After update to v1.6 G1 regularly displays "android.process.acore" error

[chriswattsuk]

Hi all,

Has anybody else has encountered this problem following update to 1.6 (Donut).

The phone regularly crashes with the error:

"android.process.acore has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again. - Force close"

I've seen a post elsewhere saying the only way to fix this is to wipe all data from the phone and start again. This seems a little heavy handed! Does anyone else have a different suggestion?

Thanks in advance!

Chris

[simms22]

Nope . Just wiping/factory reset . Its not as heavy handed as it seems . You'll be happy you did it afterward . The only other solution would be to root your phone and start modding it

[extorian]

You can also find more information about what caused the crash by either using ADB (that comes with the SDK) and a USB lead and running logcat. Or unless you already know about all that you can achieve the same thing by emailing the same logs to yourself using the Log Collector application on the market.

So, install Log Collector. Wait for a crash. Click the Force Close button. Run the Log Collector App. Enter your own email address and press send. Check your email. Post the log back here and we can have a look for you.

It might not show anything, but then it might show what caused the crash.

Alternatively, it's almost certainly an application causing it. So the other solution is to remove apps one at a time until you find the culprit. Often widgets cause the problem, so without doing much harm you could remove all widgets from your desktop and see if that fixes it - put them back one at a time...

[chriswattsuk]

Thanks both for your replies. I completed a factory reset last night which has failed to cure the problem. Therefore have followed your advice extorian and captured the log using Log Catcher.

It appears that this is the offending section of the logs, something to do with a process called sending signal?

----------------------------------------------------
10-25 10:28:58:459 I/Process ( 127):
Sending signal. PID 127 SIG:9
----------------------------------------------------
10-25 10:28:58:489 E/JavaBinder ( 70):
!!! FAILED BINDER TRANSACTION !!!
----------------------------------------------------
10-25 10:28:58:489 I/ActivityManager ( 70):
Start proc android.process.acore (pid 127)
has died.
----------------------------------------------------

Any ideas?

[extorian]

The first line you've quoted means that process that has the id 127 is sending Signal 9 to itself. In Linux (and hence Android), Signal 9 is a SIGKILL. In short, the process is being killed (forcefully terminated).

The 2nd line indicates that the process that has id 70 has failed a binder transaction... it really doesn't matter what that means...

The 3rd bit indicates that process id 70, which had started process ID 127 (android.process.acrore) has died.

So... process 127 was killed off, and process 70 that started process 127 died too as a result because it was bound to process 127. Process 127 is your android.process.acore service.

I can't tell from your log what process 70 is, but the problem is due to process 127 being forcefully terminated. Are you running something like Advanced Task Manager and automatically killing off process every X minutes?

It could also be that you're low on memory, as Android will kill off processes when it panics when it runs low on memory. Essentially the same thing - it could also be that something it trying to do something that requires a lot of memory - games and graphics applications are often a cause.

The rest of the log might be helpful too as it may give clues as to what these processes were doing prior to the crash. Feel free to send it to me in private if you wish.

Were you doing anything at the time the crash happens?

[Iceberg]

The first line you've quoted means that process that has the id 127 is sending Signal 9 to itself. In Linux (and hence Android), Signal 9 is a SIGKILL. In short, the process is being killed (forcefully terminated).

The 2nd line indicates that the process that has id 70 has failed a binder transaction... it really doesn't matter what that means...

The 3rd bit indicates that process id 70, which had started process ID 127 (android.process.acrore) has died.

So... process 127 was killed off, and process 70 that started process 127 died too as a result because it was bound to process 127. Process 127 is your android.process.acore service.

I can't tell from your log what process 70 is, but the problem is due to process 127 being forcefully terminated. Are you running something like Advanced Task Manager and automatically killing off process every X minutes?

It could also be that you're low on memory, as Android will kill off processes when it panics when it runs low on memory. Essentially the same thing - it could also be that something it trying to do something that requires a lot of memory - games and graphics applications are often a cause.

The rest of the log might be helpful too as it may give clues as to what these processes were doing prior to the crash. Feel free to send it to me in private if you wish.

Were you doing anything at the time the crash happens?

Very knowledgeable! Good job!

[chriswattsuk]

Hi extorian,

Thanks very much for your help on this.

Attached is the full log file that is referred to above. There seems to be lots of references to process id 70.

I'm not running any 'auto kill tasks' software other than Task Killer (basic) and the error happens randomly - not when I'm running Task Killer.

As I say, it's come about since my update was downloaded for 1.6 (Donut).

I've had to compress the file with WinZip to get passed the file size limits for attachments.

Chris

[extorian]

The problem starts on line 592 of the log:

10-25 10:28:07.272 D/AndroidRuntime( 127): Shutting down VM
10-25 10:28:07.272 W/dalvikvm( 127): threadid=3: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0x4001da28)
10-25 10:28:07.272 E/AndroidRuntime( 127): Uncaught handler: thread main exiting due to uncaught exception


602 of the log gives the error:

10-25 10:28:08.082 E/AndroidRuntime( 127): java.lang.ClassCastException: android.view.AbsSavedState$1

Then it spews out a thread dump all the way down to line 622 - it's all the same big error, and all from process ID 127...

220ms later, the OS does ask process 127 to quit nicely, by sending it signal 3 (SIGQUIT) on line 623 as it's realised it's hung:

10-25 10:28:08.252 I/Process ( 70): Sending signal. PID: 127 SIG: 3

Then when it hadn't terminated itself 50 seconds later forcefully Android killed the process on line 653:

10-25 10:28:58.459 I/Process ( 127): Sending signal. PID: 127 SIG: 9


Ok - so what's going on before this...

Well, on looking at this it looks like the phone is starting up, because loads of stuff is loading and initialising, there's even a log entry to say you entered your PIN correctly... (line 359)

There's quite a few errors during the boot process, but to be honest these are quite normal and just apps being slow and not responding well during the startup process. There's nothing fatal there though.

Let's look at the following lines (584 to 592)...

This is your desktop binding stuff... so you probably have 20 items on your desktop (including stuff in folders) and 2 widgets?

10-25 10:28:06.522 D/Launcher( 127): ------> binding 20 items
10-25 10:28:06.522 D/Launcher( 127): ------> binding 2 widgets

It now binds them all...

10-25 10:28:06.522 D/Launcher( 127): ------> start binding items

The weather gadget died...

10-25 10:28:06.552 I/ActivityManager( 70): Process com.weather.Weather:gadgetPrivateProcess (pid 421) has died.

Some app that has a scoreboard?? it has some issues...

10-25 10:28:06.722 I/scoreboard-EngCh( 413): Stale Data - Day On Demand
10-25 10:28:06.772 W/scoreboard-service( 413): Ignoring request - already running!

And this one in particular is interesting...

10-25 10:28:07.012 I/ActivityManager( 70): Start proc com.android.mms for broadcast com.android.mms/.transaction.MmsSystemEventReceiver: pid=435 uid=10003 gids={3003, 1015}
10-25 10:28:07.012 I/ActivityManager( 70): processNextBroadcast: waiting for ProcessRecord{433ecf68 435:com.android.mms/10003}
10-25 10:28:07.272 D/AndroidRuntime( 127): Shutting down VM

And then 127 is dying.

I doubt it's the weather widget, but try removing that and test as that's easy.

But, there seems to be some problem going on with com.android.mms... that handles (I think) both SMS and MMS messages. Do you have anything waiting to be received? Lots of stuff in your messaging app? MMS or SMS messages waiting to be sent? Try clearing out some of these if you do. If you don't have any messages you want to keep try going into Menu -> Settings -> Applications -> Manage applications -> Messaging -> Clear Data.

It is an Android process itself that is force closing, and it's accessing the phone's database at around the time of the error as well, so it could be a database problem. The only solution to that is to do a Factory Reset. However, the problem may reoccur if an app caused it in the first place.

[TheBlur]

This is a great post extorian. I've looked at my logcat before when experiencing force close issues but I only understand some parts of it (or at least i think i do).

[chriswattsuk]

Thanks again for your reply extorian! Interestingly I've removed the two widgets I had on my home page (Google Scoreboard and Money Tracker) and I haven't had the error in a couple of hours! I'll keep you updated on progress!