Timers cannot be started from another thread

[KeithS]

I have an app that draws on a canvas that is a QWindow. When the canvas needs a repaint because the data has changed, the canvas uses a separate thread to render to a QImage, and when complete the image is drawn to the QBackingStore.

The canvas itself has a few timers (QTimer *) that are started and stopped in the canvas. They are not accessible from the thread at all.

This all works well on Windows and Mac, however on Linux I am getting random crashes within the render code of the thread,; just before the crash there is a message like:

QBasicTimer::start: Timers cannot be started from another thread

In a run of ~150 gui tests this maybe happens 3-4 times, almost always on the same tests. If I run in debug mode I don't ever see a crash, only in release mode.

Any clues as to what may be causing this? Thanks.

[Christian Ehrlicher]

Run your program with QT_FATAL_WARNINGS set (see https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/debug.html) in a debugger and see where it comes from. I would say accessing QBackingStore outside the main thread will be the cause - don't do that.

[KeithS]

@Christian-Ehrlicher said in Timers cannot be started from another thread:

QT_FATAL_WARNINGS

Thank you, that was very useful - it helped debug the problem which was a crash in the thread code calling a signal handler, which tried to output a message to the gui... and so presumably caused the warnings.

Fixing the crash eliminates the error messages and all working fine!

[Christian Ehrlicher]

@KeithS Nice to hear. Can you please mark the topic as solved then? Thx.