AlpineQuest & OfflineMaps

My impression is that after every crash the Tracker, when it is restored by the system, is not capable of reading gps signal. Could you confirm or reject it?

From what I understand when a process is restored only onCreate method is called. Maybe something from onStart is missing? Sorry for this technicalities.

Hi,
Thanks for this update.
Yes you're right, after a crash the system restarts the tracker, but this one won't listen to GPS again.

Actually, this is due to the fact that AlpineQuest must send few information for the tracker for it to start recording: the location source, the update frequency, etc... When the tracker is started from AlpineQuest, this last one sends this information just after starting it. When it's the system who starts the tracker, nobody sends this information and the tracker don't start recording.

Anyway I have rewritten the communication process between AlpineQuest and the tracker, and the new version is available in AlpineQuest 1.2.11 now available (soon on the Market).
The new tracker version will start listening for locations as soon as it is started (using automatically saved information if none is provided during the startup process). This allows it to resume the listening after a crash.

However we still don't know why the tracker on your device crashes or is killed. I never noticed that elsewhere and there is not a lot of information from the logs. Referring to your post: the Tracker "died" only 20s after closing AlpineQuest.
Even is the tracker will restart fine, you will have location missing between the stop and the restart.
Waiting for a better fix, I hope version 1.2.11 will works better for you.
Best regards

Thanks for the effort! I have a full version of the app. Does it mean that I can upgrade to 1.2.11 (full version) only via the market?

If you have any additional ideas regarding testing/debugging I can do on my phone, I would be glad to give it a try. In particular, if you want some additional logs. The phone in question is Nexus S, 2.3.6 with no modifications.

By the way, the typical pattern is that Tracker works for up to 30 minutes and then dies. This 20 second is probably a record.

One more remark: this crashes never happened to me when the main app is running and from what I understand you always start tracker as a separate process. So, if I am not mistaken, the process becomes crash prone only when it runs on its own. It may be actually a reason why users are not reporting this problem.

Sorry for this cascade of comments - I am using the forum as a kind of padnote but you wrote a good app and I am committed to use it

Hi again and thanks for your updates, don't worry about how many you post every information is useful!

I have released full version 1.2.11 on the market yesterday. I tried to handle every situations based on our discussions and your feedbacks and logs.
This tracker version:
- starts recording locations as soon as it is started;
- automatically restarts and resumes recording after a crash;
- detects if the tracker process is stopped by the user from AlpineQuest or by the system or any other program (right now only a log is written but it might display a notification in a future version);
- displays a green notification icon as soon as the GPS got a first and precise enough location fix;
- handles when the GPS is deactivated in the system (display a red notification icon) and resume recording as soon as it is activated again;
- handles when the SD card is dismounted (ie when the phone is plugged as a storage device on a computer).

Concerning last point, previous versions where killed by the system when the phone was plugged as a storage device, cause it kept the log file open on the SD card. New version will only open the log file when flushing logs.

I hope this version will behave good enough on your device and give helpful information in case of crash (it is much verbose).
Best regards and thanks for your invaluable help.

It seems at the first glance that the tracker works fine. I registered some logs, but I will be able to analyze it after the weekend.

The Tracker has still a hard time to get running again:

01-07 23:41:22.015 W/ActivityManager( 105): Scheduling restart of crashed service psyberia.alpinequest.full/com.psyberia.alpinequest.services.tracker.AlpineQuestTrackerService in 5367084ms

5367084ms = approxim. 1.5 h )

Tracker on its own stopped recording at 15:53. Three minutes later I discovered this fact entering the main application. Then I left the application. Since this moment, that is since 15:56 until 18:04 the tracker worked fine.

The log consists literally of hundreds of events in the period 15:50 - 15:53. If it it is of any help I can paste it here.

Hi,
Thanks for this update.
I would be interested by the complete log. Could you send it to contact [at] psyberia.net ?
Thanks a lot.