PRS-T2 Possible solution - 'ContentService has stopped unexpectedly' indexing crash

[sharphamster]

Following up from this thread which has good information and solutions to unviewable last page of Collections.

I had the same indexing crash as described in the earlier thread after sideloading about a dozen titles to the Digital Editions and media\books directories, and numerous soft resets did not sort out my problem. My newly added books would not display, though they were present when I checked via USB on my laptop. Deleting the titles did not help, as I then had ghost covers with 'removing' written across them, and then another 'content service etc - force close?' situation. Soft resets yielded the same result.

ebmr's .nomedia fix also did not do the trick for me, and I was resigned to wiping my data with a hard reset when I decided to go through the settings feature.

'Reset Defaults' option did the trick.

I had to re-enter my location/language/time and wifi information, but that was a breeze as opposed to rebuilding my 35 collections and sideloading all my books.

Hope this helps someone else, and back to enjoying my book

It looks like you own both PRS-350 and PRS-T2.
Just a reminder that Adobe Digital Edition software no longer works with PRS-T1/T2/T3.
If you wish to manage eBooks with both devices, then I would suggest to use the latest 'Reader for PC/Mac' app.
Others prefer to use Calibre, but I personally stay away to avoid any risk with a non-official app that could screw my devices up. If I have issues with 'Reader for PC', I simply report to Sony's customer support for future improvements. Fortunately, I do not have any major issue with the Sony's app. I understand, however, everyone has different preferences.

[Son of Queequeg]

Thank you very much indeed for this solution, which worked immediately for me with my PRS-T2. I’ve been having the problem with ”ContentService” stopping several times, always after downloading new files, and never found a reliable solution (apart from a hard reset – never again…) But after ”restoring defaults” the files turned up as they should, without the ”stopping”-message.

The route, for novices like me: Applications > Settings > Initialization > Restore defaults.

As you say, there are a couple of resettings to do (also choosing the usual jpg for sleeping mode, in my case), but that only takes a minute. Great!

[ebmr]

sharphamster, Son of Queequeg, please report if the ContentService issue raises again after you've restored defaults.

From my experience (and yes, the .nomedia fix turned out to be useless) this is a problem with memory shortage and a pre-compiled sql statement the device executes. Evidences can be found in the device's LOG file.

So far, I have no idea about the exact circumstances. The ContentService issue seems to arise randomly. It sometimes helps to simply reconnect and disconnect via USB, it sometimes helps shutting down and restarting, and sometimes nothing helps but deleting the books.db database (which interestingly enough always helps).

[carpetmojo]

Originally Posted by yts06mgr

It looks like you own both PRS-350 and PRS-T2................................................ .................................................. ...
Others prefer to use Calibre, but I personally stay away to avoid any risk with a non-official app that could screw my devices up................................................ ...I understand, however, everyone has different preferences.

I've had/got all Sonys from 350 to T2, use Calibre solely, tried using the Sony junk-clunk, and all it did was demonstrate how simple, well-designed & effective Calibre really is.
And I have never had any problems with any Reader being screwed up by Calibre.
I did get the 650 screwed up thanks to the Sony stuff though.

[sharphamster]

So far so good ebmr - I've sideloaded a dozen more books, and downloaded via wifi from Overdrive and the Sony store. It's been about two weeks since I restored the defaults without another crash, so I felt confident that the problem may have been maybe-sorted.

I drag and drop via usb when I sideload, and sort to Collections on the T2. Don't know if this has any bearing on the database issue, but I thought I'd mention it. I add a few at a time, now that I have more than 600 books on the unit.

(The Reader program choked on syncing my 300 and never recovered, and with Adobe not recognizing the T2 that's out. I've got the old Library software for my 350 and 300, and they work like silk. I love Calibre for storing all my titles in one place, but oddly enough, I've never used it to sideload.)

[rupor]

ebmr

I think there are 2 different issues here (both possibly connected to memory shortage on the device):

1. Failed SQL statement - restarting device (or restarting scanning process) helps, no need for drastic measures.

2. Crash in Adobe RMSDK during indexing and scanning (when meta information is extracted from one of the books and thumbnail is created) possibly due to corrupted memory. This one kills indexing service completely. Device needs to be restarted for sure, if condition persists - books database needs to be rebuilt from the scratch, full content reset may be required...

[ebmr]

rupor, I'm actually experiencing this ContentService issue a lot, and no one of your explanations seems to explain.

Restarting the device (or restarting scanning process) randomly sometimes helps, sometimes - actually most times - doesn't. At least after a restart, a possible memory issue should have gone.

Meta data extraction can't be the problem, because after deleting books.db, it has always been rebuilt for me without any problem.

The issue only occurs with an existing books.db (any possibly? many collections) when adding a book.

[rupor]

ebmr

I was not trying to explain anything since I have no idea how to explain it. And I was not saying that metadata extraction (or anything else for this matter) is a problem. I was merely sharing my experience and pointing out that there are 2 problems, possibly related to each other and possibly related to device memory size and/or memory corruption. I did that because in your message you only mentioned one of them

Using logs, here is what you mentioned:

W/Database( 2139): Reached MAX size for compiled-sql statement cache for database /mnt/sdcard/Sony_Reader/database/books.db; i.e., NO space for this sql statement in cache: UPDATE notes SET file_size=?, modified_date=?, file_path=?, source_id=?, kana_title=?, file_name=?, conforms_to=?, author=?, corrupted=?, title=?, periodical_name=?, mime_type=?, description=?, kana_author=?, expiration_date=?, purchased_date=?, publication_date=? WHERE _id=4294967387. Please change your sql statements to use '?' for bindargs, instead of using actual values

And here is the second one, which you did not:

02-06 17:47:25.889 I/RMSDKEnv( 2390): initRMSDKEnv 
02-06 17:47:25.889 I/dalvikvm( 2390): Unable to dlopen(/system/lib/libreadercore-jg.so): Cannot load library: alloc_mem_region[847]: OOPS:  1930 cannot map library 'libreadercore-jg.so'. no vspace available.
02-06 17:47:25.889 W/dalvikvm( 2390): Exception Ljava/lang/UnsatisfiedLinkError; thrown during Lgen/javaglue/LoadLibraries;.<clinit>
02-06 17:47:25.889 W/dalvikvm( 2390): Exception Ljava/lang/ExceptionInInitializerError; thrown during Lcom/sony/drbd/ebook/contentservice/util/BookMetaData;.<clinit>
02-06 17:47:25.889 W/dalvikvm( 2390): threadid=7: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0x2aac87d0)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): FATAL EXCEPTION: EbookMediaScannerService
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	at com.sony.drbd.ebook.mediascanner.MediaScannerClient.processBookFile(MediaScannerClient.java:183)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	at com.sony.drbd.ebook.mediascanner.MediaScannerClient.processFile(MediaScannerClient.java:164)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	at com.sony.drbd.ebook.mediascanner.MediaScannerClient.doScanFile(MediaScannerClient.java:92)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	at com.sony.drbd.ebook.mediascanner.MediaScanner.scan(MediaScanner.java:393)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	at com.sony.drbd.ebook.mediascanner.MediaScanner.processDirectory(MediaScanner.java:331)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	at com.sony.drbd.ebook.mediascanner.MediaScanner.processDirectory(MediaScanner.java:342)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	at com.sony.drbd.ebook.mediascanner.MediaScanner.scanDirectories(MediaScanner.java:415)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	at com.sony.drbd.ebook.mediascanner.MediaScannerService.scanDirectories(MediaScannerService.java:184)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	at com.sony.drbd.ebook.mediascanner.MediaScannerService.access$300(MediaScannerService.java:26)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	at com.sony.drbd.ebook.mediascanner.MediaScannerService$ServiceHandler.handleMessage(MediaScannerService.java:153)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:123)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	at android.os.HandlerThread.run(HandlerThread.java:60)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): Caused by: java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	at com.sony.drbd.ebook.contentservice.util.RMSDKEnv.initRMSDKEnv(RMSDKEnv.java:33)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	at com.sony.drbd.ebook.contentservice.util.RMSDKEnv.<init>(RMSDKEnv.java:26)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	at com.sony.drbd.ebook.contentservice.util.RMSDKEnv.<init>(RMSDKEnv.java:21)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	at com.sony.drbd.ebook.contentservice.util.BookMetaData.<clinit>(BookMetaData.java:27)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	... 13 more
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): Caused by: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: Library readercore-jg not found
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	at java.lang.Runtime.loadLibrary(Runtime.java:461)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	at java.lang.System.loadLibrary(System.java:557)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	at gen.javaglue.LoadLibraries.<clinit>(LoadLibraries.java:1)
02-06 17:47:25.919 E/AndroidRuntime( 2390): 	... 17 more

IMHO results of the second error are usually more severe. If I remember it right (it was a while ago) my attempt to perform more detailed investigation went into native code from Adobe. Simple restart would not fix memory issue - if all conditions still exists (and timings are similar) code will merely reproduce the same error again and again - hence the need to remove database...

And we did try pretty hard to connect this to number of books and collections, to a particular books, etc - so far without conclusive results.

[ebmr]

sharphamster,

resetting defaults forces rebuild of the books.db database (preserving the collections, reading stats etc., though), so it might be a similar effect to my deleting it completely.

As a matter of fact, I did resetting to defaults and already the next book scanning led to the ContentService error again. So, no. No solution found.


rupor,

thanks for sharing your experience. It's most appreciated.

I was trying to say that I could not correlate the two problems you mentioned with what I'm experiencing.

Actually, my sql error is a different one (always the same statement, but with randomly different _ids):

W Database [log_main    ] Reached MAX size for compiled-sql statement cache for database /mnt/sdcard/Sony_Reader/database/books.db; i.e., NO space for this sql statement in cache: SELECT _id, file_path, modified_date, file_size, source_id FROM books WHERE (_id=238) AND (source_id=?). Please change your sql statements to use '?' for bindargs, instead of using actual values

Having a closer look on the LOG though, I found the same FATAL AndroidRuntime EbookMediaScannerService EXCEPTIONs you're mentioning. I haven't yet payed attention to them.

Originally Posted by rupor

And we did try pretty hard to connect this to number of books and collections, to a particular books, etc - so far without conclusive results.

Thanks for this information. I was planning to investigate further, but I can save the time now.

Originally Posted by rupor

Simple restart would not fix memory issue - if all conditions still exists (and timings are similar) code will merely reproduce the same error again and again - hence the need to remove database...

So removing the database will either change the timings or - more likely - result in different procedures (no reason for a SELECT on the database to compare or find any book data).

It is interesting that - at a certain point - you always can build up a new books.db database and you can modify it by executing SQLite statements on it - but you cannot add or delete books.

[speakingtohe]

I tried the other solutions but no luck. Would be good for one session only. So I bit the bullet and deleted the databases and the cached stuff. Of course all my place marks are gone, but I can deal with that I guess.

It seems good now, but time will tell I guess.

Thanks
Helen