One of our games "iCopter Classic", which was once in the top selling list and has 100K unique users everyday, is getting bad comments from frustrated users.
The problem they keep reporting is, "The app, crashes on launch" on many ios4 devices, irrespective of the hardware they run on. We have tested the game on iPod Touch 2g, 3g, iPhone 2g, 3gs, 4 and with many iOS combinations. But we were not able to reproduce the problem.
Our download count went down to 50% because of this problem and bad comments for past 3 updates. We fixed all iOS 4 related code and now clueless of what to do next to fix this issue.
We somehow got crash reports from one of the users which we are not sure how to point the bug.
NOTE: My doubt is on this part of the code. We are loading around 200 images with separate uiimage objects for loading flags of countries.
Crash log says:
Exception Type: 00000020
Exception Codes: 0x8badf00d
The first thing you need to chase up is the log file from the user, that will give you some useful information on what is going on.
You can symbolicate the crash log from your user (and get a readable call stack), by running the symbolicatecrash utility with the exact .dSYM that was generated when the application was first built:
symbolicatecrash -o .app.dSYM
SymbolicateCrash usually lives in:
/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DTDeviceKit.framework/Versions/A/Resources/symbolicatecrash
Related
So, I recently uploaded about 9 apps that were mutations of an original one, just with different content and the same framework...
So, today all 9 of the apps went into review at the exact same time although they were each uploaded a day apart, which I thought was really odd. 5 hours later I get 9 rejection emails and the same rejection as follows:
2.2
We found that your app failed to launch on iPhone 5 running iOS 6, on both Wi-Fi and cellular networks.
We encountered the issue when selecting the application on the Home screen - the app displayed a launch image then quit unexpectedly.
This may be because iOS 6 uses a watchdog timer for applications; if
an application takes too long to complete its initial startup, the
operating system terminates the application.
For information about the watchdog timer, please see Technical Q&A: Application does not crash when launched from debugger but
crashes when launched by user..
Another possibility could be a missing entitlement. For more information, please see the Technical Note: Resolving "0x800003A",
applications not launching and "missing entitlement". For discrete
code-level questions, you may wish to consult with Apple Developer
Technical Support. Please be sure to:
include the complete details of your rejection issues
prepare any symbolicated crash logs, screenshots, and steps to reproduce the issues for when the DTS engineer follows up.
For information on how to symbolicate and read a crash log, please see Tech Note TN2151 Understanding and Analyzing iPhone OS
Application Crash Reports.
If you have difficulty reproducing this issue, please try testing the workflow as described in
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/qa/qa1764/Testing Workflow
with Xcode's Archive feature".
I've uploaded a number of apps before and have never received this sort of issue.. So, I followed their suggestions and it's not the dogwatch timer, as the app runs absolutely flawless when ran from xcode on my iPhone 4s with iOS6, and also runs without any issues when I distribute it as ad-hoc enterprise, and sync the app through a .ipa file onto my iphone...
Although, before testing any of this I went through and revoked my development and distribution certificates, went through my keychain and deleted all instances of any certificates related to apps, and keys. Then refreshed everything. All my code signing / provisioning profiles are valid, I re-added my device to the provisioning portal as well.
Does anyone else have any ideas? I'd like to be positive I fixed the problem before uploading my apps again, waiting a week just to be rejected once again and have to start all over. Any help or leads would be greatly appreciated!
I have also double checked all of my info.plist bundle identifiers and they all match the dist and development profiles associated with each app.
I finally got around to finding a friend with an iPhone 5. The crashing WAS due to armv7s architecture being used. So I stripped out all architectures and used only armv7. Worked like a charm and the app ran as smoothly on my 4s as it did on my friend's iphone 5.
Did you try compiling in armv7 only? (forget the armv7s support). By the way, yeah, it's impossible to test it without any iphone5 hardware, and the simulator actually don't simulate anything. With only armv7 feature it should (i really say "should") behave like in iPhone 3G/4/4s on ios6.
Or did you have some runtime behavior depending on the device? What are you actually set on startup?
Look at this post:
http://wanderingcoder.net/original-armv7s-psa/
Even if it talk about linker error, here is the philosophy: Don't publish something you haven't, can't test. Use armv7s only when you will get rich an have an iPhone 5
I have an app that is crashing on the device (works well in the simulator) which leads me to assume that maybe it's a memory issue...
When it crashes, there is no message whatsoever reported in the console.
It does not crash each time a certain action is taken, it crashes at different points of time always after the app has been running and in use for some time.
I know I'm supposed to ask a more specific question - but if anybody is able to tell me where to start trying to track down a crash that does not report in the console, I would really appreciate it!
I am now using the latest version of XCode (4.2)
Thanks in advance...
It very-well could be a memory issue. If that is where you want to start your diagnostics, you can use the built-in Xcode profiler. In Xcode Product->Profile will get you started.
Maybe setting the NSZombiesEnabled value to YES in Project -> Edit Active Executable -> Arguments -> Variables is also helping; this will show you memory access errors based on accessing released objects. But in that case you should at least get a SIG_ABRT or BAD_ACCESS error ...
You can also log when the app receives a memory warning in the didReceiveMemoryWarning functions of your view controllers - this is called before the system is throwing out stuff when memory gets low. That of course could lead to a crash with nothing showing.
First, relax.
Then read this Technical Note.
Now, follow these steps:
From /Users/<username>/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData remove all folders.
From /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator remove all folders.
Clean your trash.
Remove app from device.
Build and run application on device.
Follow the steps that leads toward a crash.
Now, go to XCode->Window->Organizer and select "Device Logs" your device from the DEVICES pane. Select the most recent of these which has your application's name. Wait for XCode to symbolicate the crashlog. There are two possibilities now:
Its a low memory crash.
Its a memory management related crash.
If its option one, profile your application in Instruments.
If its option two, you should see the stack frame where you application is crashing (or your module's stack). This SO question will be very helpful
If you cannot understand the output (or you think the crashlog is not symbolicating - or that its not your code that's crashing), please post the crash log's crashing thread's stack here and I'll look into it.
PS: in the first section we do the first two steps to make sure there are no left-over .app/.dSYM files which might hinder symbolication later in the process because XCode symbolicator is not that intelligent.
I have an app that I occasionally receive support emails for that say the app crashed on them and won't open up anymore. It shows 'Default.png' then exits. Even when the app is deleted and reinstalled.
-I get no crash reports or memory issues (as reported by itunes connect using reports from a significant sample size >20k downloads)
-I've confirmed it's not limited to a specific model and not caused by jailbroken devices.
-The app doesn't have external dependencies, so why would reinstalling it not fix the problem?
What kind of problems could cause the crashing to go unreported and be persistent?
If you have an uncaught exception handler, depending on what you have in there, you will not get reports written out the same way, or at all, as if you did not have a handler. This will make iTunes think there is not any crash reports at all. Uncaught exception handlers are commonly added as part of analytics frameworks, or third party notification tools.
While this could answer your question, a more reasonable explanation is that the crashing devices just need a device restart.
I think every app developer with a sizable install base has struggled with an issue like this in the past.
Are you using any sort of analytics package, such as Flurry, that helps you report crashes? We used Flurry with much greater success over Apple - Apple won't start reporting crashes to you until you have many -- and "just a few" is never enough.
Additionally, if it shows the default.png and crashes, take a hard look at your start-up code. Are you setting something in NSUserDefaults, that if, corrupted, could cause the app to crash on startup?
Admittedly it is strange that a delete-and-reinstall doesn't do the trick.
The users aren't reporting the error reports to Apple. The crashes could come from any number of sources.
You could walk a user through the process of digging crash reports directly out of iTunes during the next Sync and email them directly to you.
You could try asking a user to delete the app from the device, reboot their device, then have them install the app again after a fresh reboot.
After submitting our application several times, we continue to receive the following response:
Thank you for submitting My App to the
App Store. We've reviewed your
application and determined that we
cannot post this version of your iPad
application to the App Store because
My App is crashing on iPad running
iPhone OS 3.2 and Mac OS X 10.6.2. My
App crashes upon launch.
Unfortunately, crash logs have not
been generated.
However, resigning the same build with the AdHoc entitlements and loading the build onto the device yields no such crash. After a number of attempts, the application simply does not crash as reported by the reviewer. Furthermore, the reviewer does not provide any useful logging that may have been generated by SpringBoard such as an exit status or event if it had worked properly for any other device. There are no calls to explicitly exit or quit the application in the code line and yet the application terminates on startup.
What might cause an application to terminate in such a manner?
Under what conditions is an application tested that might not be found under a development environment?
Could it be a result of a signing issue that the submission validation system is simply unable to catch?
Thanks in advance.
After fighting with this for weeks, the application has finally been approved. The key: signing corruption. Hence why the application would start (or at least appear to start by showing the splash screen) and then suddenly vanish without a crash log. It failed Springboard's preflight sighing check.
A good tool to keep in mind to check for signing issues. It tells if the application has a valid signing:
codesign -vvvv MyApp.app
When I built the application, I would cp it to a network storage device where our product manager would pull it down and submit it to Apple. If decompressed on the NAS, the code signing was valid. But if you coped the compressed application back off the NAS and validate it, it would fail.
The lesson: make use of the new XCode utility to submit applications.
A few suggestions:
Try to use the leaks tool of the static analyzer to see if there are any memory leaks or problems your not seeing.
Does your app use a web service? This happened to me one time because the day Apple was reviewing the app the web service went down. That cause a crash. If thats the case you would want to add something to catch that.
Finally, In the logs Apple sent you did they send you the dsym file? If they did you can run atos from the command line and it will convert the address to symbols. That will show you what thread and symbol it's crashing on.
Be sure you test with a variety of settings: with Wifi disabled/enabled, with 3G disabled, Airplane mode on/off, location services disabled, etc.
As a last resort, assume there is a problem in your code that executes at startup. Remove half your startup code, set your release date in the far future (just in case it gets approved), then resubmit and see if they have the same problem. If not the problem is in the half you removed... it's a binary search.
I think you have two options: try harder to reproduce the defect using the tools other people are mentioning or to catch those crashes in the field.
PLCrashReporter will trap on an uncaught exception and store all relevant information. Next time your app is run, it can send the crash report that you can then symbolificate and view a stack trace of.
Ouch! That's a tough one. I've had this kind of thing happen before, but it seemed it was reproduce-able when I switched to a different device (iPhone 3G vs 3Gs, etc.). In your case though, it sounds like you're iPad only, so that might not help. There's a difference between 3G and Wifi, I suppose, but I would be really surprised if that was causing a crash on one and not the other.
One thing you could try if you think Apple's not doing their part is to change the binary name and re-submit it under another app name/record. See if you get the same response. If you get the same reviewer, you might, but I think there's a good chance you would get a different reviewer with a new app. Just set your app release date to some time in the distant future and it will never actually show up in the app store if they approve it. If the new app comes back rejected for the same reason, you've got work to do, but if they do in fact approve it, then I would get on the phone with them and point out the discrepancy.
My approach would be to make sure that the compilation is absolutely clean both in the static analyzer (this is NOT optional, it will save you time!) and for the build itself. Then set everything as described on CocoaDev' NSZombie page. Then make sure you have an iPod running 3.2 (actual hardware, not simulator) and test, test, test. Do it with network available and not available, with the device nearly full and freshly restored, every other variation you can think of. Run it with the debugger active and as a release build disconnected. Use Leaks, Instruments and all the other tools to peek in there and get a better feel for what is happening. If you exhaust every possibility you are going to have to beg for more detail from Apple but I bet you find a problem - one of the most important things in debugging an issue like this is to try to forget everything you think you know for sure and start at the beginning.
I just submitted this to Apple Support, but I'm wondering if anyone here has encountered something similar.
SUMMARY: my iphone app crashes when downloaded from the iTunes app store or from an ad-hoc distribution, but doesn't "crash" when run in debug mode on the simulator or on my iPod
DETAILS: The app contains a rather large sqlite database file (~180 meg uncompressed, 56 meg compressed). This may be relevant.
When launched, the application should copy the database (if necessary). After this, the user should be presented with a table-view containing approximately 6,000 rows. The information presented within these rows is derived from reading a table within the aforementioned database.
This all works properly when I run the application in the iPhone simulator and also when I run the application in debug mode on my iPod.
The app was approved by Apple. However, when users began to download the app through iTunes, I began receiving emails saying that the UITableView was not populated with any information. To investigate, I downloaded a copy of the app from the app store and I saw a similar result (i.e., UITableView is displayed, but the rows are empty).
I believe I am able to reproduce the problem using an ad-hoc distribution of my app.
The ad-hoc distribution behaves similarly (i.e. shows no rows in the UITableView) to the app-store download. Specifically, I have done the following multiple times (I delete and reinstall the application each time).
add my ad-hoc provisioning
certificate to iTunes
add my ad-hoc app build to iTunes
sync my iPod Touch with iTunes
start my ad-hoc app
app seems to always crash upon the first startup (i.e., the splash screen shows for a second and then I see the home screen of my iPod Touch)
second and subsequent start-ups of the ad-hoc app do not crash, but the UITableView is empty.
None of this happens when I run the app on the simulator or when I deploy in development/debug mode on the same iPod.
I have tried to examine crash logs associated with the initial crashing of the app (see step 5 above), but no crash log is created at that point in time. HOWEVER, a crash log is created when I sync iTunes with my iPod Touch, but it might as well be written in Polish.
So, it appears as though the app-store reviewers who approved my app only examined the behavior of the application using the simulator and/or in development/debug mode. It's possible that the issue is related to the large size of the database file, but this is complete speculation on my part. To the best of my understanding there should not be a limit on app-size or database size near 180 meg. This also wouldn't necessarily explain why the app works in debug/development mode.
Has anyone seen anything similar?
I think I figured this out (haven't tested it yet)...
Turns out the entire crash log isn't written in polish.
There's a part that says that the "application failed to launch in time"
I suspect that my database is too large to be copied during launch of the application.
to quote apple: ***iPhone OS uses a watchdog timer when applications are launched. If an application takes too long to complete its initial startup, the operating system terminates the application. Applications terminated for this reason will have the exception code 0x8badf00d and related information noted in the associated crash report:*
*When Xcode launches an application, the watchdog timer is disabled to compensate for additional overhead that may be incurred when Xcode attaches the debugger. As a result, your application's long startup may initially escape your attention if you are exclusively testing by running from Xcode.***