phone force closing - Droid Eris Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I have been talking this over with Condemned Soul but wanted to see if anyone else has ran into this problem since he & I are both confused.
My fiances phone has been force closing a lot lately aka com.android phone not responding. I saw the first force close when I tried flashing Tazzs cm7 on his phone so thats when I first put on gsb 1.2
I switched his over to Sheds GSB on the 8th and it was great everything was fine but then I decided to try to improve on a few settings and when I restarted the phone it decided to start force closing.
I reflashed the rom and the gapps and everything seemed fine but then I wanted to put cs skull theme on his phpne since we had it on Kaos v9 but then when I restarted the phone after flashing the theme it force closed again.
So then I reflashed the rom and gapps again and got all his apps and settings all back how he had it and decided to do a Nandbackup so that we wouldnt have to keep reflashing the rom again and once I restarted the phone after the nandbackup it force closed again.
Long story short I reflashed the rom and gapps and now am in the process of getting his apps and settings back how he had it once again.
Am I doing something wrong to make it keep force closing? I would like to make a nandbackup at least for him so that we wont have to keep setting up his phone.
Thank you for any help

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When you say you flash the ROMs, do you also do a wipe beforehand? If not, try doing a wipe and then install and see if that changes anything.

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Yes I wiped both the factory and dalvk sorry I thought I mentioned that. lol.

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labnjab said:
Yes I wiped both the factory and dalvk sorry I thought I mentioned that. lol.
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Its a problem that happens on certain ROMs with certain themes. Not sure there's a fix for it, I just got around it by not applying the phone.apk theme.

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zerocool79346 said:
Its a problem that happens on certain ROMs with certain themes. Not sure there's a fix for it, I just got around it by not applying the phone.apk theme.
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phone.apk wasn't changed in the theme. Strange part is it's only on the one phone and haven't heard of it on any of the others.

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CondemnedSoul said:
phone.apk wasn't changed in the theme. Strange part is it's only on the one phone and haven't heard of it on any of the others.
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Click to collapse
That is odd.

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Update:
This is still causing issues. Going to try and format the sd like tazz suggested, but moving my phone.apk to his didnt work, and yesterday he had to restart his phone and it did it again and needlessto say hes not very happy with his phone. Says its not reliable at all. If anyone else has anything else I can try it would be a big help. I have tried searching on google but dont find a whole lot of information. I just wish I could figure this out its got to be something I did or something stupid that I am missing.

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There are a couple of next steps you can take.
If the problem is a software configuration issue, then it is possible that you will see the reason for the FC in the logcat.
The system logcat is designed as a "circular buffer" (in a way that it has a maximum size) - once you fill it to capacity, each new record which is added to the end causes information at the beginning to be lost. But, this also means that if a FC occurs, so long as you "dump the logcat" within a reasonable period of time after the FC happens, you will capture the moment in time that the FC occurred,
Generally, the "logcat" buffers get filled to capacity quite quickly at boot time (because there is lots and lots of "android" app activity), and quite a bit slower after the phone has been completely booted. If you are trying to capture a logcat event during the first boot, you need to continuously capture output to a file on your PC (it will be quite large) - but once the phone has completed booting, so long as you "run a logcat" within 5 or 10 minutes after a FC occurs, the relevant event(s) will be in the logcat.
If you want to capture it during the first boot cycle of a freshly flashed ROM, probably you ought to have a PC attached and dump the prodigious output to a file on the PC, as in
Code:
C:\MyWindozePC> adb shell logcat -v time > LogcatFileOnMyPC.txt
So long as the ROM you have flashed has "USB debugging" turned on by default, you can run the above command about 10-15 seconds after you see the 3 skating droids, and it will continuously place output into the local file on your PC. You need to interrupt the above command (Control-C) to get it to stop; you would usually do that a few seconds after you saw the FC, and then you would know that the log entries you are looking for at the end of the file.
(Note that logcat dumps are usually huge - don't bother trying to look at them with a text file viewer on the phone - they suck at handling large files... well, at least the ones that I have tried).
You could also instrument this on the BF's phone in a way where he can capture the info to the SD card anytime he is using the phone during the day with a couple taps of the screen, and then you could look at the logcat(s) later at your leisure - for instance by using Gscript Lite, and a simple script like this:
Code:
#! /system/bin/sh
_LOGDIR='/sdcard/logcats'
if [ ! -d ${_LOGDIR} ]; then
mkdir ${_LOGDIR}
fi
_tstamp=`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M`
logcat -v time -d > ${_LOGDIR}/logcat_${_tstamp}.txt
With this method, you just need to train him like a monkey to press the right keys after a FC occurs. If he's a clever monkey, you could even train him to send the logcat files to you via e-mail.
If the problem is due to an intermittent hardware issue with the phone, that will be tougher to identify. About the best you can do to make that determination is to return the phone software to stock and use the phone without installing any apps for a reasonable period of time and see if the problem continues to occur.
cheers
bftb0

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Thank you for the detailed reply bfbt0 I was about to msg you when you responded.
I will have to give what you mentioned a try.
Is the gscript lite what I use for the adb shells or do I need another app as well. I have never done anything with adb or if I have it was something simple.
To clarify I would have to get his phone to fc again which is easy to do and then run a logcat. It sounds easy through the pc I just want to make sure I do it right. I would make a folder dedicated to where the logcats would be stored and then run it in the gscript lite? Meaning run the first code you posted.
Update ~ Never mind I found you had to have android sdk on your pc Im downloading that now. I still may need help tho.

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labnjab said:
Update ~ Never mind I found you had to have android sdk on your pc Im downloading that now. I still may need help tho.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GScript Lite is a free app on the market. It was put together by XDA member "rogro", and he has a paid version as well if you want to throw a couple bucks his way.
Using the script above with Gscript (Lite or Pro), you don't need to be tethered to a computer nor set up the SDK and drivers. (Only when you want to capture a full first ROM boot do you need to use a PC (because the logfile grows so big in that specific case).
If you can force the FC to occur, then using the Gscript Lite script I showed above will capture the information you want.
bftb0
PS There is a brief outline of how you load a script into Gscript Lite in that "Universal Root for Dummies" thread over on AF.
cheers

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Thank you I will try that tonight and hopefully can figure out what the issue is

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labnjab said:
To clarify I would have to get his phone to fc again which is easy to do and then run a logcat. It sounds easy through the pc I just want to make sure I do it right. I would make a folder dedicated to where the logcats would be stored and then run it in the gscript lite? Meaning run the first code you posted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That code I posted checks to see if a folder exists, and if not creates it - /sdcard/logcats
No need for you to do it manually; the first time the script runs it creates that folder
But, yeah - wait for the FC to happen and then run that script within the next couple of minutes (no real hurry). It is also useful to make note of the time the phone displays when the FC occurs - it will be easier to find things in the logcat file by timestamp if you do that.
bftb0

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Thank you I will do that as well. Thanks also for taking the time to help me.

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I did the code on my phone to make sure I did it right and it gave me an error
says cannot create/logcat_20110222-1558.txt read only file system
did I do something wrong, just want to make sure that I can get it right before attempting it on his phone tonight. Thanks in advance.

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labnjab said:
I did the code on my phone to make sure I did it right and it gave me an error
says cannot create/logcat_20110222-1558.txt read only file system
did I do something wrong, just want to make sure that I can get it right before attempting it on his phone tonight. Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you typed that script in by hand, you made a typo.
I checked it by cutting and pasting it - and then I tested it afterward, and it worked.
Probably you bolluxed up the _LOGDIR variable, or you inserted a space in the logcat command where there should not be one.
I would suggest that you cut and paste, rather than type.
Hmmmm... it occurs to me that those little "scrolling CODE text boxes" don't render correctly on the phones browser. Here's the same script, but without enclosing it in [ CODE ] [ /CODE ] tags:
#! /system/bin/sh
_LOGDIR='/sdcard/logcats'
if [ ! -d ${_LOGDIR} ]; then
mkdir ${_LOGDIR}
fi
_tstamp=`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M`
logcat -v time -d > ${_LOGDIR}/logcat_${_tstamp}.txt

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Thank you for all your help. I got it to work and come to find out I didnt even need to use that program because it hasnt forced closed yet. He said he wiped the phone a bunch of times the other day when he was trying to get it back up and running when it forced closed on him while at work and now i rebooted it and backed it up and that usually caused a problem, so far so good.
I am tho going to format the sd card and redo the rom again just to be sure this problem doesnt happen again. Thank you again for all the help.

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On some builds (even though it shouldn't be required) it is necessary to wipe multiple times. On Tazz's earlier builds of GB, people reported having to wipe 3x or more to get it running smooth. Always make sure you do a nand backup before flashing in the future lol. Hopefully the phone stays running good! If not, people are always here to help!
Sent from my Ginger Tazz using XDA App