Opening Roon Remote on iOS Causes all Remotes Disappear, Playback stops[Ticket in]

[R_C]

I tried creating a support ticket through the link that pops up, but it takes me to a log in screen (even though I am already logged in ) and then throws an “There was an error logging in: InvalidRecaptcha” error without ever showing me a captcha. So I’m going to post my problem here.

Since the most recent update (right around when iOS add updated to 2.50.01528 iOS) Roon has been unstable. I’ve been running it on the same network / hardware / etc. for years and I don’t think I’ve done anything that would offend RoonServer, which runs on on Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS.

The behavior is as follows:

When I open the Roon Remote app in my iPhone playback stops and all devices vanish from the remote which then tells me to select an audio zone (and there none listed). If I wait a 30 seconds or so the zones come back.

The log fills up with:

05/10 12:32:33 Warn: [raat/tcpaudiosource] disconnecting + retrying
05/10 12:32:33 Debug: [raat/tcpaudiosource] disconnecting
05/10 12:32:33 Debug: [raat/tcpaudiosource] connecting to 10.10.10.144:46541
05/10 12:32:33 Error: [raat/tcpaudiosource] connect failed: Connection refused
05/10 12:32:33 Warn: [raat/tcpaudiosource] disconnecting + retrying
05/10 12:32:33 Debug: [raat/tcpaudiosource] disconnecting
05/10 12:32:34 Debug: [raat/tcpaudiosource] connecting to 10.10.10.144:46541
05/10 12:32:34 Error: [raat/tcpaudiosource] connect failed: Connection refused
05/10 12:32:34 Warn: [raat/tcpaudiosource] disconnecting + retrying
05/10 12:32:34 Debug: [raat/tcpaudiosource] disconnecting
05/10 12:32:34 Debug: [raat/tcpaudiosource] connecting to 10.10.10.144:46541
05/10 12:32:34 Error: [raat/tcpaudiosource] connect failed: Connection refused
05/10 12:32:34 Warn: [raat/tcpaudiosource] disconnecting + retrying
05/10 12:32:34 Debug: [raat/tcpaudiosource] disconnecting
05/10 12:32:34 Debug: [raat/tcpaudiosource] connecting to 10.10.10.144:46541
05/10 12:32:34 Error: [raat/tcpaudiosource] connect failed: Connection refused
05/10 12:32:34 Warn: [raat/tcpaudiosource] disconnecting + retrying
05/10 12:32:34 Debug: [raat/tcpaudiosource] disconnecting

If I happen to have another Roon Remote running, it also becomes slow and unresponsive when I open the iOS app, as in the play head stalls and only updates every 10 seconds or so and the play/pause controls take several seconds to respond. As soon as I force quit the iOS app, everything goes back to normal, e.g., I can use the Roon Remote on MacOS without issue.

At the same time, I noticed that the latest RoonServer update made it incompatible with Docker; I don’t mean running in a docker container, I mean running RoonServer on Ubuntu through systemd. When I start the docker process all my remotes disappear and won’t come back until I stop the docker and docker.socket service. The RoonServer logs fill up with lines like Debug: [broker/filebrowser/volumeattached] skipping /run/docker/netns/218add7954d9 because it is not a /dev/sd[0-9]* (mountline: nsfs /run/docker/netns/218add7954d9 nsfs rw 0 0) and Trace: [volumewatcher] ev_VolumeChanged DidUnmount: /var/lib/docker/overlay2/f5c36783e084396e77a8007f29297cdc927465fee0e85edc30833cfe6e4534b6/merged

I don’t want to confuse the two issues, so to be clear, RoonServer is completely fine and stable as long as docker.socket is stopped. But as soon as I launch the Roon Remote app on my iPhone, all the remotes disappear. I just mention the docker thing because a) Roon Server had no problem with docker for the last ~10 years and b) the symptoms of starting docker.socket and opening the iPhone Remote app are the same.

Upon further inspection, it seems that opening Roon Remote on any platform causes instabilities, it’s just worse with the iOS app. The preceding log entries are:

05/10 13:00:14 Trace: [raat] [sood] Refreshing device list
05/10 13:00:16 Trace: [raatserver] [sood] Refreshing device list

Following those, Roon Remote becomes unresponsive and then all the remotes disappear. It does seem worse when opening the iOS app versus the MacOS app (at least I can leave the latter open and things eventually settle down and act normally).

RoonServer version:

205001528
2.50 (build 1528) production
production

[vadim]

Hello @R_C,

Thank you for reaching Roon support.

We enabled the diagnostic for your account for some reason it is not reaching our servers, even after I tried re-enabling diagnostics on your account. I also ran a quick test and I was able to submit a similar report from my setup here, so something else is going on.

So we can move forward, I was hoping for now you could use the directions found here and send them to our Logs Uploader Service and let us know after, thanks!

[R_C]

Thanks for getting back to me — I uploaded an archive of the enitre Logs directory, so hopefully that has what you need.

Totally unrelated to the recent issues with devices dissapearing, Roon Arc has never worked for me. It sees the server fine, but as soon as I try to play something it complains. I wonder if it is related to the inability to send diagnostics… I’ve run into weird issues before that seem to be related to the way my ISP (mis)handles IPV6.

[vadim]

Hello @R_C,

For testing purposes, could you please remove the iPad from the list of audio devices in Roon and check if the issue persists? This will help us determine if the iPad is affecting overall system behavior.

Let us know the results so we can proceed with further troubleshooting if needed.

[R_C]

I don’t see any iPads in the list of audio devices in Roon settings. Will uninstalling Roon Remote (and Roon Arc?) from all the iPads in the house be enough to take care of whatever you’re seeing in the log files?

[vadim]

Hey @R_C

Thanks for performing that test, we have added this info to the investigation ticket. The ticket has been submitted for developer review, meaning that this may take some time to be reviewed.

There aren’t any additional details needed at this time, so we will go ahead and close the thread for the time being, and if any other questions arise after the developers have reviewed the case, we will re-open the thread and reach out once more.

Thanks again for your report, and thank you in advance for your patience as the ticket progresses through the development queue for review.

[R_C]

Uninstalling Roon and putting the iPad in Airplane mode did not solve the problem, but qualitatively it seemed to recover more quickly.

Thanks for tossing this to developer review. I’m happy to help with future testing, as I’d very much like to solve this issue.

[vadim]

Hello @R_C,

Thank you for the update and for taking the initiative.

We’ve identified an exception in the logs that appears to be causing the issue. It should be an easy fix, but if anything additional is required from your side, I’ll be sure to update you here.