Database Develop

The Boot Loop of Death (BLOD)

Hey Guys,
Ever since I first experienced this bug, it seems more and more people are coming forward explaining the same symptoms.
Connection drops, OS becomes unresponsive, freezes, and then you are greeted by the 'X' animation. After the phone reboots, it freezes once again and returns you to the 'X' animation and the process repeats until you pull the battery.
There seems to be no direct trigger as it can occur when on a call, when browsing or even when the phone is idle.
I've read through various threads on different forums in an attempt to reveal some kind of pattern, yet reports are coming from users on different ROMs with different kernels and different apps. I've created this thread in the hope that if people contribute their experiences, we can draw some kind of reasoning behind the development of the bug and offer some hope for resolving the issue in then future.
So guys, what are your experiences of the BLOD? What ROM were you running? What kernel were you running? Do you overclock, underclock or remain at stock? Anything you think may contribute to this annoying bug.
Thanks in advance.....

Reserved for future use

My experience began after updating to Kang-o-Rama 0.6 final (CM 5.0.6) after using Kings Desire Port aswell as using Paul's Desire ROM and Cyanogenmod previously. Originally it happened to me in the gym. While listening to music I recieved an SMS and the phone suddenly crashed and went into the BLOD. I had to pull my battery for it to stop. Since that occasion, I began to suffer the BLOD 3-5 times a day, sometimes when on a call and other times when the phone was idle. I tried wiping and reinstalling countless times, flashed stock Cyanogen and the later versions of K-o-R which would give my phone a slight reprieve ,however eventually the BLOD would hunt me down and return.
Eventually I believed it was a Cyanogenmod specific bug, especially after reading this thread,
http://forum.cyanogenmod.com/index.php?/topic/43-odd-crash/
Since I thought it was CM specific I went away and flashed Enom's ROM which again gave me a reprieve but only until I charged the phone at night. I awoke in the early house to find my phone rebooting away as I slept. This pattern continued for 3 nights until last night which was my first BLOD free night.
Now i'm not 100% sure as to what cured my looping last night but I flashed a new kernel yesterday (IR .33.5) and also on the advice of this thread,
http://www.google.co.uk/support/forum/p/android/thread?tid=2711ea74ef3d9aee&hl=en
I wondered whether the fact that I'd started using the stock alarm clock app could have triggered this so called 'notification bug'. I returned to using Gentle Alarm from the market and cancelled my stock Androdid alarm.
Right now i'm waiting to see how long I go without a BLOD before investigating if it was specifically the new kernel or changing the alarm which got me through the night. Will report back if anything changes.

I'm pretty sure this is a form of a kernel panic. I know Cyanogen had made some type of tweet or post regarding this. I'll try to find it and edit this post when done

wesbalmer said:
I'm pretty sure this is a form of a kernel panic. I know Cyanogen had made some type of tweet or post regarding this. I'll try to find it and edit this post when done
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cyanogen posted something regarding it being a system_server crash in the CM thread and that we needed logs of the event occuring before he could draw any conclusions. I managed to dump and adb logcat of the event while it was happening, although it was just a panic loop of which a segment was posted on the Cyanogenmod forum I posted above. Has anyone managed to capture a log of the BLOD as it starts? That would be a great help.

I got my N1 about 4 weeks ago and it worked OK until I flashed the Froyo radio. from that point on I could not get any rom to run in a stable way - my reboots happened 3 - 4 times a day and got to the point where I would get stuck in the boot loop. Pulling the battery did not always solve the problem although I found that if I kept the battery out for several minutes my chances of getting the phone to boot into either the ROM or recovery would be better.
I noticed at the same time that once the boot loop started I could not get into recovery until my phone had at least booted into the ROM successfully once.
Flashing back to the 4.04 radio reduced the random reboots to about once a day - usually at night after I had just plugged my phone in to charge. I was using the stock alarm app as a bedside clock.
After many days of frustration and the help from several people here at XDA, I finally came to conclusion that the problem must be hardware related and am returning my current device to HTC and am getting a new one.

I don't have a boot loop but I definitely experience the initial stages of this problem on a stock (unrooted, locked) N1 (at&t).
50% of the time when the N1 loses the connection (e.g. due to going into a garage) it will not re-acquire the signal. Searching for networks will hang, putting the phone in flight mode and then disabling flight mode will still result in no signal.
The only way to get a cell signal back is rebooting the phone.
Usually, searching for a network and/or enabling and disabling flight mode will result in the phone turning black and then rebooting.

I have the problem, too.
Just a few notes:
didn't have it on stock rom and Cyanogen 5.0.6, nor an Enomther's 1.8.1, started with Enomther's 1.9.2
This is not really a reboot, because a real reboot always helps. Other than a reboot, it starts directly at the X animation, not with the unmoving X before.
Seems to be a kernel panic.
I currently suspect that the panic happens when the RAM is full, especially if there is one single process that uses up massive amounts of RAM (could be in the background, of course).
I yesterday found that Sytrant (periodically sets time using internet time server) has a memory leak, and on closer inspection today found that it queries an ad server every few seconds and thus switches from sleeping to running state every few seconds. Also, it spawns root processes when setting time, which might lead to the system not wanting to kill it.
So, here's my current suspection (I'm not at all sure if that's true!):
The reboot loop only happens when the system runs out of memory.
In this case, Android should normally kick out other programs: First apps that are not running anymore, but are still in memory, second background jobs, and third services.
I guess there's some error in the killing logic in newer Cyanogen kernels and others that use Cyanogen parts (or maybe even in the orginal code from Google).
This somehow leads to a state where the kernel has no memory left and can't kill a process, too. -> Kernel panic
Maybe this is more probable if there is one big memory hog the kernel doesn't want to kill (because it's a service, or maybe because it has children running as root).
So, everyone who has this problem, please get a process monitor or task manager where you can see how much memory an app uses. OSMonitor is a very good one, and it can also sort the processes by memory usage. Start it periodically to find out if a process is constantly growing.
If you found such a process: Is it one that requires root? Does it run as a service? (Unfortunately, OSMonitor can't tell you if a process runs as service, or at least I didn't find it if it can. ES Task Manager can show that information, though, for example.)
Personally, I threw Sytrant off my phone now and will watch if that helps. I had reboot loops every two or three days, so I can't tell yet if it really will make a difference. I really hope so …
Edit: Of course, this theory does not really explain why the network drops before the boot loop starts. It could be, though, that the kernel tries to kill just anything to gain meomry, which might also be a system process that it responsible for the network. As the networks always seems to drop before the loop starts, maybe killing that process is what leads to the panic in the end.
Maybe, could … well, yes, this is just a theory. But at least it sounds good, doesn't it? ;-)

The more I read about this problem here and in other threads, the more I am convinced that my problem is probably not hardware related. My replacement phone arrives today but now I am wondering if I should return my original or not. Argg!
Is there a way we can all band together to try and get to the bottom of this problem? I am more than willing to do whatever testing those that know what to look for tells me to do.
Would one of the Guru's here be willing to guide us through a coordinated troubleshooting excersize?
Maybe we can start by trying to find out what we all have in common?
I have an AT&T/Rogers version of the N1.
I typically have the Facebook, Calendar Widgets on home screen.
Power Widget on 2nd screen
Use gmail but via the standard email client, not the gmail client.
Use the native alarm clock app in the dock at night
16GB ADATA MicroSD card.
I also install:
- ChompSMS (with icon widget on home screen)
- NewsRob (with Widget on home screen)
Did not get the reboots initially running the stock rom but they started the moment I installed paul's version of Froyo. I tried several of the other roms and had the same instability and BLOD's until I reverted back to stock and things stabalized again although I was still getting random reboots once a day or so.

While a hardware issue (especially RAM failure) could cause this issue, I don't think that it is the cause in most of the cases here. The fact that some don't experience it anymore after trying one or another software-related measure makes a hardware failure highly improbable, at least in their cases.
I won't rule that out, but until I tried everything else I can't conclude it must be a hardware faliure.
Please get OSMonitor and watch your processes. If after some days you still can't find a process using more than, say, 65 M, and still get the issue, you can be pretty sure that a memory leak isn't the problem for you.
The memory leak + killing bug guess is a good one and is quite probable. So let's check that first.

I think my FroYo rom problems are the same problems you guys are having. I think it's something with an app or an element of the OS or something.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=703508
I get the exact same issue on a handful of roms. Everything starts to force close, then it goes into boot loop, but, as someone said, doesn't really fully reboot, it just starts at the boot screen.
I've also noticed when things get funky, plugging in the USB cable makes it immediately go into a boot loop.

I start having this problem after I install the Quadrant Standard program, I was using the Kang-o-rama - Froyo when this happened. But after going back to Paul's Froyo everything is working perfectly again.

cmarti said:
I start having this problem after I install the Quadrant Standard program, I was using the Kang-o-rama - Froyo when this happened. But after going back to Paul's Froyo everything is working perfectly again.
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I deleted quadrant, signed into market and all so it knew i uninstalled it, flashed a baked modaco R17, and it still boot looped on first reboot.

I suspect it is related to the 4.06 radio. My first boot loop started just after I installed the radio and before I updated the ROM itself.

DvTonder said:
I suspect it is related to the 4.06 radio. My first boot loop started just after I installed the radio and before I updated the ROM itself.
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That doesn't explain mine though. I get the boot loop on some roms but not others, with the same radio.

MSigler said:
That doesn't explain mine though. I get the boot loop on some roms but not others, with the same radio.
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Which ROMS are safe for you - I will flash one of them tonight and see if it works on my device as well - maybe we can narrow it down to a specific ROM.
Would also appreciate a list of the apps you use - I am thinking we should set up our phones as close to identical as possible to begin with and then start adding things to see what causes it. Thoughts?

DvTonder said:
Which ROMS are safe for you - I will flash one of them tonight and see if it works on my device as well - maybe we can narrow it down to a specific ROM.
Would also appreciate a list of the apps you use - I am thinking we should set up our phones as close to identical as possible to begin with and then start adding things to see what causes it. Thoughts?
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The only roms that screw up for me are modded froyo roms. LeoFroyo works fine for some reason, as does the stock FRF50. I'll screenshot my apps in a minute and post them.

I have this on stock 2.1u1 EPE54B

I was getting some pretty random boot loops when running CM 5.0.7.1 and 4.04 radio. Noticed two things could (almost) cause it every time:
1) Not so much a cause, but Google Listen was running almost every time I went into a BLoD.
2) Something that WAS causing it.. I keep my phone on airplane mode at work with WiFi on, since I don't get a reception in the building. Reboot + turn off airplane mode when the phone is to that point = BLoD.
I actually flashed Kang-o-Rama and the 4.06 radio earlier, no problems now.

tjsimmons said:
I actually flashed Kang-o-Rama and the 4.06 radio earlier, no problems now.
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Did you flash the Froyo version with SP3?

CyanogenMod hiccups

I have been using CM11 for a while now and I am experiencing frequents hangs and hiccups. In particular the systems doesn't seem to be able to handle an installation, what I mean is that whenever I install or update an app the system hangs like if it can't handle a multitasking session, the systems freezes. Also, I ofent have my device frozen and I can't turn it on, the screen stays black for long periods, in the order of 5 minuts or more. I'd say this ROM is not functional. Is there anyone else who is experiencing the same problems? I am not sure whether the ROM is not working properly because of some setting I changed but well... I was thinking about going back to stock or to re-format and start over with a fresh CM11 because it might also be that I did something wrong. Any comment or suggestion, personal experiences? is CM11 working on your xperia sp's?

Cellulario said:
I have been using CM11 for a while now and I am experiencing frequents hangs and hiccups. In particular the systems doesn't seem to be able to handle an installation, what I mean is that whenever I install or update an app the system hangs like if it can't handle a multitasking session, the systems freezes. Also, I ofent have my device frozen and I can't turn it on, the screen stays black for long periods, in the order of 5 minuts or more. I'd say this ROM is not functional. Is there anyone else who is experiencing the same problems? I am not sure whether the ROM is not working properly because of some setting I changed but well... I was thinking about going back to stock or to re-format and start over with a fresh CM11 because it might also be that I did something wrong. Any comment or suggestion, personal experiences? is CM11 working on your xperia sp's?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It did start lagging after a few weeks and for me the recent button took forever (3 secs ! thats a lot since it never took that much long) to open recent menu. So I reinstalled it not knowing whether it was my fault or CM and to my surprise after a few weeks it did it again and I switched to PAC rom. Never looked back. IMO pac rom is the best experience of kitkat on sp.

Phone screen slow wake from sleep ocassionally (several minutes)

I've noticed it ocasionally on my Atrix HD for quite a long time but though it was just my phone. I got my SO the same phone and the same thing has been occurring. It doesn't happen all that often, but when it does, it's very frustrating. It still functions underneath: if it's in a phone call or playing sound, you can adjust the volume. Can take screenshots, or hold power button and it will vibrate (e.g. when the menu pops up).
We are both on CM11 M snapshots and running xposed with nlpunbounced. I believe I remember it occurring before we started using xposed. Also, we've been on CM11 since something like M3. Have run fstrim on all of the partitions (except for my /data partition since I encrypted it, and last I checked the fix for fstrim on dmcrypt wasn't ported to our phone). Anyways, does anyone else have this problem? If not, what could it be? Being an very occasional thing, it's hard to test and capture logcats from.

For anyone curious about this, it's been called the "I/O Stall" in the razr hd thread. They suggest a solution, which I'm trying out:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=57605249#post57605249
I have switched to the F2FS and it seems much less common, so we'll see how much the swappiness setting helps.

Help - Phone Randomly Powering Down

Hi Everyone
Bit of help please.
Having problems over the last 20 days or so. The phone keeps powering down completely at random.
I had flashed No Root Stock Debloated/Deodexed N6 ViPER|Atmos Audiophile 1.6 and after a week the above started.
Fully wiped (including data) the N6 and re-installed from a OTG USB through TWRP. After a week the same random shut-downs began again.
Another full wipe and installed ver 1.7 from the above and within a couple of days the shutdowns started again.
Today thought a different ROM may be the answer. Full wipe and tried [MMB29U/Q][6.0.1][STOCK][OMNI][MOKEE][CMTE][LAYERS] FLUENCE HD9 and the shut-downs are still here.
Seems to be getting worse.
Not using layers or anything abnormal - nova launcher and popular apps, nothing strange. No Kernel optimizations.
Really stumped as to what I have done. Wondering if I have a HW fault rather than custom rom or apps. Going to un-root, lock the BL and give Google stock image a go, unless anyone has a suggestion.
TIA

Any water damage that you can think of? Any parts of the phone getting extremely hot?
You could try ordering a new battery, and see if that fixes the issue, as it is not a software issue.

I'm also having a similar issue, but it occurs when trying to open camera and having relatively low charges(%20). I could not pinpoint my issue exactly but generally complete shutdowns caused by battery problems(temperature, voltage, mis-feedback). Like flyeyes says it is probably a defected battery unit.

Grab some logcats or a crash message. Without them the only thing I can advise is that it is one of your apps causing it or a hardware issue.

Have you tried complete stock firmware from Google with no customizations? If so, does it happen then? If it happens on complete stock from Google you might be looking at a hardware issue. If it only happens on custom ROMS after you set them up, then it might be an inconsistency with whatever apps/changes you make to it.

WiFi Turning Off During Deep Sleep

Hi all,
Can anyone help with this issue. I can see no long discussion about it which seems to suggest it's either rare (not great) or something I am doing (probably).
My WiFi status appears to be fine throughout the day, when in regular use. I have no speed issues (connection speeds as expected for my home internet), no random drops or on/off switches and no seeming battery drain. I have all additional services on (Bluetooth, location and NFC as I want the phone to be fully functional at all times and not just 'look nice') and despite this I get what I would expect in battery life (c. 6 hrs screen on time). YET, amongst a few other problems (what is the slider customisation about - awful!) the one I can't fathom is this:
My WiFi switches off over night presumably when the phone goes into deep sleep. I have gone into the advanced settings and set it to 'Always on' but this doesn't seem to keep it 'always on'. I wake up in the morning and it is off. I was running some Tasker profiles (which seem to make little difference given the slider issue noted above) but actually my WiFi isn't one off the Tasks effected by a night time profile.
Any help would be appreciated.
AS a secondary question, I switched my VPN over to Canada as suggested and was provided with the Nougat update. I haven't yet tried it but was wondering if there are any bugs that I should consider before switching over given I am 4 days into owning this phone and still haven't ironed out certain things in Marshmallow.

Just as a follow up question, would the 'turn Doze off' option help with this? Surely I shouldn't have to do this though?

Am I the only one having this issue? That would suck. Even so, would anybody more adept at these things than me like to have a guess at solving the issue.

IV had agresive dose mode on and haven't had any wifi problems but I am on 4.0.1 so might want to just update it as it's really stable and I haven't had any issue except having to reconfigure the APN settings. PS if you do update reset you phone after as some people have said it helps with the new file system.

Greedyfly said:
Hi all,
Can anyone help with this issue. I can see no long discussion about it which seems to suggest it's either rare (not great) or something I am doing (probably).
My WiFi status appears to be fine throughout the day, when in regular use. I have no speed issues (connection speeds as expected for my home internet), no random drops or on/off switches and no seeming battery drain. I have all additional services on (Bluetooth, location and NFC as I want the phone to be fully functional at all times and not just 'look nice') and despite this I get what I would expect in battery life (c. 6 hrs screen on time). YET, amongst a few other problems (what is the slider customisation about - awful!) the one I can't fathom is this:
My WiFi switches off over night presumably when the phone goes into deep sleep. I have gone into the advanced settings and set it to 'Always on' but this doesn't seem to keep it 'always on'. I wake up in the morning and it is off. I was running some Tasker profiles (which seem to make little difference given the slider issue noted above) but actually my WiFi isn't one off the Tasks effected by a night time profile.
Any help would be appreciated.
AS a secondary question, I switched my VPN over to Canada as suggested and was provided with the Nougat update. I haven't yet tried it but was wondering if there are any bugs that I should consider before switching over given I am 4 days into owning this phone and still haven't ironed out certain things in Marshmallow.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This happens when people is crying about updates every day. Then, when the updates are available, they update it in the first minute and again, they start crying, that they encounter bugs and stuff that doesnt work as it should, even if they dont have any idea how to revert their OS to the previous working one. People should learn how to be patient and enjoy their phones without being so greedy about updates.
Just sit tight, enjoy your phone, READ forums about latest updates and the problems encountered on that specific update ( since its still a beta update, and an early one , called Beta 1 ). If they seem to be fine with those issue, ONLY then should update to the latest one.

smilirulz said:
This happens when people is crying about updates every day. Then, when the updates are available, they update it in the first minute and again, they start crying, that they encounter bugs and stuff that doesnt work as it should, even if they dont have any idea how to revert their OS to the previous working one. People should learn how to be patient and enjoy their phones without being so greedy about updates.
Just sit tight, enjoy your phone, READ forums about latest updates and the problems encountered on that specific update ( since its still a beta update, and an early one , called Beta 1 ). If they seem to be fine with those issue, ONLY then should update to the latest one.
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Click to collapse
I haven't 'cried' about anything, pal, so keep your unhelpful comments to yourself or help. Don't middle ground-it by offering your own personal, and incorrect, opinions.
I hadn't upgraded anything, I was running stock OS and stock marshmallow, so I had literally done nothing to my device other than switch it on and download the same apps I've been using for years.
I've also rooted several devices in the past with no issues and chime in when I can to help, but I'm not a dev and there are far more technologically gifted individuals operating in this forum which is why I sought help here... Not that I got much from you. But I'm more than capable of reading release notes and making sure I can revert backwards before installing anything.
Now to anyone still here, and with the same issue, it appears that carrying out the update to Nougat, re-adding my WiFi networks and clearing system cache solved the problem or at least for the first night. Should this change I'll update here.

ISO_Metric said:
IV had agresive dose mode on and haven't had any wifi problems but I am on 4.0.1 so might want to just update it as it's really stable and I haven't had any issue except having to reconfigure the APN settings. PS if you do update reset you phone after as some people have said it helps with the new file system.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi Iso, thank you for your response, I hadn't seen this until now.
The upgrade to 4.0.1 does appear to have done the trick somewhat as it stayed on overnight without issue. I did notice it wasn't on a little later this morning but I am giving the device the benefit of the doubt on that one as I have been messing about with certain things and it's possible I or a profile in tasker switched it off.
As an aside do you recommend any other potential fixes, just to be on the safe side.

Did you factory reset after upgrading? Other than that it's probably a app you have I hear Facebook is really bad at battery

ISO_Metric said:
Did you factory reset after upgrading? Other than that it's probably a app you have I hear Facebook is really bad at battery
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I didn't factory reset, only Cache wipe after the upgrade, and as it seems ok so far, I am reluctant to factory reset the device as it took so long to set up in the first instance.
Should it start becoming an issue again I'll try it but for now...
Also I know there are backup options though I haven't found one that works flawlessly which gives me the confidence to explore this avenue just yet.

You might have to because in nuogat they optimized the file system and in order to get the new one you have to factory reset not 100% sure it affects battery life but it really affects performance, PS also try turning off gestures, ambient display and pocket mode

ISO_Metric said:
You might have to because in nuogat they optimized the file system and in order to get the new one you have to factory reset not 100% sure it affects battery life but it really affects performance, PS also try turning off gestures, ambient display and pocket mode
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Click to collapse
Are you sure ISO? The UI has been updated and the already snappy OS feels snappier. Is there a way to tell for sure if it's required?
If so, any good recommendations for backup capability. I have used Helium to mixed results and I can't use Titanium as I have no root (and don't wish to).

Maybe not but it all elts fails