Operating system
Android
Joplin version
3.6.20
Desktop version info
Joplin Mobile 3.6.20 (prod, android)
Gerät: android
Client-ID: c7152387327149f28262e6d05ce0f0d0
Sync-Version: 3
Profil-Version: 49
Unterstützter Schlüsselbund: Nein
Alternative Instanz ID: -
Sync target: (None)
Editor: Markdown
Revision: 5751788a7 (release-3.6)
Android-API-Level: 31
WebView-Version: 148.0.7778.215
WebView-Paket: com.google.android.webview
FTS aktiviert: 1
Hermes aktiviert: 1
Sync target
WebDAV
Editor
Markdown Editor
What issue do you have?
The app crashes, if synchronisation is activated. It is able to syncrhonise many (maybe even all notes), but crashes at some poiint. If I try to use the app again, it crashes almost immediately. A dialog appears stating that the app is continually crashing and offers to stop it. If I stop it, start it again and very quickly disable synchronisation, it does not crash and I can read the notes available. This may have started with 3.6.20, but it only happens on this phone. It seems to work fine on my Android tablet. And it works fine on Windows and OpenSuse Linux. I do not have very many attachments in the notes (only 17) and the biggest one ist 500KB large.
I have already tried removing and re-installing the app including deleting the cache and data before removing the app and rebooting the phone, before re-installing. But that did not help.
The app and synchronisation has worked for several years on this phone without any problem.
By the way when I view the log file the on the phone and click only errors, nothing is displayed.
Expected behavior: the app does not crashed because of the the synchonisation!
Log file
mobile-log.log (355 KB)
For the device you are having issues, if you are using GrapheneOS, try turning off the hardened memory allocator for Joplin. If it is a low end device, then maybe it is just running out of memory. If neither are the case, then I'm not sure what to suggest
Thanks, but this is stock Android 12 from Samsung with OneUI 4.1. It's a Note 10, so not really a low-end device, but kind of old.
It's possibly related to the age. I have found with older Samsung devices that when kept up to date, they become less stable and I get random and sometimes continuous app crashes.
I suppose that's a possible explanation. However, I have no other apps that crash and Joplin just started crashing about 3 or 4 days ago or so. The Android-API is obviously pretty old with level 31. The device is about 6 years old. (And quite frankly I probably wouldn't buy I new smartphone, because Joplin doesn't work, especially now with the flash memory/RAM crisis.)
Have a look on your WebDAV server at the directory with the Joplin data, and sort the files by size. How big are the top 3 biggest md files at the root?
In fact, the 3 largest files are 25MB, 49MB and 96MB large. That does sort of surprise me!
Ok that would be the problem then. I think your tablet is just more tollerant of the high memory usage, but md files of that size is abnormal. You likely have some base 64 encoded content within those notes, which is making them have massive plain text content. I'd suggest to work out which notes they are, extract the encoded content and add them as attachments instead of having the content inline in plain text
Then I'd have to ask how I can recognize if base 64 content is in a note? When I look at the note involved I only see markdown and have never actually done anything else. It is fairly long, but when I do an external edit and save the file somewhere else than the Joplin WebDAV folder, it is only 53KB large.
Oh yes, and when I do a "more file.md" on the actual file in the WebDAV folder, it shows me many repetitions of the title of the note!?
It's hard to say how to check this. But is the note html content by any chance, or it only contains markdown? Also do you use E2EE or not? If you don't, you can look at the md file on the WebDAV server directly to verify the contents, but if you do use E2EE that wont help
There is something odd about these very large notes: when I do a complete JEX-Export of everything, the file is only 3MB. But there is several very large notes when I look at the size in the WebDAV folder. I don't thnik they are simply notes. Could this have to do with sub-notebooks or history of note changes?
I'm pretty sure I have no HTML in my notes. I can't imagine how that could have been inserted.
You may wish to consider making a jex export of all your data (from desktop), then clearing data for all clients and the server, then importing the jex into the reset profile and resyncing all devices. That may be a slow process depending on how much data you have, but should solve whatever issue there is, seeming as the export is only 3mb.
Before doing that though, import the jex to a new Joplin profile and verify nothing will be lost through this process.
Also, you didn't answer whether you had E2EE enabled - if you havn't and you don't have anything private in one of the 3 big md files, would you mind sending one of them to me in a PM to investigate what might have caused the issue? If its too big to allow sharing in a message, just upload it to a file sharing site and send the link.
I'll give it a try with the export and import. I have to look at what all is in that huge file. That'll take a bit. It's mostly software project stuff, which isn't critical, but I'd like to make sure, before I upload it. (It's all in German by the way.) Unfortunately I don't have any time right now, but will try to get to it later today or tomorrow.
Sorry, it took so long. No, I don't use encryption (just a home network). The big file seems to be a history file of different versions of a note used for a programming project. That note does have LOTS of changes and is kind of long (53KB). There is no private stuff in that note. So if you're still interested, I could upload it.
I also found a sort of syntax error in the note involved: I wanted to mark code with "`" and forgot the closing character for that. Android phone (and not the tablet) would be the only device that couldn't deal with that error. So I don't think that's the reason for the problem, but rather, as you suspect, the sheer size of the note.
Is there anyway to get rid of a lot of that versioning stuff? Could I simply set the "Note history" in options from 90 days to 30 or turn it off to get rid of huge history files? (I wouldn't mind having versioning history, but I'm sure I don't need 90 days.)
I also imported my Joplin JEX export into a fresh Joplin installation just to see if it works. It's on a very old and weak performing netbook with only 4GB memory and OpenSuse Tumbleweed, but it worked fine, as far as I can tell. It's obviously not the fastest, but at least has an SSD installed. So I could certainly set everything up anew, if necessary.
I'm not sure without looking at it. Yes, please send over the file. You could try zipping it and seeing if it will upload here, or if not then upload elsewhere and post the link
Okay, here it is (only 1.8MB).
e1f94111042f48d38518d871fbce80f8.zip (1.8 MB)
By the way, this is really odd, but I have an old Samsung S8 with /e/OS (Android 12) on it. Joplin is installed there too and it astonishingly has no problem synchronizing the same data with the WebDAV-Server. It has the same Joplin version too.
That made me think about the difference to the Samsung Note 10 which has more memory and flash memory. So I came upon the (probably very obvious) idea to reduce keeping deleted notes in the recycling bin on the phone to 30 days (from 90) and now the synchronization works again!
That doesn't necessarily mean that there is no bug with the note history stuff or something else, but it's at least a work-around that I can work with. I don't do too much editing of notes on the phone anyway, but use it primarily to refer to something I've written on a computer.
So I am not sure if the very large files in the WebDAV folder have much to do with the synchronization issue on the Samsung phone. I do now see that the largest file is about half as large as it was, but don't know if that's just a coincidence. And like I say, the synchronization is working fine since reducing the trash bin retention on the phone to 30 days from 90 on the phone.
In other words I don't know what the cause of the issue actually was und what the connection is betweeen the retention time for deleted notes and the size of -- apparently history -- files is. Maybe there is none and our presumption that the problem is related to those large files was mistaken.
(That evokes the question: What happens when the other Joplin instances synchronizing with the same WebDAV server retain deleted notes 90 days?)
I'm glad you could resolve the issue. The file you uploaded is helpful, as the contents do seem to be abnormal, so I'll see if I can figure out how a note history sync object can get in that state.
I assume the note title is not "Gerade am Wickel!" repeated 3000+ times. Could you share the full current title of the note?
Sorry to get back to you so late. Yes, I saw that and found it odd, but of course, I don't anything bout the format. The entire title of the note is "Gerade am Wickel! (eher konzeptuell)". Maybe a problem with the parentheses or with the "!"?