Send log to developers

Introduction

The Android system offers a method to collect logs of system events and app specific messages.

When c:geo crashes or behaves unexpectedly the support team might ask you to send such a logfile. These logs often contain important information about the reason of the problems and helps the developers fixing it.

c:geo has a built-in function to access the logs collected by Android and save them into a logfile.

Disclaimer: Logfiles generated by c:geo might contain personal information (such as your current location, authentication token for geocaching services and other personal data). The c:geo team assures, that we only use the content for the purpose of analyzing your problem and not disclose or make unauthorized use of any personal information contained within. The logfiles will be deleted after the analysis has been completed. In case we would like to use information contained on our bugtracking system we will remove or leave out personal information or ask for your consent in beforehand. If you upload a logfile yourself to our GitHub bugtracker you are solely responsible for disclosing its contents. We recommend sending it via mail to support@cgeo.org referring to the related issue on GitHub instead or to manually remove personal information from the logfile before posting it.

Create a logfile of your problem

The following section describes how to generate a logfile with help of the c:geo app itself. This will however not work, if c:geo e.g. already crashes on startup, so that you cannot use c:geo to configure and finally save the logfile. In that case please refer to chapter [TBC].

Steps to generate a logfile using c:geo

1. Under normal conditions c:geo is not writing detailed information into the system log, therefore the first step is to enable the function "Debug logging" in the c:geo settings (Menu -> Settings -> System).

2. On some devices several phone functions or background apps are writing many messages to the log. Therefore it might be helpful for us if you turn of all functions and other running apps which are not needed.

3. Restart your device to get clean starting conditions and wait a bit for all system functions to finish initialization and get into a stable state.

4. Start c:geo and answer the dialog informing you about active debug log with "Cancel" to keep debug logging active.

5. Perform the action(s) which replicate your problem/crash in a continuous sequence. As the system logging has only a limited size and some logs might otherwise be no longer contained.

6. Go to the c:geo settings (Menu -> Settings -> System) again and select "Generate logfile". In the following dialog select "Standard" unless otherwise instructed by the support team.

7. The generated logfile will be stored below /cgeo/logfiles/ on your internal memory as a text file containing date and time in the file name. Send this file to our support team.

8. Don't forget to switch of "Debug logging" in c:geo after you finished.

Generate a logfile if c:geo is no longer working

If c:geo does already have a problem or crashes before you can actually use the c:geo setting to configure logging, there is an alternative way described below.

1. Create a file log-properties.txt in the directory /cgeo/logfiles/ with the following content:

logging.minlevel=DEBUG
logging.mincallerinfolevel=WARN
logging.throwonerror=false

In some cases the support team may send this file to you (which might contain different content). In that case please use the file sent by the support team and store it into the directory mentioned above.

2. Then restart c:geo until the error happens.

3. When finshed go to Settings => System => Generate logfile

4. You should now have a couple of log files in the "logfiles" directory beneath your c:geo directory, their filenames starting either with "logfile" or with "login". Please send those files to our support e-mail address

5. Rename or delete the log-properties.txt to deactivate the logging.

TO BE CLARIFIED (Remark:Lars): Can this file be used to generate a logfile if c:geo cannot be started or at least the user is unable to use the "Generate logfile" and/or "Enable debug logging" function? Otherwise I do not understand the advantage ot it?!