Auto-Restart Crash Loop

Issue Summary

We identified a critical crash pattern in Firebase Crashlytics where a small subset of users experienced an unusually high number of repeated crashes. While the issue affected relatively few users, each affected user generated thousands of crash reports, all occurring during application launch.

Investigation

Initial Observations

• Small number of affected users
• Extremely high crash frequency per affected user
• All crashes consistently occurred during app launch
• Crashes showed a pattern of immediate app relaunch

Reproduction Steps

To investigate the issue, we:

1. Simulated a crash during app launch
2. Observed the following pattern:
   • App crash during launch
   • Automatic relaunch
   • Immediate subsequent crash
   • Pattern repeated indefinitely

Root Cause

The investigation revealed that:

• WorkManager was attempting to auto-restart the SystemJobService
• This auto-restart was scheduled while the app was in a crashed state - (Scheduling restart of crashed service com.grabtaxi.passenger/androidx.work.impl.background.systemjob.SystemJobService in XXXms for connection)
• The restart attempt during an incomplete launch sequence created a crash loop
• Each crash triggered another auto-restart attempt, perpetuating the cycle

ActivityManager Scheduling restart of crashed service [my-app-package]/androidx.work.impl.background.systemjob.SystemJobService in XXXms for connection

Component used:

• "androidx.work:work-runtime"
• "androidx.work:work-runtime-ktx"
• "androidx.work:work-rxjava2"
• "androidx.work:work-multiprocess"

Version used: 2.8.0

Devices/Android versions reproduced on (check emulator_spec.txt)

Those crashes could not be fixed because they were device-specific issues. However, we hope to prevent repeated crashes. Please provide any advice to fix or workaround.