Locus Crashes & Reboots periodically

[wldbest]

Hello,
I use Locus Pro & Nexus one.
I have made 2 sqllite maps includes maps of korea, qingdao.
it has 2 categories and 50 + 40 POIs.

I rebooted the device and then ran locus and started tracking.
then switched to system home and/or lock screen, and then did nothing.
about 10-20 mins from run, it crashed and rebooted automatically.
sometimes it lasts about 30-40 mins.
I think it's not normal.

wierd thing is ..
I suspect that GPS turn on/off function has some defacts.
whenever i turned on LCD(press power btn) from system lock screen, locus always tries turn on GPS..
(whenever i don't use save tracking & location monitoring.)

I think previous version was much stable than today's new version.
While crashes all the time, I can't use this program ..
Please check the problem.  

Thanks.

[Menion]

Hi,
  hmm interesting. Are you using any custom rom? If is Locus trying to launch GPS, it have to be because when you ended Locus last time, you had GPS enabled. Anyway by your description I have no idea where to search for any mistake. You can help me, if you download program called CatLog, start it and from menu choose record, and let it run. And then try to crash Locus again. I hope that in log that CatLog program do, will be error that occur in the end.

  Anyway really weird is that Locus cause restart of whole phone. It looks more on some system problem then on problem in my code

[wldbest]

[attachment=0:1zbyad4g]2011-07-15-22-06-52.zip[/attachment:1zbyad4g]Here is the error log file.

When locus & system enters powersave mode(screen off),
the crash occurred ..

please check the file
----------------------------------------------------------------
last recoded lines before crash..

07-15 22:11:48.970 D/GpsLocationProvider(   92): android_location_GpsLocationProvider_read_sv_status+
07-15 22:11:48.970 D/GpsLocationProvider(   92): android_location_GpsLocationProvider_read_sv_status- :2
07-15 22:11:48.970 V/GpsLocationProvider(   92): SV count: 2 ephemerisMask: dffffffe almanacMask: fffffffe
07-15 22:11:48.970 V/GpsLocationProvider(   92): sv: 24 snr: 1.47 elev: 17.0 azimuth: 61.0 E A
07-15 22:11:48.980 V/GpsLocationProvider(   92): sv: 17 snr: 1.46 elev: 70.0 azimuth: 341.0 E A
07-15 22:11:49.889 V/libgps  (   92): DeferredActionThread pthread_cond_wait returned
07-15 22:11:49.889 V/libgps  (   92): ext status nmea report: $GPGSV,4,1,16,24,17,061,14,17,70,341,14,02,05,258,,04,45,274,*77
07-15 22:11:49.889 V/libgps  (   92):
07-15 22:11:49.899 V/libgps  (   92): DeferredActionThread pthread_cond_wait returned
07-15 22:11:49.899 V/libgps  (   92): ext status nmea report: $GPGSV,4,2,16,09,,,,10,21,202,,11,07,080,,13,07,136,*4D
07-15 22:11:49.899 V/libgps  (   92):
07-15 22:11:49.899 V/libgps  (   92): DeferredActionThread pthread_cond_wait returned
07-15 22:11:49.909 V/libgps  (   92): ext status nmea report: $GPGSV,4,3,16,20,48,057,,23,17,108,,27,,,,28,41,194,*4D
07-15 22:11:49.909 V/libgps  (   92):

[wldbest]

and I dont use custom rom, it is genuine nexus one rom.

I use csipsimple, sometimes it gave me an error message - permission denied.

[rijackson741]

I have a Nexus One, and have not seen this problem. To check the latest version I recorded for 2 hours today. Everything was fine.

[Menion]

thank you for log file, unfortunately as you saw by your own, in the end of file is no error message. Nothing that should show something interesting and something that should help. I'm sorry for that but I'm worried that this have to be some problem with your phone. Did you noticed similar behavior in any other application that use GPS intesivelly as Locus? May you try another (My Tracks for example) application for track record?

you may also try another rom but by me, it's too much work . So If you'll want, I can of course offer you refunding of your order, because in this case I probably will not have any solution .. unfortunately.

[svartbjorn]

This sounds very much like the same problem I have been fighting with for the last 4 months. Refer my thread " Serious phone hang issue while recording - test results".

'wldbest' is saying "When locus & system enters powersave mode(screen off), the crash occurred ..". This is exactly what I observed dozens of times. After trying all kind of settings and tests, Menion recommended me to try another memory card. After I did that 4 days ago, I haven't had any problems at all.

Even though memory cards are speed classified, that class is minimum guaranteed speed. Because of production tolerances, there will always be a distribution of speeds of the actual cards from different production lots, some may be at the guaranteed minimum speed, but several will also be faster (I am designing integrated circuits and know these details very well, so trust me).

So my point is that if several processes are writing to the memory card at the same time, some writes may be queued and take longer time. If a process doesn't handle timeouts correctly, it will certainly crash. I am pretty sure that when you turn on/off the screen, there is some status writing to the memory card. That can explain why I found most crashes to happen when I turned on/off the screen. I was using a 32GB Class 4 card when I had all these crash problems. When I changed to an old Class 4 8GB card, I haven't had a single crash - so far (just 4 days of experience)! Even though same speed class, the actual speeds may be slightly different such that one card works smoothly and the other card causes crashes. I am now waiting for a new 32GB Class 10 card. That should at least solve any speed related issues, so I am crossing my fingers. You may want to try same thing.

[rijackson741]

Perhaps this is a little off-topic, but then again perhaps not. I am intending to get a new 32Gb card to replace my existing 8Gb card, and I have been trying to work out what speed class to get. Opinions about this on the web seem to be all over the place, with some claiming better performance with class 10, and some claiming class 4 has no benefit over class 2. In particular, it is claimed that class 10 cannot have any benefit over class 6 unless you have a high speed bus, because the bus will limit the throughput (see //http://www.sdcard.org/developers/tech/speed_class/). Perhaps as a chip designer you can address that point? Anyway, perhaps we can answer this question, and at the same time see if the card write speed is maybe the problem for Locus (which makes this post on-topic   ) I installed this app: //https://market.android.com/details?id=ales.veluscek.sdtools&feature=search_result. On my current card (I forget what class it is, and it's not marked) I get 6.4Mb/s write and 22.7Mb/s read. So the question is, how does this compare to the speeds others are seeing when Locus does or doesn't have problems?

[svartbjorn]

rijackson741 - your question is really, really good. When you want to buy a memory card for your devices, this big question always pops up: which speed class do I really need in this device? And it is almost always no clear answer, no device spec, no guideline. It is absolutely true that a higher speed memory card has no effect if the memory channel becomes the bottle neck. But flash memories are extremely slow devices when comes to band width. This is due to the semiconductor physics behind the storage technology. RAMs and flash memories are using completely different technologies. We use flash memories for two reasons: storage density and non-volatile capabilities (keeps stored data without power). So when you power on a device, it takes time because programs and data need to be copied into the fast working memory - RAM.

So back to the band width: class 4 = minimum write speed 4 M bytes. I do not know the bus controller used in the phones for the memory port, but to handle the 10MB speed of Class 10 devices is really a piece of cake. Compare to USB 2.0: channel speed 480 Mbit/s, i.e. about 60 Mbyte/s. These numbers are not exact due to overhead in bus operations and protocols. So I can't believe the bus controller to a memory card can be the limiting factor (but as I said, i do not know which controller is being used). You may not find phone operations faster with a class 10 over class 4, but you *may* solve burst write problems. I never had any phone crash problems before I instaleld Locus, and I don't know how/why Locus is involved in this. Menion has been very cooperative and did his very best to help me for a long time. The last thing to try now, was another memory card. And so far, that seems to make the difference.

What can class 10 do for you? You will certainly not need that bandwidth over time, but the point here is to be able to handle a burst of read/write requests. The a class 10 card will certainly be able to handle the queue in a shorter time than a class 2 device. When I bought my first 32GB card last December, I was even wondering if I needed class 4. There is a significant price step between the speed classes, and at that time class 10 was up in the skyes. The memory card issues that seem to be the root cause of my phone crashes, may not be the speed class, but could very well be initial production problems since I got hold of one of the very first 32GB class 4 microSD cards that became available on the market at that time. The web shop where I bought the card accepted a replacement without any further questions. And to rule out any possible bandwidth related issues, I decided to spend the little extra now between class 4 and class 10.

[Menion]

nice topic guys!

just a little information from my side ... I rewrote part that store data on card. Added some "batch" saving so only ten points at once will be stored and also with little bit different way, so please mainly wldbest, test next market version (maybe tomorrow because of some more fixed bugs)!

and you can continue with interesting discussion

[rijackson741]

svartbjorn: Thanks. What you say about the bus speed makes a lot of sense. I couldn't find specs for the speed on the web (which surprised me a little!), but I did find something on the Panasonic web site that implied it's 22Mb/s. That's consistent with the read speed I measured. For sure, unless the bus has different speeds in the two directions it must be able to handle 22Mb/s, because I can read data at that speed!

I am curious though. Did you measure the speed of the card that seemed to be causing problems with Locus?

[svartbjorn]

Regarding read and write speeds - yes they are always quire different for all flash type memory cards. The speed class is always referring to guaranteed write speed. Read speeds are typically 5-6 times faster. This is due to the semiconductor physics how data are stored into the memory locations.

Regarding my 32 GB class 4 card - yes, I measured the speed to be exactly 4MB, so nothing more than min spec..l

[wldbest]

Hello,
Here are new log files. (at least 2 times crash)

I have tested My tracks recording during 20 hours without stopping,
and I had no crash yet.
It seems that there are no problems in getting gps positon & writing on my device.

=========================
SD Card Test Result -
Writing Speed : about 6 MB/s
Reading Speed : about 13 MB/s
HTC Nexus One Bundled SD Card 16GB (SU16G)

[wldbest]

Menion..
In my case, it seems saving is not so critical factor of crash.

I have tested more cases and got some more strange ones ..

Case Detail:
After reboot,
Just run Locus Pro,
- No Track Recording
- Just run in Offline Map Mode
- GPS Monitoring(Current Location) ON
- Turn Off the Screen.
DO nothing,,

After 3-10 mins,
The crash & reboot occurrs..
(No other apps make crash like this.)

I can reproduce this crash at any time.

Here is log files of those cases, but I can't find critical error messages causing crash..  :cry:

[wldbest]

Unfortunately,
Updated version of Locus pro has the same problem.

Recently, I noticed a strange behavior of locus.
Whenever I turn on GPS Beep Option, it always beep !
I think it must beep only once after getting initial GPS signal.
But It constantly beeps while i can see 5~6 satellites in GPS window.

Is this a normal situation?
If it's not normal, please check gps modules.


****************
Hmm..
When I set GPS interval to 0, It beeped only once.
so It maybe a normal case.
I'll check more and report any findings later.