Collect Logs with Logcat

Logcat tool
Using Logcat
Journal and other information

When experiencing issues related to Android applications, collecting logs might provide additional information as to what is causing the issue. You will need to enable the Developer mode for this.

Logcat tool

Logcat is a command-line tool that dumps a log of system messages from the Android driver subsystem. With the Logcat tool, it goes easily to collect Android logs from the system. There are two ways to use logcat: a) from Sailfish OS b) from Android AppSupport (see the next chapters). The resulting logs differ. Choose a) or b) depending on the problem you want to look at.

Using Logcat

Open Terminal

Open the Terminal app.

Get super-user rights

See the document Developer mode.

cd $HOME
export MYHOME=$(pwd)
devel-su 

Collect the logs from your device

The next commands print the logs into files. Note that the commands vary by product.

Jolla 1 and Jolla Tablet

/opt/alien/system/bin/logcat -v time > $MYHOME/android-logs.txt
exit

Xperia X and Jolla C

a) Viewed from Sailfish OS

/usr/libexec/droid-hybris/system/bin/logcat > $MYHOME/android-logs.txt

b) Viewed from Android Support

chroot /opt/alien /system/bin/logcat -v time > $MYHOME/android-logs.txt

Xperia XA2, Xperia 10, Xperia 10 II, Xperia 10 III, Xperia 10 IV, Xperia 10 V and Jolla C2

a) Viewed from Sailfish OS

/usr/libexec/droid-hybris/system/bin/logcat > $MYHOME/sailfish-logs.txt

b) Viewed from Android Support

The same about Android apps. Note that the command is different for different OS releases:

the 1st variant works up to OS release 4.4.0
the 2nd variant works from OS release 4.5.0 onwards

lxc-attach -n aliendalvik -- /system/bin/logcat > $MYHOME/android-logs.txt
appsupport-attach /system/bin/logcat > $MYHOME/android-logs.txt

The events in the Android system will now be printed to file android-logs.txt. The command runs until you stop it with <ctrl>C.

Journal and other information

It is always good to collect the journal log, too, as it shows all events in the Sailfish system. Note that you must have super-user (“root”) rights to do this successfully. We assume below in the next commands that you have the setup from chapter 2.2 still in effect - if not, redo the devel-su command first.

devel-su        ## not needed if still in effect from chapter 2.2
journalctl -ab --no-pager > $MYHOME/journal.txt

The following commands give information on what has been installed to Sailfish:

rpm -qa | egrep 'alien|apkd' | sort > $MYHOME/rpm-alien.txt
ssu lr > $MYHOME/ssu-lr.txt
ssu s > $MYHOME/ssu-s.txt