Gospel Library crashes on load

[russellhltn]

Consider any security apps that might interfere with GL's ability to reach church servers. I'm thinking GL may not always reach out to the servers on startup, but it would if it's been awhile since the last sync.

[sbradshaw]

Another idea: On launch, the app opens to where you were last time it was closed. Maybe the app opens fine if you were on Home or in a content chapter, but crashes if you were in a certain section of the app, like the bookmarks screen, or Settings, or in a study plan, or something else?

[lajackson]

On launch, the app opens to where you were last time it was closed.

It does? Mine always opens to the Home page, even if I was elsewhere. Android GL 6.9.0-(etc.)

[russellhltn]

Mine opened up where I was last reading.

[tfurrows]

I left the app last night on the home screen, with no screens loaded.
I have no special security applications installed, and it fails to load whether using the cell network, home wifi, church wifi, and with custom DNS or not.

[tfurrows]

Same results this morning with the official build. The application crashes. I did test a few other things though:

1. Tested launching from the home screen (Nova) -- failed
2. Tested launching from App Manager app (muntashirakon.github.io/AppManager/en/) which allows you to view activities and launch specific activities -- failed
3. Tested launching from adb -- failed with the following output:

Code: Select all

adb shell am start -W org.lds.ldssa/org.lds.ldssa.ux.main.MainActivity
Starting: Intent { act=android.intent.action.MAIN cat=[android.intent.category.LAUNCHER] cmp=org.lds.ldssa/.ux.main.MainActivity }
Status: ok
LaunchState: UNKNOWN (0)
Activity: org.lds.ldssa/.ux.main.MainActivity
WaitTime: 4347
Complete

4. Tested switching back to system default home screen and launching from there -- failed

I'll continue goofing around with adb, but at this point I'm out of ideas again. If I find anything, or complete any other meaningful tests, I'll post the results here, otherwise I'll hope that someone else can come up with some more ideas. Thank you!

[tfurrows]

Another idea: On launch, the app opens to where you were last time it was closed. Maybe the app opens fine if you were on Home or in a content chapter, but crashes if you were in a certain section of the app, like the bookmarks screen, or Settings, or in a study plan, or something else?

When this first started happening, I thought it might be related to the state I was leaving the program in. I tried logged in / logged out, multiple screens open / one screen, no screens, etc. Nothing seemed to matter.

I'm still at a loss as to why this seems to happen after a period of non-use. The application worked fine all day yesterday, I used it several times.

As a note, I've also tried rebooting the phone, including this morning, but that doesn't change anything. The adb info is interesting, as it it seems to indicate that there is no particular failure that is presenting itself, the application just finishes trying to load and then doesn't load.

[tfurrows]

Here's a funny and interesting thing:

Using App Manager (mentioned previously), I'm able to launch the .ux.annotations.links.LinksActivity activity. This is usually called from within the Library app when you want to link text. From there, I can search from anything in the library (tested "handbook") and browse through the content as if I were going to link it. I'm able to see/read the content (text and images) just fine, in the link popup dialog.

It's not much, but it does let me read in the handbook

None of the other listed activities (there are 6 launchable activities in total) will launch to anything interactive. I also attempted to launch the service .media.library.MediaLibraryService, but that results in a popup "Gospel Library isn't responded" dialog, then "Gospel Library keeps stopping".

[tfurrows]

For the curious, here's an unlisted video / screen recording, demonstrating the crash and activity launch described above:

https://youtu.be/Y1G_O79RsbY

[sbradshaw]

Are you able to replicate the "next day" crashing behavior by fully closing Gospel Library (swiping it out of the recent apps view), then opening it again? Android will close or pause apps in the background after a period of inactivity to free up memory, which is similar in some ways to fully closing and reopening the app. If you can't reproduce it that way, I think russellhltn's idea that it might have to do with the periodic syncing and content updating in the background (which happens every 12 or 24 hours) is likely.

There's an App Instance ID in Settings > About > ( i ) that the developers can use to search crash logs – maybe that would allow them to find a stack trace with some clues. Unfortunately, you can't get to Settings while the app is in a bad state; and, the App Instance ID changes when the app is deleted and reinstalled.

For next steps, I'd recommend deleting and reinstalling the app, and while it's working, get the App Instance ID. Then when it starts crashing again, you can send your App Instance ID to the support email (listed at the bottom of Gospel Library Support), along with a link to this forum thread for context. The team that triages feedback can then escalate it to a developer to search for crash logs under that App Instance ID. There's no guarantee that the crash logs will tell us anything useful, but they might!