I have had it, after struggling with the media server for months now, the damn thing consistently wastes and kills my battery.
I downloaded rescan media root, which supposedly deactivates it, but not really. It keeps coming back and usually when I see it, it is already too late and the battery is low.
Now the question is which package do I have to deinstall (freeze) to kill the media server? I don't really need it, I can find my media alright myself.
And saving some well meant suggestions right now:
And yes, I do have a SD card. Yes, I do have media on it.
No, I will not remove that media. If media server is overwhelmed with more then 30 files, it has to go (not the media itself)
No, rebooting does not help.
No, reinstalling the whole OS or doing a factory reset is not a solution and not a proper way to do troubleshooting (you also don't just kill a person instead of giving them surgery) I can't wipe out all my data everytime I got a problem.
Any other suggestions I am eager to hear.
I'm ready to suffer any consequences by a disabled media server, at this point it can only get better. I just want the blasted thing stopped and switched off.
Wow, nobody??? Shocking how something as trivial as this gets no answer.
Android has strayed far from its Linux roots, where people are a lot more knowledgable about how their OS works.
Well, if somebody runs into this problem, I now kill it on a regular interval.
I will post the script in the next post. There are quite a few people suffering from this and it seems that it does not take much to make the media scanner crap up and crash and then go into a restart loop forever.
browny_amiga said:
*TL*
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed, strayed really far, because if you made the searches you'd see most of the media scanner related issues are usually due to corrupt media/unknown characters in id3/exif. There's even some apps available on the Play Store that create broken jpg when taking a picture... Trying to kill the media scanner is akin to trying to cure a fever. The crash is the symptom, not the problem.
If you want to disable it, I'd imagine you could use
Code:
pm disable com.android.providers.media/com.android.providers.media.MediaScannerReceiver
This will disable scanning on boot. I'm pretty sure that's what Rescan Media does though.
I do however agree that the error handling on media scanner is piss poor, it shouldn't crash but rather skip problematic files.
Either way, all troubleshooting can be done with logcat/ddms if you feel like finding the culprit file(s).
Related
I have read that taskkiller is not necessary on Android as the OS will kill off running apps when it needs memory - what are people's thoughts on this?
Hmmm...I read somewhere (maybe on here) heard if the App is coded properly that when not in use it will be background so not take up memory.
Not too knowledgable, but in that case would imagine they are acting like a windows service so will be taking up memory somewhere....so perhaps what I read was nonsense
Well, I have stopped killing tasks and guess what - I notice no difference at all! Hero is just as speedy (or slow depending on how you wanna look at it!).
Interesting!
Killing truly idle applications wont have significant effect. There are however many applications which appear idle, but still drains resources. An example is Peep, the twitter client, which starts automatically even if there's no twitter account configured. It has some frequent checks that put load on the CPU and thus helps drain power. Killing it adds many hours of standby time.
i'm not using any task manager/killer, did try them for a couple of days, can't really tell the difference, except i was wasting time constantly killing apps :/
suisen said:
i'm not using any task manager/killer, did try them for a couple of days, can't really tell the difference, except i was wasting time constantly killing apps :/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ditto... surely there is no need as the OS will kill a unused app if it needs the memory ??? I don't have any problem running any apps one after the other... they just load.
The only lag I get is while the handset starts a widget update, once they are started everything runs slickly.
I found it a little slicker without taskiller. Especially in the use of big apps like copilot or documents2go. It seems to be managing itself pretty well.
Yep. I can report that the phone is working very well without Taskkiller. I have uninstalled it now.
If you are reading this, give it a try for a few days and tell us what you think. You may be pleasantly surprised...
Ditto - I've removed taskiller so I don't get tempted. Surprise surprise, no problems, no lag, etc. Now mostly this is due to removing the clock and people widget, but memory management seems fine after playing many different games and browsing the internet.
I think a benefit to doing this is that you aren't going to get and bizarre problems caused by killing system processes by accident - ie you won't miss alarms or stop receiving email alerts.
The SG4 is my second smartphone - first was the Droid Charge, which nearly drove me crazy but I learned a lot.
I am aware of the possibility of rooting my phone, but having never done it.....I'm hoping to fine ways to make it work for me unless and until I find someone to root it with me - and teach me.
So, my biggest irritant is the app that says Play Music, and has an icon of a pair of yellow headphones, is playing music most of the time. I don't hear it unless I turn the media volume up pretty high - but ??? When I open it, it is called "Listen Now" and has images of the music that I had on my external SD card from the Droid Charge. The options seem to be to play my own music or all music. This is a Google app called Google Play Music. It is running all the time and when I force turn it off, it turns back on.
Story Album is also running along with an Amazon process (not the shopping cart - I think more apps)
Samsung Watch and Samsung Link are also running all the time.
I know about task killers but unless there are new and better ones (recommendations please), they turn most things back on pretty quickly and don't really accomplish very much.
BTW, Verizon, without my knowledge, switched my SD card from my Droid to the SG4. Is that ok? It seems to be working.
So I guess I'm asking for suggestions as to how to turn at least some of these apps off and avoid having to root, if possible.
Thanks for reading this and for any suggestions/recommendations.
Louise
You cant help yourself until u root.
To stop stock apps or google service, you have to either freez them or can also grinify them.but you hav to root. For now disabled the internet when u don't need it,it helps some apps stop working in background.Auto sync off also can help you a bit.but root must.
Sent from xda -
Hey guys I need some help not in resolving this but in finding a way to resolve it...as weird as that sounds.
I've searched on google and here in the forums and there doesn't appear to be any clear answer to the problem.
The problem is that last week, my battery was drained like crazy (no this is NOT a battery drain post!), so after going over the usual BBS stats and logs, I narrowed it down to Media / Download manager / DRM protected media (each app will report it differently). I also noted that my data plan got sucked up with more than 300MB downloaded. Since then it's happened twice more, downloading about 90MB each time.
Going into settings, data usage and disabling background data use for Google services will fix the data use but it doesn't address the problem.
A bit of background: I've been using custom ROMs for years, and finally settled on Slim ROM (which is based on CM10), running on a Galaxy Nexus, so an OTA is out of the question. Also, this is the first time this has ever happened. Ever.
What I need help with (I've also searched and found nothing yet that could help me):
I want to know what the hell is downloading and from where.
That's it. How can I do that? Is there a way to check active connections, bw used and where they're coming from? Some log? Some app that will monitor this for me and tell me where it's downloading all this crap from? I've tried to use disk usage apps to see if any directory is larger than 350MB but all I can see is my photos and music which has always been there, nothing new. Maybe one of the privacy apps that could scream at me something like "this app is trying to connect to this server here". I need details.
I could easily wipe the device and install OS again, but I feel I should really find out what the hell is going on before anything else.
Many thanks to all in advance,
I am at a loss for what else to do as for troubleshooting, for the most part I know what I am doing when it comes to tech/apps etc. However I have noticed something very strange, creepy too, in the last week and a half. Everytime I hang up a phone call a random audio clip starts playing on my phone. Sometimes the audio sounds like a recording (like the phone randomly recorded something while I was out and about and was replaying it. But I could not peg the location, so I figured its playing a recording, but it isn't from my whereabouts, still creepy), other times its random music clips, I wouldn't be surprised if this switches to inappropriate audio at this rate.
The audio seems to be cut at a 30-40 sec loop, yes it restarts itself and plays indefinitely unless:
I make a phone call, it stops. 50% of the time it resumes after the call.
I have to restart the phone 98% of the time to make it stop.
Or I hit the recent apps and click 'close all'. I'd like to specify only hitting 'close all' stops it, manually closing apps all apps from recents doesn't do the trick.
In my effort to troubleshoot I have tried to:
Close apps from the recents individually hoping it'd help me find the culprit app emitting the sounds. But I had no luck.
I downloaded Malwarebytes and have scanned my phone with it, it didn't find anything helpful regarding to this issue.
I have checked my android filesystem through the file explorer thoroughly trying to look for MP3's or any other relevant audio files.
I have gone into app info screen and force stopped almost all media apps such as spotify, youtube, instagram, fb etc any app that I may suspect to be playing audio in the background or an app I may have used recently. Force stopping it all yielded no results.
I even went into developer settings and dug into the running services, and cached processes and started killing them all one by one and it still didn't stop the audio!
I also made sure I didn't have any hidden or suppressed notifications making it so that the app playing the audio wouldn't appear in the notification panel.
The got the phone mid July, when I got it I factory reset it twice (it's just something I do with new phones). I set it up as a new phone, I am not a fan of letting Google/Samsung restore apps. I did restore the call log and messages through the Samsung backup service.
I haven't noticed any unusual drain that may have been caused by this issue. I would consider myself a power user and use my phone quite a lot through the day. I don't download random apps, most games I play are paid (fortnite/pubg being an exception) so I doubt it's some silly game throwing ads at me. I have Adhell installed and configured properly to filter out 80% of the ads on the phone. So while I could just go ahead and factory reset my phone, my curiosity would like me to get to the bottom of it. I found one more similar thread on the internet about something like this, here is the link to it. It's mostly inconclusive for the most part however the symptoms mentioned are similar to mine.
I have a feeling there is something going on at system level. I should also note the audio channel the audio is playing through is not the "Media" channel, because while this audio plays in the background, even if I play a song on Spotify or play a video on YouTube, this would continue to play on top of it. It persist even after the screen is locked! Interesting part is I can control its volume through the Media slider however.
I know this sounds like a creepypasta story but its been creeping me out the past few days. I genuinely thought someone was spying on me the first day or two before I bought into those big brother is watching conspiracy theories. But I am not located in the United States and I am sure no one is spying. But I have cleared all sensitive files from my phone just in case.
Any help or further troubleshooting ideas would be appreciated, I wish I could troubleshoot on demand too, but this happens once every five phone calls I take. So reproduction has been a pain. I hope this is the right forum to post in, I'd post in galaxy s9 forums, but I feel this is more in this forums ball park.
Why don't you ask it in here?
There is a section for Galaxy 9 Plus.
-=> https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s9-plus/help <-=
I believed you'll got better answer for sure!
Is there a way to see real time app activity on an android device? I remeber there were programer apps that you cold run on PC that did this for debug/cracking.
I'm honestly just trying to figure out what app keeps resetting my volume. Its been going on for months and its driving me nuts...
Any other suggestions are welcome.
rufunky said:
Is there a way to see real time app activity on an android device? I remeber there were programer apps that you cold run on PC that did this for debug/cracking.
I'm honestly just trying to figure out what app keeps resetting my volume. Its been going on for months and its driving me nuts...
Any other suggestions are welcome.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Developer options>running apps
See what's running when normal, immediately after an event see if something new is running there.
There are 3rd party apps that may work better, on Samsung's I use Device Care to do this as it list cached apps in order of use. I clear the cache and wait. You get the idea, it works well for stock devices. I tracked down some nasty critters like that and avoided a factory reset to purge them.
Likely a 3rd party app, try in safe mode. May be a system app, any app that has change settings permissions. Use that list as well to see all the potential suspects. Eventually you'll find it.
Avoid using factory reset as it is likely to reoccur otherwise. Clearing the offending apps data maybe all that's needed. Fun times...
Thanks blackhawk, I'll give that a shot.
rufunky said:
Thanks blackhawk, I'll give that a shot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Global power management is another trouble maker. Try disabling that as well.
Not sure how you do it on Pixels. It will be under battery or power management ie adaptive battery, shutdown apps when not needed, something like that.
It's a native Google Android power management system. To check if it's active: Developer options>standby apps, all app buckets states should show as "active" and not be adjustable (any changes won't take).
If so global power management is disable.
If you can change any of the bucket states, close Developer options and the change takes, it is active. You can not disable it here though.
try checking drivemode , bluetooth devices, adaptive sound and even google assistant for bedtime timers etc
rufunky said:
Is there a way to see real time app activity on an android device? I remeber there were programer apps that you cold run on PC that did this for debug/cracking.
I'm honestly just trying to figure out what app keeps resetting my volume. Its been going on for months and its driving me nuts...
Any other suggestions are welcome.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you figure it out? It's been true for months for me too, but didn't start until several months after release
deusfaux said:
Did you figure it out? It's been true for months for me too, but didn't start until several months after release
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When I had the same problem after switching to a new phone I realized that it must have been app and I finally found the culprit. It was a sound app that I had installed as an equalizer.
I just came across something in a huge Reddit thread about it that suggests it's a TikTok accessibility feature that keeps reducing it.