user selectable autostart - sample AutoStartApp application does NOT work

[wujienokia]

I'm following the guide at < http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.ph...Qt_for_Symbian > to use an s60launcher to autostart my application at phone startup. The good thing of this way is its convenience for a user to switch it on/off through menu.

My program merged with the provided s60launcher code is compiled, installed and run quite ok. The only problem is that it does NOT autostart. I took quite some time to analyse and debug, but couldn't figure out why. Though I could observe that the little red circle on screen flashes for a second at phone startup, indicating sth. is being launched, without knowing if it's the s60launcher, or my application or else being executed, but in the end, my application window is not brought up and not found in the process list either.

Then suddenly it came to my mind that I should try with the original sample AutoStartApp application downloadable from the guide page. Well, the funny thing is, even the sample AutoStartApp application does NOT autostart (despite being instructed to do so with the setting file)! My test device is 5230, a 5th edition one.

I'm not sure what's going wrong, just can't figure it out for the moment. Anyone else has tried the sample AutoStartApp application? Did it work? Thanks for your input.

[treinio]

Hi,

Hmm - works for me, have tested it on 5800 with Qt 4.6.3 and now also with 4.7.1.

Check that AutoStartApp_template.pkg has following lines in it:

; Manual PKG post-rules from PRO files
"C:/S60/devices/S60_5th_Edition_SDK_v1.0/epoc32/release/$(PLATFORM)/$(TARGET)/as_s60launcher.exe" - "c:\sys\bin\as_AutoStartApp.exe"

"C:/S60/devices/S60_5th_Edition_SDK_v1.0/epoc32/data/z/private/101f875a/startuplist.rsc" - "c:\private\101f875a\import\[e0123abc].rsc"

"" - "c:\system\data\AutoStartApp.ini", FN

Also check that c:\system\data\AutoStartApp.ini exists before rebooting the device.

Possibly you could add some debug logging code to s60launcher.cpp to determine if the StartL() function is called or not.

But if building & creating the sis package are both successful, then this has to be a certificate problem - although I don't know how to solve it. Maybe someone else with a developer certificate has tested the app?

[danhicksbyron]

You do understand that you need special capabilities for the autostart stuff to work, right? And therefore you can't "self-sign" the app?

[treinio]

True, self-signing doesn't work, the sis package that puts an executable onto the startup list has to be signed against a trusted certificate. I think I saw wujienokia mention in another thread that he's using a developer cert, which should work.

But other than that, there are no other requirements for auto-started apps, no special capabilities needed. Both the auto-started launcher and the test application on above page have TARGET.CAPABILITY = none.

[wujienokia]

Thanks a lot Treinio! I was diverted to another project before coming back to this old lasting issue. As I've lost the track of earlier changes that I made, I extracted a clean copy of the AutoStartApp project, built and installed it (with an Ovi developer certificate), but then got the same problem. Either the red point flashes for a second or two then nothing shows up, or the touch screen is totally frozen (becomes irresponsive, and I have to use the hang-up key to return to the home screen, and a reboot is a must to make the touch screen normal again).

c:\system\data\AutoStartApp.ini does exist before rebooting the device. It was enabled using the AutoStartApp UI. The following lines are in AutoStartApp_template.pkg too:

; Manual PKG post-rules from PRO files
"/NokiaQtSDK/Symbian/SDK/epoc32/release/$(PLATFORM)/$(TARGET)/as_s60launcher.exe" - "c:\sys\bin\as_AutoStartApp.exe"

"/NokiaQtSDK/Symbian/SDK/epoc32/data/z/private/101f875a/startuplist.rsc" - "c:\private\101f875a\import\[e0123abc].rsc"

"" - "c:\system\data\AutoStartApp.ini", FN

I can't check \sys\bin or \private\... on the phone but on my PC, as_s60launcher.exe and startuplist.rsc are found in their right place. I also modified the .pkg file to add C: in front of /NokiaQtSDK/... but that makes no difference.

I'm really puzzled. I'll try to add some logging code to identify what goes wrong. In addition, I suppose no phone settings could stop an application from auto-startup? If I finally get it fixed, I'll post my find-out. Thanks again Treinio.

[treinio]

Hi,

Hmm - it could be that the startup list has been messed up somehow for your application. Try to uninstall the app, restart the phone, reinstall. If the problem still persists, try modifying the TARGET (appname), TARGET.UID3 and s60launcher.UID3 values in the AutoStartApp.pro file - in other words, create a brand new application and test with that.

Do you have security (lock) code query enabled at startup? There is a reported issue where the lock code affects launching 3rd party apps on the startup list.