Incorrect sync after app crash

Bug Reports
1

Please fill out the following sections to the best of your ability, it will help us investigate bugs if we have this information at the outset. Screenshots are especially helpful, so please provide those if you can.

Platform: Android

App version number, if a mobile app issue (shown under Settings or About):
1.29.5

Description of problem (please provide a set of steps we can use to replicate the issue, and make as many as you need.):

Step 1: With auto-sync turned off, use app normally until it crashes. (For me this takes about 10-15 minutes, depending on usage. There doesn’t seem to be anything consistent that triggers the crash, just using app for a while and going a couple layers deep in exploration to try to identify an observation. But this isn’t the bug I’m reporting–presumably any crash that causes the app to hang would do the same thing.)

Step 2: Restart the app.

Step 3: The app tries to sync all of my embarrassingly incomplete observations despite my not having pressed the upload/sync button. If I’m lucky and quick on the draw, I can stop it before it uploads more than a couple.

I’m hoping that this is just a simple design oversight, where there’s an incorrect assumption that auto-sync is on. Sorry I’m not able to be more specific, since step #1 is erratic.

2

if you haven’t already, you should probably generate log files from your app and send them to help@inaturalist.org

3

Please fill out the following sections to the best of your ability, it will help us investigate bugs if we have this information at the outset. Screenshots are especially helpful, so please provide those if you can.

Platform (Android, iOS, Website): Android

App version number, if a mobile app issue (shown under Settings or About): 1.29,11 (585)

Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) : N/a

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: (I deleted the observations, of Pterostichus beetles)

Screenshots of what you are seeing (instructions for taking a screenshot on computers and mobile devices: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/):

Description of problem (please provide a set of steps we can use to replicate the issue, and make as many as you need.):

Step 1: The app hangs (for unknown reasons), and then I “Close all” apps.

Step 2: When I restart the app, the app starts Uploading observations which I have stored on my phone but which I have deliberately not uploaded (because it is a poor photo, or a duplicate).

Step 3: I enter Flight mode to stop further unrequested Uploads. I then have to open the browser version to delete the unrequested Uploads.

This happened today between 0908 and 0931 with two observations of Pterostichus beetles.

It also happened on 14 May 2023 at about 1300 with 15 or 20 observations (when I was slower in stopping it).

It had happended on one or two occasions before that, but I cannot specify the date.

4

i don’t totally understand your issue. you can toggle off the setting to automatically sync your observations, but at the end of the day, you really just need to delete observations from the app that you never intend to upload.

i don’t think you have a an actual bug here.

5

The setting for automatic uploads has definitley been switched Off for over a year, since soon after I started using Inaturalist. It was definitely Off on 14 May and 18 September. So I do still think that this is a bug. Maybe when unstable conditions occur, the setting for Automatic uploads gets corrupted. This only happens when Inaturalist has been hanging, after which I have to Close it and Restart it.

Deleting all photos which I have not uploaded is not a satisfactory workaround, as the recent ones are observations which I am researching before I have come up with a confident ID, and I am not yet ready either to upload them or delete them.

6

okay. so your report is basically the same as: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/incorrect-sync-after-app-crash/44651, right?

7

It is not just “basically” the same, but rather it is “precisely” the same (including the “embarrassingly incomplete observations” and the need to be quick on the buttons).

8

Since this is the same bug. I’m consolidating here. It will definitely help to have log files from the app to pin this down. To send log files, go to the Settings tab in the app and tap three times on the version number. You will then have the option to email the log files to us. (I think this is still correct, but I copied from an older bug report).

9

I have prepared the log file email. After deleting all the log files except for the ones which have 18 Sept in the file name, I have 70 files to attach, and some of these files exceed 4 mb. I am not sure that trying to email the log files is the right way to get the data to you.

10

you could load the files to some sort of cloud share (ex. Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Apple iCloud, Dropbox, etc.) and then e-mail iNat staff a link that will give them rights to view those files.

1 Like
11

Yes, this sounds like a good plan, the address is

12

I am afraid that it is not that simple. I can see the files as attachments to an email, but I think I would need to copy the attachments to a storage folder on the phone one at a time, for 70 files, and then copy them to the dropbox folder. The only file which I have looked at so far is 11 mb and is decompressed, so this may be as much as 700 mb, for 70 uncompressed files.

The files seem to be stored in a cache folder on the phone with very long unintelligible filenames, and they seem to be uncompressed.

Can you suggest how I might access and transfer these files in a manner which is not too time-consuming?

13

if you can somewhat reliably reproduce the problem, then you could maybe just try to reproduce the problem as the first thing you do with the app on any given day. then immediately after, generate the log files for just that day. that could reduce the number and size of log files you need to work with.

1 Like
14

It has happened maybe 4 or 5 times in a year, randomly, so there is no possibility of me deliberately reproducing it. If the problem randomly recurs I may be able to select the most recent log file.

1 Like
15

It happened again at about 15.00 BST (14.00 GMT) this afternoon (probably between 14.55 and 15.15) in exactly the same circumstances. The Android app 1.30.13 (606) crashed, and when I restarted it, it began uploading records which I had not yet identified or annotated and was not ready to upload, without my having asked it to upload them.

I am on Android 14 on a Samsung Galaxy S22.

There are 32 files. The 16 .log files are around 10mb each. The .zip files are mostly less than 1mb, but I cannot tell from the file names which log file is the most recent. I have emailed all the .zip files to helpdesk@inaturalist.org.

1 Like
16

I did not put the date in my last message. It was 2024-05-12.

17

This has just happened again at 20:55 BST on 2024-09-07, after I had done an Android “Close all” because the app seemed to be hanging."

18

Are you able to send log files, maybe via Google Drive?