Another Can't Access My Settings bug

[JackdawFool]

I'm having the exact same issue as reported by other users on this forum - When I attempt to access My Settings in MobiLinc Pro, the settings page loads and a popup immediately opens that reads "Processing profile change." The application then becomes entirely unresponsive. My device then basically hangs and I have to struggle to get to the Android app management screen to force close the app (the entire device becomes very unresponive and the MobiLinc app settings page with the "Processing profile change" popup keeps taking over the screen.)

I'm running an unmodified Android 4.1.1 on a Galxy Nexus.

I firmly believe this is NOT an OS issue for the following reasons:

1. I have been using MobiLinc Pro for quite a long time across a number of versions of Android on my device and have experienced no problems until the most recent update of MobiLinc.
2. I have been running Android 4.1.1 for a number of months. MobiLinc was working just fine on my current Andoid 4.1.1 OS that entire time. I suddenly became unable to access the settings page when updating to the new MobiLinc version.
3. I have zero problems with any of my many Android applications.

I have tried all the things other users have tried - clearing the application's cache and data, uninstalling MobiLinc, changing my Android settings to not restore application data and settings when an app is reinstalled, clearing the device cache, and clearing the Dalvik cache to no avail. I also have a backup of the MobiLinc application and data made before I had any issues. I restored that backup using Titanium Backup and still have the same problem attempting to access the settings page.

During my attempts to get it working I have also experienced my ISY ceasing to respond on the ports I have it configured for as another user in this forum reported. I had to reboot the ISY to make it responsive again. This happened a few times, though it was not 100% repeatable. I have never had a problem like this with my ISY before.

I'd prefer not to have to do a factory reset to solve this problem, though it seems that has fixed the issue for 2 people here (and one reported it did not solve the issue.)

Can some further investigation time please be put into solving this issue? Based on the handful of users that have managed to find this site and have posted about the problem I image a fair number of users must be affected.

[AdminWes]

Thanks for the detailed reporting on this issue. We have spent dozens of hours on this issue attempting to trace it to something we can fix in the app, but this still appears to be an OS 4.x issue. Here's why:

- We cannot reproduce this problem against our 4.x stock of Android devices no matter what we try.
- A Factory Data Reset did fix the issue for two users that reported it which indicated something in the OS/file system outside of the app is the root cause.
- In your post you indicated that you restored MobiLinc to an earlier version using Titanium Backup. At the time the backup was taken, that version was working, however, after the restore you see the same issue. This tells me that there's something (file/data/cache/settings/something) in the OS layer that is outside of the MobiLinc app code that's causing the problem. If the problem was something in the app code then I'd expect the older backup to work and the update to fail, but that's not what happened when you restored the app indicating that the problem is elsewhere.

Something at play here that could be a factor is if the device is rooted. You indicated that you are running a stock version of the OS, however, I don't think you can get to the Dalvik cache or use Titanium Backup without rooting the device which changes the OS.

Having this issue out there bothers us greatly as we pride ourselves on the stability and reliability of our app products. Unfortunately we have been unable to find a reason in our code as to why this issue appears for some folks and believe there is something at the OS layer causing the issue where a Factory Data Reset fixes it for at least some folks.

Wes

[JackdawFool]

Wes,

Thank you very much for taking the time to post a detailed reply. I've really loved using MobiLinc for the past 10 months or so and am truly saddened that it suddenly stopped working properly for me.

Isn't it more likely that the reason performing a factory reset has solved the problem for a couple of users is because after they do so, they then go and install the latest MobiLinc app from Google Play? That is, they are performing a completely clean installation of the newest MobiLinc version on a device that for all intents and purposes never had an earlier version of MobiLinc installed?

The problem you've described sounds very much like the code you think is running is not what is running... are you certain that during an upgrade installation from some earlier version of MobiLinc through to the latest version some modification is not being made to the device (an additional file or a modified file) that is not removed or restored during the uninstallation process for the app? Or perhaps some modified setting that is being left behind causing the application code to make its way down an unexpected path?

This seems much more likely to me than sudden/spontaneous OS corruption when no modifications have been made to the OS when the problem seems to have arisen at the same time a MobiLinc update has occurred.

I believe I first experienced the problem with the version update that introduced the cloud connect option as a startup screen when you launch the MobiLinc app. Before the upgrade, MobiLinc Pro 1.1.5 worked flawlessly for me. That's the version I have in my Titanium backup. In attempting to reproduce the issue have you taken an Android 4.1.1 device, began with MobiLinc Pro 1.1.5, and upgraded it through the deployed release versions to current?

Otherwise, if it is something incorrect with the OS, specifically what file or files are "corrupted"? (I realize you have not yet been able to reproduce the issue, but until you can identify such a problem with the OS I don't think you can positively make any determination as to the root cause of the issue.)

My device is "rooted" but I am otherwise running the stock 4.1.1 Build JRO03O as distributed OTA for my Verizon Galaxy Nexus.

Thank you again for your hard work any help you may provide.

[AdminWes]

Isn't it more likely that the reason performing a factory reset has solved the problem for a couple of users is because after they do so, they then go and install the latest MobiLinc app from Google Play? That is, they are performing a completely clean installation of the newest MobiLinc version on a device that for all intents and purposes never had an earlier version of MobiLinc installed?

Not necessarily. The vast majority of our users have updated without any issues both on OS 4.x devices and 2.x devices. If there's a code problem in the app then it would affect all users. Whatever is happening is happening to a small subset of 4.x devices.

The problem you've described sounds very much like the code you think is running is not what is running... are you certain that during an upgrade installation from some earlier version of MobiLinc through to the latest version some modification is not being made to the device (an additional file or a modified file) that is not removed or restored during the uninstallation process for the app? Or perhaps some modified setting that is being left behind causing the application code to make its way down an unexpected path?

It's possible and thus the very problem. App Devs do not control the update code in the OS. Whatever the OS does during an update, we have no control over it and we do not see what the OS does during that update process. What's troubling to us, is there's virtually nothing complex about navigating to My Settings where the issue pops up in these cases. The code here is very simple.

This seems much more likely to me than sudden/spontaneous OS corruption when no modifications have been made to the OS when the problem seems to have arisen at the same time a MobiLinc update has occurred.

This problem has been reported in both an upgrade case and just normal every day use case (no update). I cannot say with certainty that it's caused because of an update.

I believe I first experienced the problem with the version update that introduced the cloud connect option as a startup screen when you launch the MobiLinc app. Before the upgrade, MobiLinc Pro 1.1.5 worked flawlessly for me. That's the version I have in my Titanium backup. In attempting to reproduce the issue have you taken an Android 4.1.1 device, began with MobiLinc Pro 1.1.5, and upgraded it through the deployed release versions to current?

There were a couple of folks that reported this issue before the cloud update. At the time of reporting we did perform an upgrade test and didn't see any issues on our devices. We've never been able to reproduce it. Both in normal use case, multiple variants of OS 4.x or though upgrading from an older version to a newer version of MobiLinc.

If the problem is in the code, then moving back to 1.1.5 should have worked for you. Since it did not, there is something the OS is holding onto outside of our control that is causing the problem. Hince the Factory Data Reset to clear out whatever is causing the problem.

Unless you went into My Settings on 1.1.5 right before the update to the current version 1.2.1, it's hard to say when and where the problem got introduced. Based on what we know and have seen from our many debugging hours on this it's very likely that the problem would have appeared for you at some point in 1.1.5, but without a reason to go into My Settings until the cloud update, you never saw it until after the update to 1.2.1.

We are still tracking this issue so I do appreciate the community feedback. It may be one of those issues that takes several folks to report it before a pattern starts to emerge to help us identify the root cause.

[JackdawFool]

Thanks again Wes.

I spent a bit more time looking into the issue and was able to get my backup of 1.1.5 working again. I don't know if this will help you in diagnosing the issue but here is what I found:

Forward locking (.apk encryption) is presently turned on for MobiLinc Pro. Has this always been the case? I believe Jellybean (4.1.X) handles this differently than previous Android versions by installing an encrypted .apk (.asec) file into the /data/app-asec/ directory. I found multiple copies of the MobiLinc Pro .asec file in my /data/app-asec/ directory:

com.mobileintegratedsolutions.mobilinc.pro-1.asec
com.mobileintegratedsolutions.mobilinc.pro-2.asec

When I completely uninstall MobiLinc, com.mobileintegratedsolutions.mobilinc.pro-2.asec was remaining behind.

After deleting this extraneous remnant, I was able to restore operation to my MobiLinc 1.1.5 backup. My backup has 1.1.5 as an unencrypted .apk in the /data/app/ folder. I am assuming that forward locking was not enabled on this version?

Hopeful that the erroneous copy of the MobiLinc .asec file was also causing the problem with getting in to the settings portion of the latest version of the application, I reinstalled the latest MobiLinc version, but still had the same problem.

I know there have been various issues with the Jellybean handling of encrypted .apk files (it's possible my OS and or my version of Google Play services still have some of these issues, I have not had opportunity to research this further.) I imagine it's also possible the problem was introduced during a previous installation of a new MobiLinc Pro version by some other version of Google Play services which I believe has been updated a few times for 4.1.1. This would make it pretty hard for you to reproduce the problem.

To test if the encryption was the problem, I used Titanium backup to place an unencrypted backup of the most recent MobiLinc Pro .apk into my /data/app/ directory. I ran the app but had very nearly the same problem - When attempting to access My Settings, I would get the "Processing Profile Change" popup and the app would hang. However, if I waited a moment when launching the application rather than clicking on My Settings, a new popup appeared indicating my ISY could not be accessed, and allowing me to go directly to the settings screen for the light controller. This worked fine and I was able to enter the connection information for the light controller esentially restoring full functionality to MobiLinc Pro (I don't really have reason to go to My Settings other than to set up the light controller.) However, the basic problem remained in that I can not access the My Settings page directly.

It is interesting to note that this behavior is different from running the encrypted .apk - there I never get the popup message alerting me to the fact that the lighting controller is not accessible with the option to go straight to the lighting controller settings screen. So maybe that is a clue for you.

I returned to the old version until you folks get this sorted out.

My version of the os is 4.1.1 build JRO03O.
My version of Google Play services is currently 1.0.13.

I'd be curious to know if even a clean install of the latest MobiLinc Pro with these versions works fine.

[AdminWes]

Please see this post for a possible workaround:
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=2533

[AdminWes]

Hi All,

We've released a bug-fix version of MobiLinc for Android this morning that addresses the OS 4.1/4.2 issue identified in this forum post.

Please update to version 1.2.2 from the Play store or select "Check for Updates" from inside of your MobiLinc non-market app to download the latest.

It may take Google up to 24 hours to roll out the update to all of their Play servers.

Wes