Purgatory list Error (in LogCat)

Question

Is anyone familiar with the following error in LogCat?

10-21 19:45:42.476: E/SurfaceFlinger(155): layer=0x7486e0 is not in the purgatory list

I read up on "SurfaceFlinger", which seems to be responsible for graphics rendering on Android, but I'm struggling to find any documentation that covers what a purgatory list is. One other question had a referred to a similar error (but they didn't get a response).

Answer 1

The purgatory list went away in Android 4.3 (API 18). As near as I can tell the error associated with the message you're seeing was simply ignored.

The list was part of a cleanup mechanism used when graphical layers are destroyed (possibly to avoid destroying a buffer that's still being composited). I think the error means that somebody requested deletion of a layer that has already been deleted -- could be a race somewhere. If you're seeing some odd behavior it's possible this is related, but it's also likely that you can safely ignore this.