Mnemosyne Android: “Archiving Logs” Loop After Long Inactivity (Incl. Workaround)
leinad....@gmail.com
Today, I once again ran into a problem that I’ve unfortunately known about in Mnemosyne for many years. I’ve known this issue for so long that I’m starting to believe you might not even be aware it exists, because it only shows up if you haven’t used Mnemosyne for a long time. I’d say it’s been around three months since I last opened the app. And then that dreaded button appeared again, the one that says: “We’re now archiving the logs,” and you have no other choice than to press “Okay” and “Proceed.”
After that, without fail, the error message shown in the screenshot appears. Then a window pops up saying “Archiving Logs,” and it just stays there. There is a note saying that archiving might take ten minutes or longer, but it doesn’t matter how long I wait – the “Archiving Logs” screen never disappears, unless I restart the app. And then I’m greeted once again by the “Proceed/Okay” screen.
Either that, or sometimes the other window from the second screenshot shows up in between, telling me once again that archiving is about to start and that I should keep the screen on and the app in the foreground. Then I press “Okay,” and the error appears again, followed by “Archiving Logs” – and then the whole thing loops. I could stand on my head and the error still wouldn’t go away. The only real way to get the app working again at that point is to delete it or clear its data and then re-sync everything.
That’s especially annoying because it happens every now and then that I study some cards on my phone, forget to sync them to my computer – and then lose interest in learning vocabulary for three months. When I try to pick it back up after three months and get greeted by that message, there’s no way to transfer my progress to the computer to save it. Which, of course, means frustrating double learning.
That’s why I finally decided to send you the screenshots today. Along with a workaround I’ve finally discovered. I noticed that this annoying archiving window always pops up when I haven’t used the app in a while. And this morning I thought: “Why not try switching my phone’s date setting from automatic to manual?” I set the date back three months – and lo and behold, I could open the app without being greeted by that annoying window and was able to archive my progress.
Then I moved the date forward one month at a time: two months – app opened again, one month – app opened again, and I kept syncing each time. About ten days before the current date, the “Proceed/Okay” window popped up again.
Unfortunately, there’s really no way to get the app working again in its current state. What I’ve always done in the past – besides being annoyed that I lost my learning progress – was to completely delete the app, reinstall it, and re-sync everything, including the painfully slow file transfers. And that worked again this time: my progress was saved and the app worked flawlessly, without greeting me with the “Proceed/Okay” window.
Which raises the question of why this menu or log archiving feature exists at all. It doesn’t seem to provide any clear benefit and only causes crashes when the app hasn’t been used in a while. And if you use my workaround, then there’s no problem – literally no problem, everything works as it should. So why even have this “archiving” feature? By the way, since I first encountered this “Archiving Logs” issue, I’ve had multiple smartphones and various Android versions. But the “Archiving Logs” issue after long periods of inactivity has always stayed the same.
Yeah, I thought I’d share this with you. Because my frustration is like the frustration you feel with a beloved child: you love it so much that it frustrates you when certain things just don’t work – even though the child is trying its best and only wants to do good. I’m sure it’s frustrating for the child aka the Mnemosyne developers too ;) Thanks so much for all your continued work, and maybe one day this issue can be fixed.
Peter Bienstman
Every couple of months, Mnemosyne does a cleanup of its archive in
order to save space and speed up the application. I'm no longer
working on Mnemosyne, so you'll have to stick to your workaround, I'm
afraid...
Peter
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "mnemosyne-proj-users" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mnemosyne-proj-u...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mnemosyne-proj-users/7fd23793-e1e4-49fd-a509-ddb5bc1784b3n%40googlegroups.com.