progress menus letting you know that something is happening during that pause. Correct? Is your Windows machine still opening all your background processes at once?

 

Well, now, even though Unity is frozen, it does show the collab icon rotation I think. The rest of Windows still works, so I usually just do something else while it loads. It opens the project the same time it usually would, but once its loaded, the menu and the windows and all the Unity stuff, Collab starts loading. Opening the project and Unity itself takes about 2-3 minutes. Then it is about 10 minutes of collab loading after that. I suspect it is comparing the local files to the latest collab version.

 

That's still very unusual that it takes so much longer for Collab to finish checking through your project during startup than it takes to normally load your project. Would you mind sharing with me your project so that I can try opening it on my end, just to be sure it isn't anything odd with your project setup? I'll send you a PM with a means of sharing it with me if you'd like.

Do you have any firewalls or proxies setup on your machine?