Antennapod: Stuck player loading notification

[rec0de]

Checklist

• [x] I have used the search function to see if someone else has already submitted the same bug report.
• [x] I will describe the problem with as much detail as possible.
• [x] If the bug only to occurs with a certain podcast, I will include the URL of that podcast.

System info

App version: 2.0.2

App source: Google Play

Android version: 9

Device model: ONEPLUS A3003 (OnePlus 3T)

Bug description

Steps to reproduce: unknown

Expected behaviour: none / no notification

Current behaviour:

A non-dismissable notification appears without apparent reason, reading: 'Loading. If this does not go away, play any episode and contact us' (see screenshot). The message indeed does not go away until playing any episode.

First occurred: Today, 2020/10/18

Environment:

Nothing too unusual - battery optimizations are disabled for AntennaPod, I do have selectively disabled auto-updates for some podcasts. The WiFi is a bit flaky and might report a connection even though the internet is unreachable at the time.

Stacktrace/Logcat:

none

[ByteHamster]

Thanks for reporting! Would it be possible for you to send us a log file directly after the notification appears? I thought that the bug would be fixed in 2.0.x :( I can not reproduce this on my device and maybe logs could help to finally fix it.

You can export logs to a file by opening the "Report bug" screen in AntennaPod's settings and pressing the "Export full logs" button. The logs likely contain some sensitive information (what podcasts you listen to, when you listen, etc), so if you do not want to post it publicly, you can also send me an email to info@<my username>.com.

Thanks!

[rec0de]

Sure, I'll keep an eye out for the notification to appear again! At the moment I don't really have a clue what triggers it and couldn't reproduce it. Do you know anything that used to trigger it or seems related to it that I could try?

Edit: I just found #2716. I tried to follow the steps to reproduce mentioned there (Finish playing an episode, force stop, send media button event via adb). Somewhat unsurprisingly, that didn't to anything.

I managed to pull some general system logs from my phone, but there doesn't seem to be any mention of AntennaPod for the relevant timeframe (scanned for 'antenna' in the logs). Let me know if these logs might still be useful to you or if there's anything else I should look for in there.

[ByteHamster]

Do you know anything that used to trigger it or seems related to it that I could try?

To be honest, I don't know. #2716 was related to media buttons but also Bluetooth. Maybe there is still something odd about Bluetooth.

(scanned for 'antenna' in the logs)

Some of the relevant parts are tagged with PlaybackService. Not sure if your log tool prints the package that originally sent the lines. AntennaPod's logs export feature uses the system logs, too (but only the lines created by AntennaPod, not from other apps).

[rec0de]

Okay, I was definitely not using Bluetooth at the time of the issue.

Some of the relevant parts are tagged with PlaybackService.

Looks like the logs don't go back far enough for this type of message unfortunately. But I noticed that there was some sort of Android crash that day (first time that happened afaik, might be related?) for which an automated bug report was generated. I'm not sure if the notification was around before that crash or if it appeared after - I left it alone for several hours to see if it would disappear before I took the screenshot in this issue so it would have to be created around early afternoon at the latest.

I've grepped the generated report for antenna and PlaybackService - maybe there is something useful in there, but it's quite a mess.

I haven't run into the issue since despite basically identical usage patterns, so I think it's entirely possible that this Android crash messed something up - maybe it killed AntennaPod at a bad moment or something?

Anway, here are the logs:

filtered.txt

[ByteHamster]

Thanks for the logs. Unfortunately, I can not really find things that would help. While there are some mentions of AntennaPod generated by the system, it looks like messages generated actively by AntennaPod are not included. I suggest to use the log export feature within AntennaPod because that one also does not cut away lines that are still related to a message but do not contain the grepped search term. Also, the export feature only has access to the lines generated by AntennaPod, so it is filtered automatically.

maybe it killed AntennaPod at a bad moment or something?

I think killing an app removes all notifications. The notification is only shown if the app should theoretically be killed but somehow is still running.

[rec0de]

I've tried the log export feature in AntennaPod, but the logs unfortunately didn't go back far enough to the time the notification appeared. I haven't encountered the bug since, but if it ever shows up again I'll make sure to get the logs.

As long as no one else reports anything like this, feel free to close this as a one-time oddity that might have been caused by the crash somewhere else in the Android system.

[rec0de]

Nevermind, it just happened again. Logs are below
full-logs.txt

[ByteHamster]

Awesome - that log file helped a lot. I can reproduce this with the following code:

adb shell am start-foreground-service --ei de.danoeh.antennapod.core.service.extra.MediaButtonReceiver.KEYCODE 88 de.danoeh.antennapod.debug/de.danoeh.antennapod.core.service.playback.PlaybackService

Will start working on a fix.

[ByteHamster]

Will be fixed in 2.0.3