App crashes on configuration changes

Question

I am working on a part of my app where it runs an AsyncTask and because of this I wanted to handle configuration changes correctly.

Using the code from this link (which differs a bit from the code on the website) I was able to get the AsyncTask to run on screen rotations on a phone under API (I am using the backward compatible libraries for the fragments).

However I then tested this on my device and every time I rotate the device I get the below error (logged via logcat):

08-21 07:33:31.634: W/Surface(488): java.lang.Throwable
08-21 07:33:31.634: W/Surface(488):     at android.view.Surface.<init>(Surface.java:337)
08-21 07:33:31.634: W/Surface(488):     at com.android.server.wm.ScreenRotationAnimation.<init>(ScreenRotationAnimation.java:258)
08-21 07:33:31.634: W/Surface(488):     at com.android.server.wm.WindowManagerService.startFreezingDisplayLocked(WindowManagerService.java:12303)
08-21 07:33:31.634: W/Surface(488):     at com.android.server.wm.WindowManagerService.updateRotationUncheckedLocked(WindowManagerService.java:7697)
08-21 07:33:31.634: W/Surface(488):     at com.android.server.wm.WindowManagerService.updateRotationUnchecked(WindowManagerService.java:7602)
08-21 07:33:31.634: W/Surface(488):     at com.android.server.wm.WindowManagerService.updateRotation(WindowManagerService.java:7565)
08-21 07:33:31.634: W/Surface(488):     at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindowManager.updateRotation(PhoneWindowManager.java:6793)
08-21 07:33:31.634: W/Surface(488):     at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindowManager$MyOrientationListener.onProposedRotationChanged(PhoneWindowManager.java:760)
08-21 07:33:31.634: W/Surface(488):     at android.view.WindowOrientationListener$ScreenOrientationEventListenerImpl.onSensorChanged(WindowOrientationListener.java:534)
08-21 07:33:31.634: W/Surface(488):     at android.hardware.SystemSensorManager$ListenerDelegate$1.handleMessage(SystemSensorManager.java:256)
08-21 07:33:31.634: W/Surface(488):     at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
08-21 07:33:31.634: W/Surface(488):     at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:175)
08-21 07:33:31.634: W/Surface(488):     at com.android.server.ServerThread.run(SystemServer.java:1774)

EDIT

This happens when the progress dialog box is visible and AsyncTask is running while a configuration change was made.

As a work-around, I used an IntentService.

However, I still want to know what caused it the original failure?

Answer 1

This is not my answer but OP's, which was posted in the question itself. I've moved it into this community wiki answer and taken the liberty to "improve" it a bit.

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I have found this to be due to ProgressDialog and running the AsyncTask while a configuration change was made.

To fix this, I ended up using an IntentService instead now.