Unable to load native library on 4.2 4.3 but loads on recent versions

Question

I've a native android app (NativeActivity, no java code but only libMyApp.so native library)

The app runs perfectly on Android 5.0.1 and 5.1.1 but crashes on android 4.3 and 4.2.2

For 5.0.1 and 5.1.1 versions load the .so lib successfully from

/data/data/com.example.myapp/lib/libMyApp.so

4.3 and 4.2.2 versions try to load from one of following locations

/data/app-lib/com.example.myapp-1/libMyApp.so
/data/app-lib/com.example.myapp-2/libMyApp.so

The error message is

FATAL EXCEPTION: main
java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{com.example.myapp/android.app.NativeActivity}: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Unable to load native library: /data/app-lib/com.example.myapp-2/libMyApp.so
    at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2295)
    at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2349)
    at android.app.ActivityThread.access$700(ActivityThread.java:159)
    at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1316)
    at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
    at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:176)
    at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:5419)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:525)
    at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:1046)
    at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:862)
    at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method

My app has a single shared library i.e. doesn't depend on third party libs.

And the module name is specified in manifest file like this

<meta-data android:name="android.app.lib_name"
           android:value="MyApp" />

The libMyApp.so is linked with -llog -lGLESv3 -lGLESv2 -lGLESv1_CM -lEGL -landroid -lz libs.

Why the lib cannot be loaded, what I'm missing ?

Why old android versions do not load from /data/data/com.example.myapp/lib/ ?!

Does the older android versions have another module naming convention ?

@fadden There is no any linker message. Is there a linker logging level which can be elevated to and how ? — deimus, Sep 10 '15 at 07:05

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 09 '15 at 13:06

0

have you load your library in your class like this?

static {
        System.loadLibrary("nativeLib");
    }

answered Sep 09 '15 at 13:06

Android Android

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score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 10 '15 at 13:57

After 2 days of research I finally managed to find the source of issue.

Firstly somehow Native App doesn't show full linker error in logcat - (I don't know why!)

But after converting the same app to Java/JNI app, I was able to see following linker error only on Android versions prior to L (5.*).

dlopen("/data/app-lib/com.example.myapp/libMyApp.so") failed: dlopen failed: cannot locate symbol "srand" referenced by "libMyApp.so"...

I used to compile the cpp code with android-21 api level from r10e ndk.

Which basically doesn't guarantee that the app will run OK on android version prior to L.

Here is the official android bug report .

As in my native app OGLES3.1 features are used, I cannot downgrade the target SDK level from 21, so I had no choice than updating min sdk level to 21.

The error message is returned by `dlerror()`, not written directly to the log. You saw it with a Java app because the VM logs the failures. (Sorry, I forgot that part when I asked you to check the logs earlier.) — fadden, Sep 10 '15 at 17:40

Unable to load native library on 4.2 4.3 but loads on recent versions

2 Answers2