CODEWITHSUNDEEP
android
Fishbreath
Fishbreath

Reputation: 407

Android SD card writing fails, but not consistently

I've got a pretty thorny problem with Android 2.3: I have an app that gathers various logs for debugging and support purposes (my company does Linux for rugged hardware), and has stopped working lately, because it's failing to write to the SD card. Here are the symptoms I've seen and the investigations I've carried out:

This code is sufficient to cause a failure:

String sdcardDirectory = Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory().getAbsolutePath();
File directory = new File(sdcardDirectory + "/logger");  
if(!directory.mkdirs()){  
    //fails here.  
    Log.w("Logger", "Could not create logger directory.");  
}

Since I have access to the keys for this device, I even went so far as to sign the app with the platform key and run it as android.uid.system, with no luck. Anyone have any ideas?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 351

Answers (1)

Fishbreath
Fishbreath

Reputation: 407

It turns out this is a case partly of bad diagnosis on my part, and partly an apparent change in 2.1 to 2.3.

The bad diagnosis was that the directory above was indeed being created. The apparent change between 2.1 and 2.3 may be Android internally, or it may be the way we're setting up paths, PATH, and symbolic links in our own builds. Further down from the code in the original post, there are a few calls to exec() to get e.g. output from logcat and copies of various bits of useful information in /proc; using absolute paths to the commands fixed the problem.

Thanks for the help in ruling things out.

Upvotes: 1

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