Database Develop

Upgraded from Fresh 2.0d to Fresh 2.1.1 without wiping, everything seems fine. Is it?

Last night after it was found out the leak and the official release were identical I loaded Fresh 2.1.1. I realized as it was loading I forgot to wipe the phone. I figured I'd let it finish and just have to redo it, but I turned my phone on anyway, just to see.
Everything seems fine. The update seemed to leave everything in tact, while running fine. (and freeing up 55mb of space for apps despite seemingly installing the same apps and leaving mine) The update worked, there are noticeable style differences in quite a few places.
My question is, is this an illusion? Am I not really running the updated versions in some areas? Are there behind the scenes things going on that make it error check and fall back to old "backward comparability" type things, make it slower, etc? Or is wiping just a "safety" thing to give you the best odds of success?
Is my phone going to burst into flames in my sleep, or did I get lucky because most incompatibility examples would be obvious?
I'm not using apps2sd.

Wiping is a safety thing, and also required if there are major changes between versions.

If it is working then don't worry about it. I have flashed 2.1 ROMs over each other before without any problems before, for example a Damageless's Rom over Flipz's. I think as long as the framework matches there is likely to be no problem.

I found one thing that doesn't work. The people app force closes every time I go to actually view a contact.
Does anyone know a good way to clear the contacts without deleting them? (If you delete them in the contact app google syncs the deletion, as it should.)
Actually it looks like it's only a problem on the contacts linked to facebook. Maybe if I can find a way to unlink them, and then link them again, without opening them, they'll be fine.

Just had to removed and re add my facebook account. Good times. So maybe people don't need to redo their phone to jump from 2.0d to 2.1.1. Give it a try.

You've inspired me to give it a try. i, however unlike you, do use a2sd and it's picky as **** so hopefully that stays in tact.
I'll post results after.

Help all apps lost

Recently I have not been able to connect to 3G(HSDPA) and I tried rebooting a few times without luck. (Stock N1 2.1 -> 2.2 Froyo RC)
So, I did a factory reset. Before you go "moron thats why you are missing all your apps!", I watched in Google IO a person saying "if you have ever upgraded your android phone, you know there is no need to re-download all your apps, because the data is all in our server"
And, in the (supposedly not public) Android Market Website accessed from a PC, you can login and see all the android devices you have and all the apps you have installed in each.
So after reading the warning messages, I went ahead and reset it. After logging back onto my google account, guess what? All my apps are gone.
At first, I was okay with it, I have way too many useless stuffs anyway. Then I went to Market, wondering if I can view my "downloads" list, to my surprise my download list is empty except showing one app i purchased and 3 "default" apps that already came installed in Froyo.
I went back to Settings>Privacy>
and I see these two options:
Backup my settings
Automatic Restore (Restore applications' data from backup when they are installed)
I mean, am I misunderstanding something or missing some info here? I thought from my understanding, if say I buy a brand new Nexus One, and log onto my account, the least I should be able to do is log onto market and see what have i previously downloaded on my OLD DEVICE, right?
I have re-downloaded all the apps I need, I just wanna know if this feature (as the way I understand it) exists.
Thanks guys.

that auto download of apps thing from Google IO is supposed to be a Gingerbread feature for android 3.0

lol i surely missed the "Gingerbread" note and i feel like a complete idiot now
nevertheless, thank you so much for the reply, at least we know it will come !

Actually you're both wrong. The saved downloads list has been a feature since 1.6, it just never works correctly. Usually saving only purchased apps and a few free ones. The auto-restore is a Froyo feature and worked almost perfectly for me when I upgraded [it installed all the ones it remembered but because of the aforementioned bugginess of the save list, I had to restore about 20% manually with Titanium Backup]. The other new feature that was announced at I/O was data restore. This too is a Froyo feature, but like apps to SD, it is an API which must be implemented by the individual app developers. The data restore feature is fully functional in the OS right now, it just has nothing to restore because it needs the apps to tell it what to save. Within a couple weeks of the official Froyo rollout I think you can expect to see most active developers implement the 2.2 APIs in their apps.

Captivate boots slow, issues. How to troubleshoot?

So, a little history...
I'm on my 2nd Captivate (unrelated issue). The boot problems didn't arise until I restored my data onto it. The first time I tried restoring system data along with my apps (which I figured was safe since I was going from 2.1 stock to the same) but that had lots of issues. So I did a factory reset, and started over. This time I just restored apps and their data, and a few specific pieces of system data (contacts, wifi APs, etc). That worked better. But later I got too aggressive with what system apps I "froze" (using Titanium Backup), and it got into boot loops I couldn't break out of. So I did another factory reset.
This time, first I carefully froze only apps I was to confirm were safe to freeze. I didn't proceed restoring my apps until I was done freezing and ensured it was booting fine. I then restored all my apps (and their data). The problem is now that it takes forever to boot... in fact, it'll go into a boot loop if I just leave it be. It seems the only way I can gain access is to try and unlock it before it's done booting, clear any "Force close" errors (sometimes takes a few tries) and given enough attempts, I can get in. But the boot takes an unbelievable amount of time, and even with my original apps is many times longer than before on my previous Captivate. Once I fuss my way in, it seems mostly fine, but something is obviously wrong and I want to get it straightened out.
Aside from doing another factory reset, and reinstalling all my apps (which takes like a day without troubleshooting after each, since batch restores in TB don't seem to work well on the Captivate so I have to do them one by one), I'm hoping there's a way to troubleshoot it in its current state and try to fix the problem surgically versus erasing and starting over. I looked at the logcat logs but got in over my head... there are so many errors and warnings and I don't know what's normal and what isn't... too many to know where to begin with searching Google.
So... advice? What tools are available? Even the logcat doesn't seem to kick in until the boot is mostly done, so I'm not sure if it can catch the problem while it's happening. One frustrating thing about Android is that is seems to have no "safe mode" or other diagnostic boot or full logging where you can methodically look at what's happening and experiment with the config. If this was a Windows, Linux or FreeBSD box I'd be in my element and able to get to the bottom of this, but on Android I feel even more crippled, locked-out and helpless than even on Windows. Urgh.
There's got to be a better way to troubleshoot and fix than endless random factory resets. This is something us anti-Windows people scold PC makers for, with all their use of "Restore CDs" for every minor and trivial software issue.
Thanks!

I can't help but think you are still disabling some essential system apps. Either that or one of your apps is causing major problems. Please list what you have frozen in tibu. Btw, the batch function works fine and is what most people on here use.
Also, what is force closing after you restore your apps.

newter55 said:
I can't help but think you are still disabling some essential system apps. Either that or one of your apps is causing major problems. Please list what you have frozen in tibu. Btw, the batch function works fine and is what most people on here use.
Also, what is force closing after you restore your apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First of all, thanks for taking a stab at this.
My frozen apps are:
* AllShare
* AT&T FamilyMap
* AT&T Hot Spots
* AT&T Maps
* AT&T Music
* AT&T Navigator
* AT&T Radio
* Daily Briefing
* Days
* Instant Messaging
* Media Hub
* Mini Diary
* Mobile Banking
* Mobile Video
* MobiTV
* Where
* Write and Go
* YPmobile
I also tried removing my MicroSD card, as well as switching back to Touchwiz (from LauncherPro). Didn't help.
Yeah the batch problem in TB is very frustrating. I'm using the pay/donate version so I'm missing out on a feature I paid for. I've been exchanging emails with Joel (the author) and we haven't figured it out yet. Batch backups work fine. Batch uninstalls also work fine (update: phone just spontaneously rebooted after about 50 or so uninstalls in a batch). It's the batch restores that seem to choke it. It's not corrupt backup files... a verify runs fine, and I can individually restore the same handful of apps one by one that will choke and hang/reboot the Captivate if attempted to restore in a batch.
The FC error I get is on boot-up, as I try to unlock the screen prior to the boot finishing. I often see "Process system is not responding".
I have aLogcat installed, if that's any use. A few questions about that:
- What's the best logging level to view on? In other words, do I care about "Warnings"?
- What errors are common, harmless, and safe to ignore?
Currently I've tried uninstalling everything down to just a few core apps. Certainly boots fine now, but I get plenty of warnings and errors in logcat.

Are u restoring just the user installed apps+data, or system apps too? Or restoring system stuff like contacts data, accounts prefs, etc?

diablo009 said:
Are u restoring just the user installed apps+data, or system apps too? Or restoring system stuff like contacts data, accounts prefs, etc?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did not do a "restore system data" or any batch/bulk option in TB that restored all system data. As I recall, the only system data I restored a-la-carte (by selecting the individual item from the TB list) were:
Accounts
Bluetooth pairints
Bookmarks
Calendar
Contacts
Wi-Fi Access Points
These were all items in green in TB. I don't believe I restored anything else. Possibilities I suppose are wallpaper settings, "Country, Launguage, Time Zone"... but I definitely would not have restored anything not green.
Are these items safe? Is there any system data definitely not safe to restore? I have to wonder though, if "system data" is unsafe to even restore to the same stock OS version... why back it up at all?
I'm not a long distance from doing yet another factory reset I suppose, if it must come to that. But I'd love a way a bit more analytical/exacting to try and troubleshoot this other than "reinstall one app, reboot, see what happens" as that will take me a week to get back to where I was. I also suspect it's not just one single app that would suddenly show a huge difference after installing, but instead might be the cumulative errors from several apps and knowing how to identify that and clean them up would be useful.

Using adb logcat you can view what is occurring while the phone is booting and possibly see where it is hanging or what is causing the slow boot times. I have seen problems from restoring data such as accounts and contacts with titanium backup but does not seem that it should be an issue when using the same system though I have very little experience with the stock firmware. I know it is not an answer to your question but it seems that you are wanting to remove all the att/Samsung BS so why not flash a rom that does this as well as much more?
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App

Thanks for the tip about adb. I've actually not needed adb for anything yet so I've never set it up or used it. I wasn't aware that the service would be active early enough on the phone's boot process to allow it to log boot logs... nor was I even aware it could do this. I'll definitely check out how to set this up... however, if you have a free second and can point me in the right direction (FAQ, instructions, etc) it'd certainly be appreciated otherwise I'll search around and try to find it.
I could probably find other ways to restore contacts and could set my accounts up again manually but I really doubt that's the cause and the other ways are sort of a pain and imperfect. Since neither of us is really convinced that'd be it I won't bother yet until/unless you really suspect it.
I wondered how long it'd take before someone would suggest a custom ROM, this being XDA and all. Short version is I'm not really sold on the concept, as they are all based on the buggy beta leaked ROM, or 2.2 ROMs from other devices that have been hacked up to sort of work as well as possible on the Captivate. All seem to have issues... enough that I'm not really left feeling confident about them. Seems every release unleashes new issues despite addressing old ones, and all seem to have at least a handful of gremlin items that just don't work quite right. Don't have a warm fuzzy feeling, and I still feel like Samsung is going to release an official 2.2 for the Captivate within the next month or so, so I'm interested to see what comes of that. If nothing else, it'll give a better baseline for custom 2.2 ROMs. Then there's the 2.3 being worked on... now that might be interesting.
I don't really think my issue here is related to me running 2.1.

On my phone so it is a pita to search and add a link for you but search for android sdk and you will find what you need to get adb up and running.
And as far as the rom issue goes..it is your phone and I respect your concerns I just had to ask

I would think its media hub that slows it down. It will search your SD cards on every boot. I would start there first.

smokestack76 said:
I would think its media hub that slows it down. It will search your SD cards on every boot. I would start there first.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's one of the apps I've frozen though.

For me the longest process while booting is the stupid media scanner upon bootup. Takes FOREVER for the phone to finally "boot" all the way up.
Been looking for a way to disable it (not really lol) and only have it scan manually to see if the boot time will improve. I'd start searching there.
Also - from what I've read nothing you did should have affected the phone. BUT - if your using Google for your Calendar and Contacts.. and they all get synced up to Google? Why bother doing the restore for those? After you sign up with the Market they get pulled back down to your phone automagically

It's definitely more than just the media scanner. I watch that. When everything is loaded up, it actually reboots in a loop unless intercept the FC. The media scanner will rerun over and over each time... far more than the standard two times.
And I use Google Calendar for my events, but I keep my contacts locally on my phone.

So what is the FC again?
Yep.. my media scanner will run at least 3 times before it stops checking everything.
Very frustrating that the software does this EVERY time I boot back into my phone - you'd think a programmer would put a check to see if it had run before or make it user configurable to scan when you want it to.

avgjoegeek said:
So what is the FC again?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
See my second post (reply #3):
"Process system is not responding"

LOL sorry not enough coffee and a lil' guy that decided to wake up at 4a.m. = not a good mix.
Well.. did the ol' wise search of Google and came up with:
Might be a permissions issue. Easiest way to fix it is to run ROM Manager and have it fix permisions.
Run the command yourself in ADB:
Code:
Open terminal and
>su
$mount -a
$fix_permissions -r
The -r is optional, but necessary if you find orphaned apps (the app not found please reinstall message)
And reboot. That may help.
And it was also stated that you might have an errant widget/application causing the issue as well. That will be fun trying to figure out what it is.

And.. from my non-dev/non-professional experience - I have checked the logs on my phone and do see a large number of warnings on the phone - but never hindered performance.
So.. 99% of the time you can probably ignore them.
But back to the FC issue - I would try doing a restore of your apps/data again (I read where you have it back down to the "core) and then run the permission script or have ROM Manager do it for you and see if it returns.

Just an update that I think the "fix permissions" thing solved most (but perhaps not all) of my issues. Thanks so much for the tip. I've been reinstalling apps in batches and it's much better, although I see it getting bogged-down bit by bit and I can't pin down what or why.
Thing is, the apps I'm installing in these later rounds/batches shouldn't be resident all the time, shouldn't be auto-loading, and don't come up in things like Startup Cleaner or Advanced Task Killer. Nor do the various process monitors I've tried seem to have the granularity/ability to catch them while they're happening.
So things are better, but I still have some issues without a suitable means to diagnose. I don't get why just having more apps installed, but not running, should affect boot time so much. Hmm...
An inability to troubleshoot certainly rains on my love-affair with Android... not that I'm jumping to another platform anytime soon, but I really want this to work well (as well as be a good salesman to friends and family who often turn to me to show off quality technology).

[Q] [i9000 problem]Q about shared preference

I9000 moves the shared preferences to /dbdata/databases/[PACKAGE_NAME]/shared_prefs/[PACKAGE_NAME]_preferences.xml
For other mainstream devices, shared preferences are in /data/data/[ PACKAGE_NAME]/shared_prefs/[PACKAGE_NAME]_ preferences.xml
Everytime, when I uninstalled the application (my own or some other 3rd party's) in i9000, I found that the shared preferences won't be removed. It still exists in /dbdata/databases/...
this will lead to some serious problem: for example, I'm developing some app, and changing the shared perferences structure. when I debuged it (reinstalling, reinstalling the apps, finally I found my shared preference cannot save my configuration. everytime rebooting i9000, the configuration will be reset to the default value. When I change the configuration in UI and then look into the shard_pref xml, it never changes. The root cause is the existing xml is the old one. maybe UID even mismatched.
Is there any patch from Samsung to uninstall the apps completely?
we need remove not only the ones in /data/data but also the ones in /dbdata/databases/.
... Samsung, why do those vendors customize the phone so much?

no comments?

Interesting.
I have never heard of that (or a patch for that) before. But if I think about it... I am no unix expert but shouldn't you be able to mount /dbdata/databases/ into /data/data/ ? As long as the deinstallation routine has not been changed this could work^^
Edit:
Oh dear, I took a look, you're right thats really strange. I thought everything was relocated by samsung. It's not. My statement above is useless

feny_lf said:
I9000 moves the shared preferences to /dbdata/databases/[PACKAGE_NAME]/shared_prefs/[PACKAGE_NAME]_preferences.xml
For other mainstream devices, shared preferences are in /data/data/[ PACKAGE_NAME]/shared_prefs/[PACKAGE_NAME]_ preferences.xml
Everytime, when I uninstalled the application (my own or some other 3rd party's) in i9000, I found that the shared preferences won't be removed. It still exists in /dbdata/databases/...
this will lead to some serious problem: for example, I'm developing some app, and changing the shared perferences structure. when I debuged it (reinstalling, reinstalling the apps, finally I found my shared preference cannot save my configuration. everytime rebooting i9000, the configuration will be reset to the default value. When I change the configuration in UI and then look into the shard_pref xml, it never changes. The root cause is the existing xml is the old one. maybe UID even mismatched.
Is there any patch from Samsung to uninstall the apps completely?
we need remove not only the ones in /data/data but also the ones in /dbdata/databases/.
... Samsung, why do those vendors customize the phone so much?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes it's the sammy's "lagfix" since 2.2.1.
Uninstall apps with Titanium, it clears everything ! That's the only way i find (apart manual method...)

Can you give a symbolic link?

, why do those vendors customize the phone so much?
Same reason as users customize their phones .
jje

WiwiPouPou said:
Yes it's the sammy's "lagfix" since 2.2.1.
Uninstall apps with Titanium, it clears everything ! That's the only way i find (apart manual method...)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sammy's lagfix? Do you mean there's no problem prior to 2.2.1?
My i9000 is 2.2.1 now, I don't have chance to check the previous versions....

This is a serious bug.
I have encountered this too and it makes the SharedPreferences completely useless.
Uninstalling and the re-installing an app will cause the app to never be able to change preferences again!
Is there a workaround for this that we can code in our apps?

I also experience this problem. Is there really no fix to this. Its damn irritating when I'm developing my app.

I have recently found out about this too.
I started an app to deal with this:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=12483276

[Q] Icons disappear from Home Screen ! How to solve this?

My Galaxy Note is running Android 4.0.4. I am running the stock ROM. Not rooted.
After I just installed the latest Samsung patch DDLR9, whenever I switch off my phone and restart it, the Icons on my Homescreen disappear. These are those programs which I have saved on my SD Card.
Never happened before this. Is there is fix to this specific to the Galaxy Note?

no this is a bug in the new DDLR9 firmware and happens to the apps moved to sd. For now move all these apps to phone and it will work fine
Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium
---------- Post added at 10:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:49 PM ----------
and wait for jb uodate
Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium

Fast Boot option may be the culprit
This is actually a long-standing problem in Android OS, going back at least two years (donkey's years in this technology!)
Something about the interaction of the OS and an sdcard formated for holding apps creates odd behaviours.
Lots of complicated suggestions have been made, including reformatting sdcard, reinstalling ROMs, changing launchers (the one suggested here) and such.
None of these approaches seems really to solve the problem even in most cases.
Now a ROM bug is proclaimed the cause. Well, maybe... That could always be the case, but given all the problems all the others have had in so many different configurations, I wonder...
What seems to be working for me (at least for the last week or so) is the following very simple tweak.
CUT TO THE SOLUTION BELOW -- SEARCH FOR ////
Some (not all) of my apps moved to SD (all by Titanium Backup Pro) have begun to disappear and (sometimes) reappear without warning after I began to add and delete large Virtual Machines created in QEMU from my 16GB SanDisc class 10 microSD card on my HTC Droid Incredible running rooted stock Verizon Android Froyo 2.2.3. I know this thread is far from my phone's "home base", but from what I can tell this problem with disappearing apps located on an sdcard is NOT determined by hardware or even Android version.
I also happen to use LauncherPro by Federico Carnales instead of the built-in HTC Sense launcher. I noted elsewhere on XDA that a user had suggested that because at least some (maybe all) launchers start before the SD Card that this may be a problem, especially if changes are made to the sdcard that the launcher did not perform, or was not active during their performance by other apps such as Titanium Backup. That fits my situation, because I unmounted the SD, physically removed it to a PC, and added/deleted large VM files to save (lots) of time. No problems of this sort before I did this, so there must be some connection.
I noted that other users have tried reformatting SD, substituting different brands of SD, using newer/older SD etc. None of these reliably helped. So I skipped these options.
//// The (simple!) solution I tried that SEEMS to work (only time will tell!) is buried in the main Android Settings (accessed from the Menu button while in Home screen). Under "Applications" there is a setting "Fast Boot" that I checked long ago and forgot about (it seemed like a good thing to do at the time). The text warns "Turn off to use some Market apps" (that shows the age of my 2-yr old used phone and Android OS -- ohmygosh!-- because it refers to Market rather than Google Play Store!) Anyway, I unchecked the option and rebooted the phone.
Yes, it took a bit longer to boot (maybe a whole minute!), but after waiting about another minute ALL my home screen apps had normal icons and loaded properly. Titanium Backup Pro batch scenarios confirmed there were no apps in a forced uninstalled state (i.e. I had not done the deed, the system somehow had done it or at least rendered the apps "invisible" to Titanium, which decided they needed reinstallation).
The only odd behaviour was that auto brightness was turned off after I unchecked Fast Boot and rebooted. Going into Android Settings > Display and rechecking "auto brightness" took care of that. No other oddities or strange behaviours thus far (but it has only been about an hour).
I will report anything further on this thread only (Samsung Fascinate > Fascinate Q&A > What just happend? apps on sdcard) if anything else requires reporting. Silence implies success!
link: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1873670
(I am copying this post to other relevant threads, but will not post anything further elsewhere -- only there. This is a bit arbitrary (especially now that the chosen thread no longer is the most recent active one on this topic), but I hope this approach pleases the XDA sysops/admins) :angel: