Potential crash loop on soft logout

[pixlwave]

Some users have reported a crash loop when presented with the soft logout screen.

Description

If started without network access to the homeserver, it does not crash but the only view is as described above ("you're signed out", only interactable elements are "Clear all data" and "Forgot Matrix account"). After a few seconds, a dialog pops up saying only "Error", with the only button "Dismiss".

Dismissing it, there is now a red text saying "We failed to retrieve authentication information from the homeserver" and a blue "Retry" link.

Reconnecting to the network and clicking on the "Retry" link, there is now a password and log in button
...after which they could successfully log in

So the workaround seems to be to disable network, open the app and dismiss the error, click "retry", and then they can log in again

My guess would be: the homeserver signed them out (for whatever reason, like expired session), which triggers the above bug and crash-loop, introduced somewhere between 1.7.0 and 1.8.3 (since this behavior was not present prior to that)