Android app having trouble finding Linux Core

Yes, I did see that message. Also got the error about the app might misbehave if I take the permission away… but it is already misbehaving so…

Hey folks,

Wanted to provide another update as we continue to try and understand the conditions under which this issue occurs.

As I’ve mentioned previously, no one on the Roon team who uses Android has ever seen this issue occur in their own homes, nor have we heard it reported by any of our 40+ alpha testers.

Rough estimates are that this affects less than %1 of Roon Android installs, and I say all of this to be clear why we are having such a difficult time making progress – it’s often extremely hard to reproduce and resolve issues without reproduction steps that consistently trigger the issue in a debugging environment.

We had some hope that this issue might be resolved in Android 8.0 but all signs point to this persisting even when running the latest pre-release versions of Android.

Our testing continues, and so I wanted to provide a few updates here.

  • We have noticed that an inordinate number of affected users are using Ubiquiti networking gear. For those of you in that group, it would be a hugely helpful test to see if things are better with that hardware temporarily removed from the network.
    Ideally, for that test you would be running a total of 3 devices on the network:

  • A simple wifi router with default settings

  • The Roon Core

  • The Android device
    If things continue to fail in that configuration, we would like to know.

  • While we don’t currently have a good theory on why this would only affect some configurations, it would be great if everyone could get into this broken state, and then try disabling the Android device’s mobile connection by enabling Airplane mode and then turning on Wifi – we are wondering if multiple network connections could be related, so this will also be an interesting test. If possible, it would be great to run this test in the simplified configuration I mentioned above: wifi router with stock settings, Roon Core, Android device. We know that won’t be possible for everyone, but that would be our recommendation for a truly “clean” test.

  • Finally, we are designing some more intensive tests that we would like to run early next week on some of the affected setups/networks. These tests will require us to coordinate a time to run the tests, and will likely require the user of some additional logging we have in place in ROCK, as well as the ability to run a simplified network as I described above. If you are experiencing this issue on ROCK and think you’d be willing to work with us to run some of these tests, please drop me a PM and we’ll coordinate a time.

We are not giving up here folks, and neither should you. We will keep at this until we have resolved the issue, and I want to say one more time how much we appreciate everyone’s patience – this is one of the trickiest issues we’ve encountered in the history of the company, and we’re as restless as you guys (if not more) to close it out.

We’ll get there. Thanks everyone!

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Unfortunately, my Ubiquiti-based network is deeply baked into my hardwired-into-the walls home network and I don’t have any other wifi APs (the Unifi AP Pro is the only one I tried that works reliably in my very crowded wifi neighborhood, so I got rid of everything else). However, I’m happy to mess around with router or AP configuration parameters.

I don’t have the Ubiquiti stuff you are looking for. I did try the airplane mode thing and it seems to help jog the system into connecting. I have also tried removing most of the other WiFi over to wired or just shut them down for a while, to reduce the traffic.

Thanks for the feedback @bearFNF – the Ubiquiti stuff is notable because it’s come up more than we’d expect, but there are a good number of people affected who are not using that hardware.

As always, it’s possible we’re looking at multiple issues here with different causes but similar symptoms :frowning: @Eric is going to follow up with you to get some logs, in case there’s some useful information in there. Is this pretty consistent:


@Fernando_Pereira – thanks, and understood about the network. I assume you’re not having any change running in Airplane mode with wifi in?

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Yes, it did seem to be pretty consistent. Let me see if I can break it again see what happens. I mean set the permissions and notifications back to default and see what happens with the connection and if it breaks try the airplane mode thing again.

For logs is there process for “starting point” I should do to get clean logs? in other words should I purge and start new ones? Just trying to see if there is a way to simplify the “search” in the logs…

Edit: just sent he logs in from my Note 3 running android 5.0

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Tried airplane mode with wifi on last night, still no core connection. I’ll do more careful testing this weekend, though.

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Flipping on airplane mode and then connecting to only Wifi does not allow my remote to find the core.

@Fernando_Pereira and @Michael_Taormina did either of you try turning off notifications and modifying permissions for the ROON remote app? That seemed to help my issue…FWIW

I did also turn off notifications for the Roon app and remove permissions to contacts for the Roon app, no luck.

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well shoot, was worth a shot… your issue may not be exactly like mine then I guess. How about reinstalling the app? Did you try that, also?

I completely reinstalled Android two days ago and have reinstalled the app itself many times on multiple devices.

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Yes, tried all that + airplane mode, no luck.

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I’m having trouble connecting with my Pixel since moving to 8.0 yesterday. It used to run perfectly on 7.1.2

Yesterday, after around 30 minutes it connected and I deleted my original post here. However today, I have the same problem.

All my other Remotes (PC, iOS, macOS) work perfectly.

That is not what I want to hear! My Pixel C has been flawless up until now. I haven’t been offered the upgrade yet.

I wouldn’t worry too much, as the issue was/is present for devices all the way bask to Android 5.0… Not sure that it is Android version related…but until the issue is nailed down…who really knows.

Just to keep things confusing, which seems to be the natural way with this bug: when I first experienced this problem, I had zero Ubiquiti network equipment installed. We had a Juniper main home switch, an Asus access point and an Asus router. Complete inability by Android clients to connect with the Linux Core since the problem’s sudden start for me around the beginning of June.

While flailing in the throes of the bug, I decided to go ahead with a stem-to-stern replacement of our home networking stuff, and ended up replacing everything (except for some standalone copper<->fiber media converters, although I did indeed replace most of those with SFP modules in UBNT switches) with UniFi-flavored Ubiquiti gear.

With an end-to-end UniFi network… no real change from the Juniper/Asus network. Android apps still kept hanging the same apparent way.

And… a couple of months later, now, for reasons I can’t nail down - still with this all-UniFi network - the Roon app on my Pixel XL started nearly-always working again. Occasionally, it seems slow to connect - as distinct from the iOS app, which always connects right away - and occasionally the Android app just hangs completely, with no improvement from killing and restarting the app. But for reasons completely mysterious to me, the Android app usually then starts working the next day. Still, you know, with UniFi stuff all along the path.

LOL, I was about to report that mine stopped working again, I now have to restart the server while the app is searching for the core to get it to work…and even then it sometimes take a few tries. It is to the point that I am going back to using my OPPO and an external hard drive to listen to my music…or my Shield and Plex depending on what I am doing.

The “convenience” of having an always running server is just not there if i cant control it.

I wonder if we are passing the bug around like a bunch of school kids pass a cold around… :smile:

Interesting… I updated the firmware of my Ubiquiti EdgeRouter PoE-5 router to the latest release (I hadn’t updated in over one year…). That router connects outside internet to both my UniFi wifi AP and to my wired network with Roon core, NAS, Roon endpoints, etc. Guess what, my Pixel found and connected to my core right after that. I’m curious if this is a permanent change or just a temporary result from the reboot, which included both the router and the AP, because the wifi AP is powered from the router with PoE.

Just went through yet another battle trying to connect to the core, was listening to an album and my tablet went to sleep. When I woke it back up it had lost its connection to the core. It was the only remote active a the time. I di not want to restart the server to reconnect as I was in the middle of the album. I just wanted to see what the name of the track I was listening to was. Tried the airplane mode trick a few times and tried the other tricks I mentioned earlier, all to no avail. So I was about to bite the bullet and restart the server, when I thought I would try just hitting “save” on the bottom of the server page. The app immediately connected. The music only blinked but I did not loose my place and it continued playing. So it seems that any change to the server has the potential to trigger the reconnect???
Will keep at it and see if this behaviour continues.
I am considering buying a cheap fireHD for S&G maybe it would have better luck connecting… :frowning: