Android Roon Remote 1683 crashes every 30 minutes (ref#22QVPD)

Support
1

Hi! What’s not quite right with Roon?

· None of the above quite fits

None of the above quite fits

· App interface looks or behaves oddly

Tell us what's going on

· Android Roon Remote 1683 Crashes/Restarts Every 30 Minutes or So

Tell us about your home network

· Home mesh network, ASUS Zen Wifi. No VPN. Roon Nucleus 1 wired directly to access point. Google Pixel 8a streaming over Wifi. No VPN.

2

Hey @Craig_Riecke,

Thanks for writing in! We’ll need a more detailed timestamp in order to better assess the issue here.

Could you please share a more specific date and time, as well as the track name of the song playing the next time you experience a crash?

With that, we’re having trouble enabling auto-diagnostics to your android remote. We’ll need to review a set of android ADB logs in this case, I’ll share the steps on how to obtain them below:

Connect your PC to Android phone and install ADB (instructions are here (all platforms)). Then:

  1. Type adb shell in terminal
  2. Type logcat v (ref: http://developer.android.com/tools/help/logcat.html)
  3. Reproduce the problem and let terminal print logs for 3-5 more seconds
  4. Select output from the moment you started the reproduction of the bug till the very end
  5. Upload the log here and let us know once you have done so:

https://workdrive.zohoexternal.com/collection/8i5239cc05950ac07456889838d9319545a82/external

Thank you!

3

Ah very good! I now have adb set up on my Apple Mac hooked to a Pixel phone, and he logcat output is coming out fine. One thing - there is a LOT of output which appears unrelated. Is there a way for me to pipe “logcat v” output to a file (ideally on my Mac, but to a Pixel file would be OK as well if there were some command I could then use to download that file to the Mac afterwards). I could then grab the last 3-5 seconds of stuff easier.

I could probably look this up somwhere, but I’m lazy. Sorry!

4

Hello @Craig_Riecke

Run these from the Mac, not inside adb shell, so the file lands on your Mac:

adb logcat -c
adb logcat -v time > ~/Desktop/roon-crash.txt

The first line clears the buffer so the file starts empty. Let it run, use Roon until it crashes, give it another five seconds, then press Control-C. Send us the whole file, no need to trim it.

The easier option, and better for us

Since it crashes on its own every half hour, you do not have to catch the moment at all. Let it crash, then run this one command:

adb bugreport ~/Desktop/roon-crash.zip

That collects the log along with the system’s own record of why the app exited and any native crash traces, which is more than logcat alone will show us. It takes a couple of minutes to run and produces one file.

Either is fine. If you are willing to do the second, do that one.

Please upload whichever you produce here, and tell us the date, the clock time of the crash with your timezone, and the track that was playing:

https://workdrive.zohoexternal.com/collection/8i5239cc05950ac07456889838d9319545a82/external

5

Oh yeah, the second option is much easier, so I just uploaded it. The crash occurred around 2:20 PM Eastern Daylight Time. The track playing was Drinking My Wine by Hardin & York. It is a Tidal-based track (if that matters). If you need any more info, I’d be glad to provide.

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Hey @Craig_Riecke,

Thanks for sending over the crash log! Its had exactly what we needed.

The app is not being killed by Android. It’s shutting itself down. Android keeps its own record of why every process ended, and for the 2:20 PM crash it reads:

process=com.roon.mobile reason=1 (EXIT_SELF) status=5

“EXIT_SELF” means the app called it quits on its own. It wasn’t killed for using too much memory, it wasn’t force-stopped by the system, there was no native crash, and there was no “app not responding” freeze, each of those would have been recorded differently. So this isn’t your phone, your battery settings, or your network being flaky. Something inside Roon is deciding to shut down, and we need to find out what.

A few more things the log told us:

  • It’s happened nine times in the five days covered by the report, always with the same distinctive shutdown code. Intervals ranged from about 20 minutes to just under an hour, so “every 30 minutes or so” is a good description.
  • Every single one happened while the screen was off (or the app was in the background) with music playing. Not one happened while you were actively using the app on screen. That’s a very useful clue for narrowing down where to look.
  • Right before the 2:20 PM shutdown, the app was doing a network re-discovery pass, looking for your Nucleus after a Wi-Fi event, and about 70 seconds later it exited. That may be coincidence, but it’s the first place our developers will look.

I’ve written this up and passed it to the development team with the full analysis attached.

One thing you could test that would really help us, whenever it’s convenient:

Your phone is currently being used as a Roon playback zone, the music is actually coming out of the phone itself, which means Roon is running its full audio engine on the device. Could you try using the app purely as a remote for a while, controlling playback on another zone (the Nucleus output or another endpoint) with nothing playing on the phone, and let me know whether the app still restarts on you?

If it stops happening, that points us straight at the playback engine. If it keeps happening, we know the problem is elsewhere. Either answer cuts the search in half.

Also, just to confirm: have you ever seen it restart while you were actively looking at the app with the screen on? Based on the logs I’d expect the answer is no, but I’d rather hear it from you than assume.

One last note, the app is holding a fair bit more memory and posting its playback notification far more often than it should. Neither of those caused the crashes, but they’re on the ticket too, since they’re likely hurting your battery life in the meantime.

Thanks again for the detailed report and for your patience with this one.

7

No problem - I’m a software developer as well, so I know what you’re going through!

I often do use my Android device purely as a Roon Remote sending music to a Bowers and Wilkins Formation Wedge speaker. I never have any problems with that device, but just to double-check, I played a couple of hours of music there just now using the phone as a Roon Remote. Again, no problems.

And your hypothesis about the screen being turned off is correct holds true for me. I have never seen the problem happen while I have had the screen actively on. But to be honest, I don’t often listen to Roon on my Android phone while doing other things on it. So that could be a red herring.

If you need more info, give me a holler!