Permission Denied for downloaded APK when performing Upgrade in Android 11

Permission Denied for downloaded APK when performing Upgrade in Android 11 // Expert user has replied. W WTG WTG 2 years 1 month ago 63 2 0 I have been attempting to test my Android application to ensure it supports Android 11 but have been having trouble with our pre-existing In-App upgrade process. We make use of EMDK to call an upgrade instruction after downloading to our applications storage: Where apkPath = Path.Combine(context.GetExternalFilesDir(null).AbsolutePath, fileName); In Android 10 and prior, this instruction would succeed. However for Android 11, we are getting an error "INSTALL_FAILED_INVALID_URI", even though the path is identical. Investigating via Logcat i discovered the following logs: 10-05 00:49:03.079 6970 7019 I MXStorageManager: Received Path: /sdcard/Android/data/{PACKAGENAME}/files/{PACKAGENAME}.apk 10-05 00:49:03.079 6970 7019 I MXStorageManager: Returned Path: /sdcard/Android/data/{PACKAGENAME}/files/{PACKAGENAME}.apk 10-05 00:49:03.081 2954 2990 W ziparchive: Unable to open '/sdcard/Android/data/{PACKAGENAME}/files/{PACKAGENAME}.apk': Permission denied 10-05 00:49:03.081 2954 2990 E nstallerservic: Failed to open APK '/sdcard/Android/data/{PACKAGENAME}/files/{PACKAGENAME}.apk' I/O error 10-05 00:49:03.081 2954 2990 W System.err: android.content.pm.PackageParser$PackageParserException: Failed to parse /sdcard/Android/data/{PACKAGENAME}/files/{PACKAGENAME}.apk 10-05 00:49:03.082 2954 2990 W System.err: at android.content.pm.PackageParser.parseApkLiteInner(PackageParser.java:1449) 10-05 00:49:03.082 2954 2990 W System.err: at android.content.pm.PackageParser.parseApkLite(PackageParser.java:1420) 10-05 00:49:03.082 2954 2990 W System.err: at android.content.pm.PackageParser.parseMonolithicPackageLite(PackageParser.java:935) 10-05 00:49:03.082 2954 2990 W System.err: at android.content.pm.PackageParser.parsePackageLite(PackageParser.java:928) 10-05 00:49:03.082 2954 2990 W System.err: at c.b.b.a.c$a.onTransact(:11) 10-05 00:49:03.082 2954 2990 W System.err: at android.os.Binder.execTransactInternal(Binder.java:1154) 10-05 00:49:03.082 2954 2990 W System.err: at android.os.Binder.execTransact(Binder.java:1123) Why does EMDK not have permission to install this apk? I can manually install without issue, and this works for older versions of Android. How do I resolve this for Android 11?

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2 Replies

J James Swinton-Bland 1 year 10 months ago

Hi,

I think this is an issue w/ Scoped Storage in A11. Because you're storing your file in your applications scoped storage, the EMDK can't access the file for security reasons. We've a blog with some more detail here.

I think you have a couple options:

Store the APK in the /enterprise folder. This doesn't require any additional permissions, however, the file will persist after an enterprise reset so make sure to delete it if you don't need it any more.
Use any other shared storage location (E.g. "/sdcard/") by requesting the MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission. There's a few drawbacks to this option, but the main one is that your app can't be distributed via the public playstore (bar a few very small exceptions)

R Richard Venderbosch 1 year 10 months ago

You can also use "/data/tmp/public/".
See "Device File Location Rules" on https://techdocs.zebra.com/emdk-for-android/11-0/mx/powermgr/.