onServiceConnected() not called

Question

I have a problem with using a background service.
I am using the service from 2 activities.

The first activity starts the Service with startService(intent) and the binds to it with bindService(intent, mConnection, Context.BIND_AUTO_CREATE);

This works perfectly and I can send a Message in onServiceConnected().

The second activity only binds to the Service (since it's already started), again using bindService(intent, mConnection, Context.BIND_AUTO_CREATE);

Now here is my problem:
In the second activity I have a Button which should use the service when I press it.
However, the onServiceConnected() is never called in this activity, so I can not get the binder to create a Messenger to send a Message to the server.

Does anyone know when onServiceConnected() is called exactly, or what it is possibly waiting for?
Or maybe something else to fix this problem?

EDIT: bindService returns false, what could cause this?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

You need to add:

<service android:name="package.path.to.your.service.class" android:enabled="true"></service>

in the Android manifest file.

Answer 2

After some more research, I discovered this is a known issue in Android.

The second activity I was talking about was an activity which is used as content within a TabActivity.

The way to fix this was to call bindService(...) on the application context, instead of on the activity context using getApplicationContext().bindService(...)