Issues creating cache files and directories on HTC Desire
<p>I've experienced a strange issue running (my own) applications on the HTC Desire. </p>

<p>When I call getApplicationContext().getCacheDir() or getApplicationContext().getFilesDir() from my activity this always returns null. In the emulator /data/data/com.myapp.android/cache respectively /data/data/com.myapp.android/files is returned.</p>

<p>Because of that I'm not able to use the webview class as it tries to create cache files and crashes with a null pointer exception. The logs:</p>

<p>10-23 12:24:38.055: ERROR/Database(16692): sqlite3_open_v2("/data/data/com.myapp.android/databases/webview.db", &amp;handle, 6, NULL) failed
10-23 12:24:38.055: ERROR/Database(16692): sqlite3_open_v2("/data/data/com.myapp.android/databases/webviewCache.db", &amp;handle, 6, NULL) failed</p>

<p>10-23 12:24:38.545: WARN/cache(16692): Unable to create webviewCache directory
10-23 12:24:38.665: ERROR/webviewdatabase(16692): Exception: java.lang.NullPointerException
10-23 12:24:41.555: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(16692): FATAL EXCEPTION: WebViewWorkerThread
10-23 12:24:41.555: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(16692): java.lang.NullPointerException
10-23 12:24:41.555: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(16692):     at android.webkit.WebViewDatabase.getCacheTotalSize(WebViewDatabase.java:793)
10-23 12:24:41.555: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(16692):     at android.webkit.CacheManager.trimCacheIfNeeded(CacheManager.java:548)
10-23 12:24:41.555: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(16692):     at android.webkit.WebViewWorker.handleMessage(WebViewWorker.java:190)
10-23 12:24:41.555: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(16692):     at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
10-23 12:24:41.555: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(16692):     at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:144)
10-23 12:24:41.555: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(16692):     at android.os.HandlerThread.run(HandlerThread.java:60)
10-23 12:24:41.575: WARN/ActivityManager(92):   Force finishing activity com.myapp.android/.StockDetailActivity</p>

<p>I noticed that other apps have issues as well. For example the google finance app logs the following message:</p>

<p>10-23 12:18:59.415: ERROR/ApplicationContext(16073): Couldn't rename file /data/data/com.google.android.apps.finance/shared_prefs/com.google.android.apps.finance_preferences.xml to backup file /data/data/com.google.android.apps.finance/shared_prefs/com.google.android.apps.finance_preferences.xml.bak</p>

<p>Why I cannot create folders in this directory?</p>

<p>Is there a possibility to set the fileDir and cacheDir paths to the sd card or somewhere else? 
I looked at some classes like Context, Webview and CacheManager but I could not find a way to change it. </p>

<p>Do I need to set a permission to create cache files?</p>

<p>Thank you for your help!</p>

<p>Kind regards,
Dominik</p>
