[Q] Is it possible to make KitKat usable? - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Since the release of Android 4.4, I was unable to upgrade from 4.3 JellyBean because of two issues that completely disqualify newer Android versions for me:
1. Apps have no access to the external SD card.
This issues is NOT solved by moddification of /system/etc/permissions/platform.xml file
Examples of apps include:
- Sygic GPS navigation
- BeyondPod podcast manager
- Locus trekking app
- BTSync
Full access to the external SD for all those apps is indispensable to me and I was unable to get it with KitKat even though I applied all the fixes I was able to find AND used Carbon ROMs which are supposed to have this enabled to boot.
2. Only one app at a time has access to SMS box.
This is also not acceptable, because normally I send/receive SMS messages with GoSMSPro, but I also use MySMS to send/receive/type texts on my mobile through my laptop.
In KitKat each time I have to switch the default SMS app which defeats the purpose.
I would like to know whether there is there a fix for either of those problems, and whether those issues are likely to continue on Android L?

impactor said:
Since the release of Android 4.4, I was unable to upgrade from 4.3 JellyBean because of two issues that completely disqualify newer Android versions for me:
1. Apps have no access to the external SD card.
This issues is NOT solved by moddification of /system/etc/permissions/platform.xml file
Examples of apps include:
- Sygic GPS navigation
- BeyondPod podcast manager
- Locus trekking app
- BTSync
Full access to the external SD for all those apps is indispensable to me and I was unable to get it with KitKat even though I applied all the fixes I was able to find AND used Carbon ROMs which are supposed to have this enabled to boot.
2. Only one app at a time has access to SMS box.
This is also not acceptable, because normally I send/receive SMS messages with GoSMSPro, but I also use MySMS to send/receive/type texts on my mobile through my laptop.
In KitKat each time I have to switch the default SMS app which defeats the purpose.
I would like to know whether there is there a fix for either of those problems, and whether those issues are likely to continue on Android L?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Neither one of these things are problems or are broken things. They work as intended and have been explained as security measures. Annoying for some, yes, but this isn't a "bug".
http://www.androidcentral.com/kitkat-sdcard-changes
As far as the SD card, if you are rooted, which I am assuming because you mentioned playing around with the platform xml, there are a couple different ways to return full R/W functionality.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/xposed/modules/kitkat-sd-card-access-t2790992
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nextapp.sdfix
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.geeksoft.extcardpatch
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jrummy.sdfix
For SMS on the desktop, you might check out PushBullet. Their recent update has enabled replying to SMS, though not sure how well it works with Go, but they do support a variety of other solid SMS app connections.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pushbullet.android&hl=en

I am aware of Google's justification of breaking the SD card functionality. Whether we call it a “security measure” or “bug”, the fact remains I can no longer use a phone with KitKat to fulfil functions it used to, so to me it is no longer a smartphone.
The solutions you liked to I tried and they all failed to fix the issue. I have not tried the Xposed module, but I suppose it does the same thing as other “fixes” so I have little hopes with it.
As for PushBullet, it took me years to find MySMS which was then the only desktop SMS app that provided delivery reports. Are you aware if PushBulled does it, too?
In any case, this is a non-isue as long as there is no solution for the SD card.

Not sure why the SD card isn't "fixed" for you as it works for 1000s of others (including many of my customers), meaning there is something else going on - quite possibly how the apps were developed. Do ANY apps work right with the fix applied? And once again, no, it's not a bug, as it was done intentionally. If it is a must have and nothing else works, you can always convert the necessary apps to system apps, if you have room(you should).

I do not know what do you mean by „works”, but for all the programs I need on all the phones and KitKat roms I tried, SDcard DOES NOT work. This is even stated by developers of some of those programs (like BeyondPod).
To see if I am not mad, I just tried it again – I installed KitKat on another Samsung debvice. Latest version of GoBackup and BeyondPod could not write to SD card. 'Fine' – I think – 'I will install the Sdfix from PlayStore'. I did, and rebooted.
NOTHING changed!
KitKat is worse than a bug, because a bug is a accidental, and usually does not cause such gargantuan damage to functionality. What Google did with KitKat is worse, because it is deliberate.
This is ridiculous. If Android L changes nothing, I will have to keep all my phones with 4.3.1 forever, because of how useless Google made Android on devices with external SDcard.
Maybe they killed SD card functionality to force people to buy newer phones with huge internal memory, maybe they want to force people to use their cloud storage, or maybe they did it just out of pure mindlessness.
But they did, and - as I suspect - they don't plan to revert it.

Have you tried the fix for BeyondPod suggested by their team...?
http://beyondpod.mobi/android/help/FAQKitKatSDReadOnly.htm
Tried switching the apps to /system apps so they'll have more permissions?

es0tericcha0s said:
Have you tried the fix for BeyondPod suggested by their team...?
http://beyondpod.mobi/android/help/FAQKitKatSDReadOnly.htm
Tried switching the apps to /system apps so they'll have more permissions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, the fix they suggest does not work on KitKat, because you can't select external card.
I did not try to set BeyondPod to system app, but I can't do it with every app I want to use. Many apps refuse to even start if converted to system app status, and besides system partition is limited in size, and can hardly accommodate all apps.

impactor said:
Yeah, the fix they suggest does not work on KitKat, because you can't select external card.
I did not try to set BeyondPod to system app, but I can't do it with every app I want to use. Many apps refuse to even start if converted to system app status, and besides system partition is limited in size, and can hardly accommodate all apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have an idea on why none of the fixes are working for you...
Install this: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2524485
and try the mods again and reboot.
I'm not a 100% sure it'll help, but will only take a minute to figure it out... This step would also be necessary to make something like Xposed work properly on newer Samsung devices with Knox and all that security stuff they added.

Do you mean that SELinux may be preventing changes to the /system/etc/permissions/platform.xml file?

impactor said:
Do you mean that SELinux may be preventing changes to the /system/etc/permissions/platform.xml file?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes. It prevents a lot of different kinds of changes to the system.

es0tericcha0s said:
Yes. It prevents a lot of different kinds of changes to the system.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Than this is not it, because the changes are being applied correctly and appropriate lines in the appropriate files are changed/added.
Which is why, when I try to apply yet another SDfix from the playstore, the program informs me there's nothing to do because the fix is already applied.

Just because the line is there doesn't mean something else isn't interfering. Just telling you what I would try, since it takes a minute or 2. *shrug* Haven't had a phone with an SD card in awhile so don't have anything to test it with.

Thanks, but it wouldn't take 2 minutes, because I don't have a phone with KitKat. And to install a KitKat and restore all the necessary data would take several hours.
So I might try it next time I give KK a shot, but I don't have high hopes for it because I think what I have with KitKat is what everyone else has - it's just most people either don't care about it or don't need the functionality.

Related

Installed apps disappear

Hi, i'm having a problem with my installed apps. Some apps disappear from my app drawer, and in menu installed apps this apps have a system logo and system name, they are still installed but do not work.
I guess it might have something to do when I disconnect phone from PC USB, apparently internal storage is not mounted back correctly and corrupts apps, some time after the apps go back to original working state, and some others break. Did this happen to anyone? Does anyone have a clue about what's happening?
Many thanks in advance.
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App
this happens to me sometimes but after i reboot my phone, everything shows up but ya it does happen time to time
Are you moving apps to the sd card? I've experienced similar problems when doing so....so I just stopped moving apps to the sd card.
con_ritmo said:
Are you moving apps to the sd card? I've experienced similar problems when doing so....so I just stopped moving apps to the sd card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Had the same problem and used the same fix
Had the same problem once, restarting phone or launcher fixes the issue...
This problem is also for Galaxy S2.
I think that the problem born because you have 2 sd on the phone.
This problemi in my Atrix is very annoying.
In Titanium Backup, go into Batch>Move/Integrate and make sure that all user apps are on the Internal memory. Chances are your "disappearing" apps are on the external sd.
So if there is any number other than 0 next to "Move user apps to internal memory," run that batch operation, reboot and you shouldn't have the issue. My XDA app installs to external by default, which is stupid, and I have to redo this process for that app after every titanium restore.
Try going to the android market on a laptop or desktop. If you are loved in it will say if it is compatable with your device.
This problem happens often with ADW launcher for me. For some reason the launcher doesn't update its app list instantly and restarting the launcher is needed. I haven't researched the problem though.
It used to happen on my old phone (dell steak) it was not mounting and un mounting properly, even downloads were disapearing no matter what rom. Or computer I tried it still didn't work and it turned out that my SD card was f#$ked
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App
disappearing apps
I noticed this on my Atrix when running Titanium backup. Rebooting the phone will restore the missing apps. If there are a lot of apps missing it may take 2 reboots, but they will come back along with their icons.
I just had to restart the launcher, then all is back.
I had similar problems in the past. My solution = Don't restore apps + data from titanium backup. This also caused 'rogue' apps that prevented my phone from sleeping. Would have to charge my phone at least twice a day. Completely wiped my phone and went back to Wet Dream and haven't used Titanium Backup since. Both issues were fixed.
I had this same problem once I started using jokersax's CM9 alphas. It turned out that, for whatever reason, a few apps were being installed to the SD card. Rebooting the phone or connecting to my PC (basically any time the SD card was mounted/unmounted) would break those apps.
So I can confirm that if the app has disappeared from the app tray, but you can still find it in Manage APPs (with a system icon and probably it's pacakge name (like "com.appname.something")) then your best bet is to uninstall the app, reinstall it, and double check from Manage APPs that it's installed to the phone (bottom right button will say "Move to SD card" rather than "Move to phone").
[tl;dr - apps don't like being on SD card, install to phone]
I've been having this problem for a long time now. Searched the web everywhere, xda, lot's of forums. I have not found a solution to this yet, because i have come the conclusion that it's an internal android problem. This happens to everyone that has many apps on their phone, but they don't realise that it's happening until they look for an app they know that is installed but can't find it.
This happened to me with:
Android:
* stock 2.2
* stock 2.3
* blur mod roms
* cyanogenmod
Launchers:
* Launcher pro
* ADW
* SPB Shell
* Go Laucher
* Blur Launcher
Root:
* When rooted
* When not rooted
It seems that the problem is that the internal drive, when mounting does not take the enough time to mount all of the installed apps, that's why if you plug you phone to the USB, after it get's unmounted and mounted back, the status of your apps change (people who had this problem, know what i'm talking about).
The only solution I found so far is with Cyanogenmod, becuase it's the only rom i tried that has the possibility to unmount the internal drive (as you can always do with the external SD card).
If you have this problem that you check the installed apps in the configuration, and you see that some correctly installed apps have the system icon and not the correct one, the unmount the internal drive and mount back, you will see all apps appearing correctly.
horsage said:
It seems that the problem is that the internal drive, when mounting does not take the enough time to mount all of the installed apps, that's why if you plug you phone to the USB, after it get's unmounted and mounted back, the status of your apps change (people who had this problem, know what i'm talking about).
The only solution I found so far is with Cyanogenmod, becuase it's the only rom i tried that has the possibility to unmount the internal drive (as you can always do with the external SD card).
If you have this problem that you check the installed apps in the configuration, and you see that some correctly installed apps have the system icon and not the correct one, the unmount the internal drive and mount back, you will see all apps appearing correctly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the advice!!!
Greetings.
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.
Mentioned here is internal phone storage -- I NEVER use it for anything related to apps or downloads (from what I can tell it can be much less reliable than an sdcard and much less portable or capable of being backed up in a timely way). I only use phone memory & sdcard, yet I have the same disappearing app problem everyone else has here. Avoiding apps on sdcard is not an option for me -- my phone memory is too limited for that (and again, I don't trust internal phone storage).
Also, worries about Titanium Backup mentioned here. But other backup apps and ROMS that move apps to sdcard appear to have the same problem. I have had no problems myself with Titanium Backup Pro, but I have experienced disappearing apps after mounting sdcard as a disk when USB cabled to a PC. Others have reported the same. I would bet the problem lies with the mounting process, not backups or ROMs
So ... 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:
kirkers said:
:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have not posted it here but before I forgot. I have found an app that has solved this issue at least the 95% of the time. Also if an app disappears, reboot, when comes back, move to internal and back to sd with this app, always. This app moves apps differently from other app2sd's apps.
It's called link2sd.
Can be found in Google play store and XDA forum.
A great life saver, for an unsolvable problem. Not the super solution, but the best I found so far.
Regards
Enviado desde mi MB860 usando Tapatalk 2

[Q] Android Security Questions

I am a hardware engineer with some limited software knowledge. I am ULTRA paranoid when it comes to security and have a few questions:
1) People do seem to be paying attention to app permissions now. If an app only had network and storage access permissions, people would probably think it seemed pretty tame. Am I wrong in thinking this is probably the most dangerous an app could be? With these permissions it seems that the app could siphon EVERYTHING off your phone to their servers.
I guess my question would be, do Apps that have read/write storage access, have at the very least read access to all files? For example, it seems that my music app can scan for music, which is fine obviously, but what is stopping it from scanning ANYTHING else on my phone? Like business related documents, private notes, etc...then uploading these to their servers.
2) If an app only has network access, but no access to storage, I assume it would have no ability to add anything malicious locally after installation (or transmit anything off your phone)? Basically, can an app load malicious code from the network?
3) One nice feature on the iPhone is that a full reset actually does a decent job protecting your data. On Android this is not the case. Does Android device encryption actually encrypt everything (i.e. starting from the root (/) directory)? If this is the case, I would assume that a full device encryption, followed by a factory reset would nearly be akin to running a dd urandom on the drive.
4) Google seems to be stepping in the right direction with the new App Ops in Android 4.3. I am not sure what direction they will be taking this, but currently on my Nexus 7 it does not allow you to prevent access to storage or the network (for example I would like to block Final Fantasy from having network access and Weather Bug from having storage access).
Regardless, can an app automatically run on installation? The reason I ask is let's say you are downloading a seemingly benign app, but it really wants to make a dump of personal data and send it to their servers. If I download the app, could it start doing this immediately, or would I need to manually launch it first? If this was the case, then App Ops would not be very useful against certain malicious apps if they have the 1-2 minutes to dump off your contacts list before you could shut them off in the menu.
during installation it'll ask for granting permissions before installed
once installed, it can do the things you granted without further request for permission
with popular apps like viber, this is supposed to be okay

[Q] Best way to move app data to SD Card

Has anyone got any recommendations on the best way to move my app data to SD Card on the Z2? For example the 1-2GB of data that many larger games download to internal storage, I'd like to put that onto the SD Card. I know there'll be a performance hit, but I want to be able to play around with it and at least give it a try to see how the performance is anyway.
I'm currently running the .402 firmware and am rooted without unlocking the bootloader.
I've tried FolderMount but the UI is rather sparse/counter-intuitive and the three apps I tried with on the free version seemed to either break entirely, or just re-downloaded their data back to internal storage.
I've checked out the ROM Toolbox, but the options to move to SD card are greyed out on every game I check, as is the convert to user app option (as I assume games downloaded from the Play Store are already set as User apps).
Folder mount should work fine, the problem is if you haven't set it to auto mount after boot, or you open the app before mounting is complete it won't find the data and thus redownloads it. Working fine with Co-pilot for me.
I did have it set to Auto-Mount after boot and was waiting for the progress bar to finish saying it had moved the data before trying to open the apps.
I think one of the main things I didn't like about the app was also the interface. It seemed impossible to actually undo anything once it was done, in the free version at least. Does the full version have a more fleshed out interface?
No, only difference is the limit on number of pairs is removed, long click on the pair should allow you to amend details of pairing. Yes UI is spare but it does work.

You now have root access, now what?

Hello all.
After recently obtaining root (see thread asus padfone x mini rooting device) I thought we could all begin to catalog what we have changed. Any app that required root and has proven useful and effective for you, please share it here and I will begin to aggregate all of the useful tools here in this top post.
Some stuff you might want to try after rooting
(Copied from my other thread)
A couple things I did with my phone after root.
1. Froze all bloatware. I might remove it later but I felt safer just freezing it with Titanium Backup in case I find out later it screwed something up.
2. Installed a CPU tweaker like 3C ToolBox. If I choose any governor besides interactive, the phone crashes, freezes and just won't play nice. But I have it set to on boot interactive, 1.33GHz - 1.6GHz and no problem. Phone is much faster now. Also for screen off I have ondemand 800MHZ - 933MHz with 1 CPU online, 2nd free and 3rd offline. Ondemand seems to work fine in screen off maybe because I am not accessing apps on the fly. Before root this phone would suck away the battery life and I would only be able to get 6 hours out of it. I assume it was because all the CPU's were online running high and lows and draining the battery as well as the bloatware just lingering in the background sucking up precious resources. I was right. Once I forced the screen off settings my battery now last 3-4x longer. I can have a full charge in the morning and it still be at about 50% - 60% late at night with the occasional checking emails, checking on a game or two and surfing the web. Awesome!
3. On a more important note, I HATED the AT&T boot up sound. Dun dun dun dun snap. Awful! At night it wakes my wife up when I am in bed needing to reboot my phone. I had to smother it with a pillow to muffle the sound. There was no way to change or quiet it. It was a forced noise on a forced volume. However, I used X-Plore, gave it root and navigated to /system/media/audio and renamed powerup.wav to powerup.wav.bak. No more annoying AT&T sound at bootup! Whoohoo! It is quiet as can be. Love it.
4. I also hated the low battery noise. So I went to /system/media/audio/ui and renamed lowbattery.ogg to lowbattery.ogg.bak and now no more annoying low battery notifications. Only the popup window notifies me. Yay! Progress!
5. Installed SD Fix! Finally! My 3rd party apps can now write to my external micro SD card. This allows for installing apps to SD, moving their data and just overall more usage of the micro sd card that was stupidly blocked when KitKat 4.2.2 was released. I don't care if it has more security risks. Unless they plan on making 64GB+ a standard for all phones for built-in memory, I need my micro sd card to work as intended.
This phone is 100% better because of root. Happy rooting!
How in the world do you move apps to the sd card? I did the SD fix but there is no option to move apps to sd.
Moving apps to SD
pjohnson87 said:
How in the world do you move apps to the sd card? I did the SD fix but there is no option to move apps to sd.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I should of been more clear on moving apps to sd. Sorry about that. The operating system doesn't support apps to sd currently at least to my knowledge. Asus will have to come out with an update to their own OS or maybe someone here can do it. However, using the sd fix brings down one more obstacle to getting apps to sd working. Or, just wait for a custom rom.
NEED ROOT!
How was root obtained?!
JDubbed said:
(Copied from my other thread)
A couple things I did with my phone after root.
1. Froze all bloatware. I might remove it later but I felt safer just freezing it with Titanium Backup in case I find out later it screwed something up.
2. Installed a CPU tweaker like 3C ToolBox. If I choose any governor besides interactive, the phone crashes, freezes and just won't play nice. But I have it set to on boot interactive, 1.33GHz - 1.6GHz and no problem. Phone is much faster now. Also for screen off I have ondemand 800MHZ - 933MHz with 1 CPU online, 2nd free and 3rd offline. Ondemand seems to work fine in screen off maybe because I am not accessing apps on the fly. Before root this phone would suck away the battery life and I would only be able to get 6 hours out of it. I assume it was because all the CPU's were online running high and lows and draining the battery as well as the bloatware just lingering in the background sucking up precious resources. I was right. Once I forced the screen off settings my battery now last 3-4x longer. I can have a full charge in the morning and it still be at about 50% - 60% late at night with the occasional checking emails, checking on a game or two and surfing the web. Awesome!
3. On a more important note, I HATED the AT&T boot up sound. Dun dun dun dun snap. Awful! At night it wakes my wife up when I am in bed needing to reboot my phone. I had to smother it with a pillow to muffle the sound. There was no way to change or quiet it. It was a forced noise on a forced volume. However, I used X-Plore, gave it root and navigated to /system/media/audio and renamed powerup.wav to powerup.wav.bak. No more annoying AT&T sound at bootup! Whoohoo! It is quiet as can be. Love it.
4. I also hated the low battery noise. So I went to /system/media/audio/ui and renamed lowbattery.ogg to lowbattery.ogg.bak and now no more annoying low battery notifications. Only the popup window notifies me. Yay! Progress!
5. Installed SD Fix! Finally! My 3rd party apps can now write to my external micro SD card. This allows for installing apps to SD, moving their data and just overall more usage of the micro sd card that was stupidly blocked when KitKat 4.2.2 was released. I don't care if it has more security risks. Unless they plan on making 64GB+ a standard for all phones for built-in memory, I need my micro sd card to work as intended.
This phone is 100% better because of root. Happy rooting!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The phone is dual core so why set three cpu's
the phone is set from factory with interactive 1.6GHz max but it's low is like 200 I checked it out with pimp my rom but didn't change or keep any tweets as my battery life is fine
SDK fix is important you can't even delete files off SDK without it I believe bloat is what causes battery drain trilla the rooting thread top post works
My mod list
Ok, so I wanted to post a reply to this to list what I have done after root access was obtained.
1. I installed Titainum and removed most of the bloatware from AT&T, along with some of the random stuff I don't need.
2. I installed permissions denied to remove permissions from apps and games that don't need access to things like my contacts or network access.
3. Installed busy box and terminal emulator so I have some basic linux commands and can configure my iptables firewall. (on a side note I am still looking at how to install the "netfilter" kernel module to allow droidwall firewall and network logging)
4. Still working on enabling WiFi tether. ( I use Straight Talk, not AT&T )
5. Installed ES File Explorer and gave it root permissions.
6. This doesn't really require root but I added Owncloud for my cloud storage on my own server, Subsonic for music streaming on my own server, carddav for syncing contacts from my own server and configured my email from my own email server. I like to keep all of my information on my server rather then Google's servers, and I am so far completely disconnected from Google other then using their servers to get my apps I use.
Once I get #4 and #5 finished and all my apps I use installed I will be stripping everything "Google" related out of the device including all of google play's services, Gmail and any background services not needed. Since Google wants to use their services for tracking user data I don't feel the need to keep them...
GE3K.me said:
Since Google wants to use their services for tracking user data I don't feel the need to keep them...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
doesnt matter if you use google,microsoft/bing, or any other service, all of them track you no matter what you try to do. i just avoid putting anything detrimental to me on my phones. no credit card data, no ss numbers, etc. all else is basically public knowledge anyway
Sent from my Z987 using Tapatalk
Cognacentertainment said:
doesnt matter if you use google,microsoft/bing, or any other service, all of them track you no matter what you try to do. i just avoid putting anything detrimental to me on my phones. no credit card data, no ss numbers, etc. all else is basically public knowledge anyway
Sent from my Z987 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, all of the above invade our privacy which is why all of my email, cloud storage, and music is hosted on my own server at my house and secured with SSL encryption. I don't use microsoft, google or apple for my personal information, but I keep a gmail account for a junk mail account (not connected to my phone) and exchange for work. Also my phone is encrypted as well as my text messaging database (text secure). Now I know this does not fix all vulnerabilities but it sure does reduce them and make me feel better that my information is for the better part under my control. As far as credit card data, if I were to even consider putting that on my phone or even my SS number it would all be stored under an encrypted database.
I also do not use public hotspots since that would just open a whole other world of vulnerabilities.
JDubbed said:
I should of been more clear on moving apps to sd. Sorry about that. The operating system doesn't support apps to sd currently at least to my knowledge. Asus will have to come out with an update to their own OS or maybe someone here can do it. However, using the sd fix brings down one more obstacle to getting apps to sd working. Or, just wait for a custom rom.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
After I rooted my Mini X, I just re-partitioned my 64gb external micro sd into 3 parts. 50 gb as ntfs for regular storage, 10 gb as ext4 for link2sd app to create a link for moving apps to the sd. and the rest which was a little over 3 gb or so as swap space to help with the 1gb low ram using memory swap for root. I keep all of my important apps on the 8 gb internal phone storage... or 4gb and the rest of them go to the 10 gb reserved within the partition i created on the sd. as far as "memory swap for root" goes. It took some time to figure out how to use the swap partition, because the location /dev/block/mmcblk1p3 didn't exist. but after I rebooted everything worked as it should have. Now my mini x which is running net 10 can outrun the zenfone 5 on the antutu benchmark. There is a little glitch when you reboot, which is probably the sd mounting but after that everything runs much faster. Considering how crappy it ran from being stock. I almost took it back.
Still waiting for cwm and cyanogenmod to meet this phone. I hope this trick helped you I won't be around much online to make a step by step how to on this. Considering i am currently a laser technician and working 12 hour shifts at the moment. But to format the micro i used "full wipe" and to create partitions i used "AParted" by sylkat tools
GE3K.me said:
3. Installed busy box and terminal emulator so I have some basic linux commands and can configure my iptables firewall. (on a side note I am still looking at how to install the "netfilter" kernel module to allow droidwall firewall and network logging)
..
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I bought a Zenfone 5 and after rooting, I just discovered that the kernel does not support netfilter, so Droidwall cannot work !! :crying:
why Asus doesnt have this ? wish I had known earlier.
rht_sg said:
I bought a Zenfone 5 and after rooting, I just discovered that the kernel does not support netfilter, so Droidwall cannot work !! :crying:
why Asus doesnt have this ? wish I had known earlier.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I actually returned my Asus Padfone because I couldn't use netfilter. I needed it for network logging and Droidwall, so it was kinda a deal breaker... I ended up getting a Sony Xperia T2 unlocked and rooting it, so far everything I needed is working better then I would hoped with the Sony.
I wish you luck with your Zenfone.
Custom ROM ?
Hey all,
I'm new to the padfone x mini seeing that my note 2 finally said I give up.. But what has to happen to get a ROM oor this thing.. It seems to me that the padfone x mini has a decent amount of potential here!.. I am no developer and have never done so but I know my way around d a PC and I know my way around linux a bit. I would just like to know where to start for developing a ROM for this phone and my first actually... Any help or guidance in the proper direction is much appreciated.
Factory rom backup?
Did anyone do a backup? We're really going to need one.
I installed Root Booster which made my phone actually stable. It hasn't crashed since I installed it and paid for the high stability mode.
Removed a lot of the Google and AT&T apps. The GOOGLE app itself and the Play Music, Play Videos, Play Books, etc. were removed with the store intact and related services left alone.
Performance jumped up once I removed the "Google" app named essentially just that, "Google".
But most importantly, it is stable. Like when I installed Lollipop on the Padfone X regular, this one makes the tablet worth it and proves that AT&T destroyed yet another device with its idiocy. But I'm running this on T-Mobile since the device itself was unlocked when I got mine for $99.
Also, I reinstalled the Google Music, Video apps since you can but I wanted to remove the default version that comes preinstalled with the ROM. BUT make sure to use System app remover (ROOT) by Jumobile. If you uninstall too much, this lets you restore it right back. Just don't purge the recycle bin.

I want to install apps on SD card, what are my options?

Does every Cyanogenmod rom allow that by default, or dit it die with version 11 or 12 being the last one?
If installing directly to SD is a no go, what good apps are there that do the transfer (and keep everything working, of course
I would recommend Link2SD.
I have used it with satisfaction on several low memory devices.
Not sure why, I find Link2SD and its options terribly confusing Well, I guess I'll need to learn.
There are a lot of guides and it's not so complex.
The best way to use it is to create a second partition on sd (consider a backup of your data on pc/otg/cloud/...).
As far as I can remember link2sd will ask you the filesystem type and then it will create some script to use it.
Then you can simply tap on an app from the list and press "link to sd".
From the apps list you can do a lot of operation like convert apps to system/user app, freeze/unfreeze, merge an updated app to rom etc. and using the filter this kind of operation will be very easy and fast.
EDIT:
On the plus (paid) version you can link also data.
If you really want to maximize the free space on the device, this option is worth the few moneys.
EDIT2:
I've always used it on other devices using AOSP based roms, I don't know if there are problems using it with MIUI.
Thanks a lot! So, if you "link" (strange choice of word, it's not actually linking if it gets completely moved to SD and nothing remaing in main storage is it, that's what confused the hell out of me), app and its data to SD, will it be exactly like it was downloaded and installed on SD right from the store, like it used to be on Android versions that supported such thing? I know Cyanogenmod 11 did that perfectly, wonder if it's CM thing by default, or did they moved to new (stupid) concept of raping the main storage in later versions
EDIT: Any chance of "linking" bloody Whatsapp to SD completely? I'm in continuous maintenance mode of my wife phone because that **** consumes the storage for all it's worth.
C64Ever said:
Thanks a lot! So, if you "link" (strange choice of word, it's not actually linking if it gets completely moved to SD and nothing remaing in main storage is it, that's what confused the hell out of me), app and its data to SD, will it be exactly like it was downloaded and installed on SD right from the store, like it used to be on Android versions that supported such thing?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Linking is not the same as moving.
For example, if you move to sd and then remove the sd from the device, widgets and app icons will be removed.
Maybe they will be restored when you insert your sd again, but the order could not be the same.
The same doesn't happen linking.
There are also other benefits, try googling for "link2sd faq".
C64Ever said:
EDIT: Any chance of "linking" bloody Whatsapp to SD completely? I'm in continuous maintenance mode of my wife phone because that **** consumes the storage for all it's worth.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not using whatsapp so I don't know if it works.
I guess that your are talking about the "whatapp" directory on which msgs and media are store.
If link2sd can't solve your problem, I think that can try to move the whatsapp directory to sd and then manually create a link (keep the original name) on the original position.
Or you can try with apps like foldermount
EDIT:
try looking at this thread
Maybe your can try xposed app..xinternalsd..swap sdcard to be phone memory

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