Captivate boots slow, issues. How to troubleshoot? - Captivate Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related

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

Last night after it was found out the leak and the official release were identical I loaded Fresh 2.1.1. I realized as it was loading I forgot to wipe the phone. I figured I'd let it finish and just have to redo it, but I turned my phone on anyway, just to see.
Everything seems fine. The update seemed to leave everything in tact, while running fine. (and freeing up 55mb of space for apps despite seemingly installing the same apps and leaving mine) The update worked, there are noticeable style differences in quite a few places.
My question is, is this an illusion? Am I not really running the updated versions in some areas? Are there behind the scenes things going on that make it error check and fall back to old "backward comparability" type things, make it slower, etc? Or is wiping just a "safety" thing to give you the best odds of success?
Is my phone going to burst into flames in my sleep, or did I get lucky because most incompatibility examples would be obvious?
I'm not using apps2sd.
Wiping is a safety thing, and also required if there are major changes between versions.
If it is working then don't worry about it. I have flashed 2.1 ROMs over each other before without any problems before, for example a Damageless's Rom over Flipz's. I think as long as the framework matches there is likely to be no problem.
I found one thing that doesn't work. The people app force closes every time I go to actually view a contact.
Does anyone know a good way to clear the contacts without deleting them? (If you delete them in the contact app google syncs the deletion, as it should.)
Actually it looks like it's only a problem on the contacts linked to facebook. Maybe if I can find a way to unlink them, and then link them again, without opening them, they'll be fine.
Just had to removed and re add my facebook account. Good times. So maybe people don't need to redo their phone to jump from 2.0d to 2.1.1. Give it a try.
You've inspired me to give it a try. i, however unlike you, do use a2sd and it's picky as **** so hopefully that stays in tact.
I'll post results after.

[ThinkTank] How to speed up Market after wipe (Partial fix)

Okay, this has been bugging me for a long time. I've been around since the beginning of G1 and have never seen a solution to this. I'm out of town on vacation, so my updates and responses may be slow. I've found a partial solution for this. If you don't want to read the fluff, drop down to Partial Solution sections, but be warned, this is not perfect (yet). Below is a quick spilling of my guts on this. Please excuse any grammar mistakes and fragmented thought. I posted this in DEV because more research needs to be done by someone that knows how this stuff works. If we get this worked out, I'll update this post with whatever information is necessary.
This post takes for granted the reader has some knowledge of file management and manipulation, so I won't get too detailed with how to copy/move/delete files. There is a lot of information here and I know most won't read it all, but I'm trying to get all the detail into this I can think of in hopes others have ideas that we can share.
I DO NOT KNOW THE RAMIFICATIONS OF WHAT THIS DOES! ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS TO YOUR PHONE IS YOUR FAULT, NOT MINE! Etc... Etc... Etc...
Issue: After flashing/Odin/wiping, sometimes the Market takes about a minute to load as does the app and security info screens. The Top Paid button is missing and all that's available is Top Free and Just In. Installing an app takes quite a bit of time. It eventually clears up, but it may take up to a week.
If you restore Market preferences via Titanium Backup or similar app, it can speed it up, but in the long run, you may get cross referenced apps over time or Market problems in general. For example, I install app1 and when it's finished, I select it in notifications and it takes me to app3. Some apps are also missing from Downloads and have to be installed again for them to show up. I also experience Titanium Backup not linking the Market correctly if at all. How to fix that is below, also.
How I Tested: I renamed /dbdata/databases/com.android.vending which reproduced the problem reliably and gave me a working set of databases and .xml's to look at.
Partial Solution: Save a copy of /dbdata/databases/com.android.vending/shared_prefs/vending_preferences.xml and put it back after you've restored your apps and opened Market once (just to lay down the directory structure). There are other files that will get more "stuff" back, but because of issues I've had between vending.apk versions, I choose to restore just this one file. It doesn't seem to change much. You can look in it and find some interesting things, but I've found changing it does very little if anything. Changing local_db_sync_required didn't do anything and it just reverted back to "false" for me.
What you will find, is Market will run quickly again BUT, you have no links so none of your apps show as installed. Although it will probably sync over time, the point of my messing around was fairly instant gratification. Thus the next section.
New Problem: Market speed is normal, but no apps are linked. Hey, I use Titanium backup! Fix Market links works, partially. I have 226 apps backed up in TB (Yes, this is why I wanted to get this working) and when I fixed Market links, it found 167. I fixed them again and it found 9, then 17, then 6 etc... It repeated some apps and never detected others. I checked and some of the "fixed" apps did not show in downloads... So I started looking. Menu -> Legend showed me part of the issue. Smiley face -vs- green M. For some reason, some of my apps were not linking properly. Here's how to get that part working.
Partial Solution: Here's what I did in TB. I filtered by Status: Backed up and Type: User. Starting at the top of the list, I long pressed on the first "smiley face" which means it didn't back up the Market link and if it was "Attached to Market", I Detached it. View in Market and installed the app. When it was done, I backed the app up again and viola, green M showing it backed up the Market link. I did this many, many more times to fix my links. It worked in all occasions as long as I could find the app in the Market. Of course, some apps installed outside the Market cannot be fixed (duh), but all others worked fine.
I still have a problem getting everything attached in one shot. If I fix Market links in TB, I still get strange results, but this is as close as I can get and I found quite a few apps that have not been linked for so long, they were a few revs behind, so I'm happy with how far I've gotten.
Questions that will be asked:
- Why didn't you force attach to Market with TB? Because it didn't work. Some indicated it did, but they didn't show up in Market as installed, they didn't back up as linked and some even reverted back to not being attached and the forced button was available. The above is how I got around all of that.
- What about the other cool DB's and .xml? I didn't find that it was worth any possible issues to restore anything else except this file. That is probably what got me into this in the first place. Your mileage may vary. DB's usually need an update script if any changes are made. If that doesn't happen and the schema doesn't match, that's usually bad. That's why a lot of ROM's require a wipe. The old doesn't match the new...
- Why can't you backup Market with TB now that it is working well? I could and it would probably work, but I know it won't work forever because it didn't before. It also won't help someone else who is in a similar situation. I've been using TB (paid) since it came out and I love it. But, it's not perfect.
- Why should I mess with this instead of waiting for it to fix itself? You probably shouldn't. I've found that if I did a restore of apps, some NEVER go back to the Downloads section without a re-install. That's my concern.
- I don't have any of these problems, why are you posting this? Because I and others have. The universe does not revolve around you. Please move on.
- Why did you post this in Dev? As I said in the beginning, because we need someone who knows how this OS works so maybe a reliable workaround can be had for all. I didn't post in DEV for exposure, I posted here because I started it and I don't know where to go. Maybe a fix can be turned into an app or incorporated directly within a ROM. Who knows? I'm not a DEVing, but I am troubleshooting an issue within the OS.
One thing I've found that helps, is I kinda ignore if it shows up in Downloads in the market after a restore. I check for updates using AppBrain app, it finds all the apps on the phone whether they're in the market or not. Then, whenever an app is updated, it directs you to the market download page. If the market link was broken, that will say "Install" instead of "Update", but an install at that point will update properly, and you'll now have a working market link.
The main goal of having apps show up in the market, IMHO, is updates and uninstalls. Use the system uninstaller rather than the market for uninstalls, and use AppBrain to find updates. Works for me.
Thanks a lot for putting this up! I was banging my head against the wall last night, as I ran into this issue again and couldnt remember how I fixed it on my G1
zimphishmonger said:
Thanks a lot for putting this up! I was banging my head against the wall last night, as I ran into this issue again and couldnt remember how I fixed it on my G1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yw
lotherius said:
One thing I've found that helps, is I kinda ignore if it shows up in Downloads in the market after a restore. I check for updates using AppBrain app, it finds all the apps on the phone whether they're in the market or not. Then, whenever an app is updated, it directs you to the market download page. If the market link was broken, that will say "Install" instead of "Update", but an install at that point will update properly, and you'll now have a working market link.
The main goal of having apps show up in the market, IMHO, is updates and uninstalls. Use the system uninstaller rather than the market for uninstalls, and use AppBrain to find updates. Works for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I rarely uninstall via market. Have an app that throws me straight to the system uninstaller from the apps icon. I like appbrain, but it exhibits the same issue as the Market for me as far as detecting installed apps in some cases. I use the Market for updates and it works fine for me as long as the apps are linked. I think it has something to do with the hash getting messed up in the assets.db

So what would happen if I just started deleting BN apps ...

... from /system/app
Which of them would save me some resources (assuming I don't care about the built-in nook functionality), and which of them would make things go kablooey?
Wordsmith9091 said:
... from /system/app
Which of them would save me some resources (assuming I don't care about the built-in nook functionality), and which of them would make things go kablooey?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why do you think they would save you resources?
Plus I think you might want to avoid doing that until there is a full ROM and Recovery, if you screw up /system I think you're hosed.
Without recovery it is possible to brick the NC by deleting stuff as previously stated.
I did try some cautious renaming of B&N stuff with the end result that while the NC worked, it showed as not registered and this made it a bit difficult to de-register and reset...
And not only did the B&N stuff not work (since it wasn't registered!) there were a few other glitches as well.
As a note from my earlier Android experiments: if you do want to try getting rid of something, don't delete it! Renaming it is just as effective and has the added plus of being easily restored AS LONG AS THE THING STILL WORKS AT ALL.
I usually append .bak to things like text messaging, facebook and twitter since I don't use or want them.
/system can be recovered regardless of changes to the file-system as long as you don't play around with the factory fallback stuff which is on a different partition completely. The minute you start messing with that all bets are off.
The /system partition will be restored if the device doesn't boot 8 consecutive times.
Well, so far I've deleted the library, the shop, the built-in app launcher and a few other items with no ill effects (other than, you know, not having the library and the shop). I got rid of one that looked a little borderline scary -- but I'm being a little reckless here and didn't note the name. Maybe a BN specific applicationservice apk?I think that's why selecting settings from the B&N bottom notification bar doesn't work anymore (but selecting settings from within Zeam gets me there). Got rid of the home apk.
I know, I could play it a lot safer just renaming these things. But I'm living on the edge (besides, I could always get back to a stock system setup if I screw things up badly enough to force the 8 reboots).
I'll soon look at this a little more methodically and see if there are any B&N-related services running that I don't think I'd really need ... then go for them too. After all, just deleting things that may or may not be running from boot ... it's a fun reckless experiment, but it doesn't necessarily save any resources (other than space in system).
If you manage it I would be interested in knowing about it- especially if the Nook for Android app can be installed and actually work, afterwards!
That had been my goal when messing with it.
Methinks I found one too many packages that had "bn" in the name for my own good. lol

[Q] Samsung Galaxy S apps not remembering their settings?

So a friend of mine updated his T-Mobile UK Samsung Galaxy S to the official 2.2.1 JPY firmware using Odin a few weeks ago. This went well, and is the same firmware that I've had on my unbranded SGS since December.
However, he has an interesting problem. Some of his apps (Handcent, Dolphin HD, plus a few others) seem to forget all of their settings every time the app is exited. For example, every time he goes back into Dolphin it enters the setup wizard as it it's being ran for the first time. This doesn't happen on every app, and it doesn't happen every time.
I noticed there are a couple of other threads on here with people reporting similar issues on custom ROMs (with no solution), but this is a stock ROM from samsungfirmware.com and certainly doesn't happen on my SGS, so it's not the ROM to blame.
Anyone know of a fix?
This question posted in the last few days .
jje
As I said in my post "I noticed there are a couple of other threads on here with people reporting similar issues ... (with no solution)". I wasn't being lazy and just starting another thread without doing some research first. I've read the other threads and they do not contain a solution that will work for him.
I'm assuming you're referring specifically to this thread? http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=992335 In my friend's case, rooting is not an option, so this solution won't work for him.
However, based on that it looks like a factory reset may fix it. If I don't come back people reading this can assume it worked.
Hello
I experimented the same issue.
Looking at some log traces event it reported some permissions errors on intestinal filesystem like database location access write errors. This can explain setting persistence trouble.
After various workaround, bypass or others kind of fallback I did a full reinstallation of filesystem including a wipe data of the system. Take care to backup application and sensible data SMS, photo...
Since all is working fine and no more problems with settings
I don't know if it's helping you.
This is just my personal experience on this same problem.
Perhaps more simple solution is possible
Regards
Gilles
Thanks. So far so good after a Factory Reset. If it were my phone I'd be looking at Logcat, etc, too, but it's a bit hard to do remotely.
It's odd how some apps saved their settings fine, but some don't.
A factory reset did fix it... for a while. But then other apps started suffering from the problem.
So I've been researching this a bit more today. Here's what I've discovered:
The problem is unique to Samsung Galaxy S phones, and appears to be only ones running 2.2.1 (but maybe 2.2. too?).
Samsung have renamed /data/data to /dbdata/databases, and shared preferences for applications are persisting in this folder even if the application is uninstalled. If you install the app again, the app becomes a different user from the one that owns the shared preferences.
For example - If you install some random application and you look at its process running with the ps command, it will show as "app_XX", where XX is some number. For our example here let's say it shows as "app_55". When it then saves its settings in /dbdata/databases the folder the settings are saved in will have owner (shown by ls -l) as "app_55" too. That's fine, and normal.
The seed of the problem is sewn when you uninstall the app. Those shared preferences are not removed. Even using the "Clear data" option before uninstalling doesn't seem to help. If you then install the app again and look at the output of ps you'll see the new app is "app_56". The shared preferences are still there from last time with owner "app_55", hence the permissions error when it tries to save its settings, as user app_56 cannot modify user app_55's files.
A factory reset obviously cures it as this, at least temporarily, as it wipes the data in /dbdata/databases.
If you're rooted, you can go into /dbdata/databases and delete the relevent folder for the application that's having the problem. It will be recreated with the correct owner next time the app saves its settings.
I didn't try chown to change the owner to the correct one, but maybe that's a way to keep the old settings and correct the problem.
Bingo. No wonder my titanium backup is not remembering the preference settings.

Titanium Backup WAL database conversion

Titanium Backup recently enabled conversion of app databases to a new WAL format. Is this safe to do? Can any dev's shed any light on this new file type?
Sent from my DROID3 using XDA App
Avoid
This ****s me I did this on my Samsung Galaxy, it WIPED ALL SETTINGS on my phone. no warning that it is dangerous!
Had to revert back, and then restore all settings again.
I learned quickly not to do anything that hasn't been discussed and tested by these talented people with XDA. And its still not 100 percent safe even then. I noticed by the release notes for the new TB Pro that its for all 2.3 roms, recognized by sqlite3, and is supposed to be faster than the old app database file type. What I don't know is the side effects, and what effect it has on rom updates applied over the change
Droid 1 Rooted (ChevyNo1 0.9MV Kernel, LGB2.6)
Droid 3 Rooted (Stock Kernel, Custom lite De-bloat)
Settings wiped out confirmed plus MAYBE a few very destructive glitch (Unconfirmed by others):
Power button only lists one entry: Power off instead of the original three - Confirmed by bonks
Home button not working (In respect, task switcher not available) - Confirmed by 0nebukadnezar0
Search button not working - Confirmed by bonks
Android market not connecting - Confirmed and solution provided by 0nebukadnezar0
SMS wiped
Nexus S Stock ROM 2.3.4 rooted (Kernel Netarchy Nexus 1.3.7)
Added symptoms :
Lost APN settings (0nebukadnezar0 on Galaxy S)
Screen lock not working (0nebukadnezar0 on Galaxy S and bonks on Motorola Droid 3 rooted)
Facebook authentication lost (0nebukadnezar0 on Galaxy S)
Some other application's settings (0nebukadnezar0 on Galaxy S and bonks on Motorola Droid 3 rooted)
Do not run this batch until further update!
Do not use this function!
I've also been hit by this. I paid for this software and it should really have a warning that:
1. it affects all application data: I was under the impression it affects only the TB internal database
2. it converts user data of the complete device: I had thought twice if this had been clear
3. one should create an up-to-date backup first
Instead it highly praised that this is a performance improvement traded against little higher storage usage. Why shouldn't I want to enable such a feature?
Had I known the implications I would've created a full backup first and thought twice. Now I had to go back to a three day old backup. My phone was completely wiped. No error message. Still some settings were missing after restore: TB still seems not to be able to correctly restore ActiveSync settings, and all widgets were gone from my start pages.
This is extremely unsatisfactory for an app I paid for. Please, developer: Improve your warnings in an application like a backup app which handles sensible data.
I noticed it in the change log, and was like " Uhh... why, in the last 6 months, have I not heard of this new super fast database conversion before now... I better ask someone before I mess with it"
Luckily I did, I'm still running the stock rom minus vcast and a few additional bloaties removes, and have dreaded altering anything without the bootloader unlocked, as this is my second device, the first returned returned DOA. I appreciate your testimonials guys, our stories will save the devs a few headaches, and will give titanium devs some live input on the batch operation. If Pzouza or Chevy has any comments on it, the input would be welcomed, as this is the first most of us have heard of it
Droid 1 Rooted (ChevyNo1 0.9MV Kernel, LGB2.6)
Droid 3 Rooted (Stock Kernel, Custom lite De-bloat)
verkerria said:
I noticed it in the change log, and was like " Uhh... why, in the last 6 months, have I not heard of this new super fast database conversion before now... I better ask someone before I mess with it"
Luckily I did, I'm still running the stock rom minus vcast and a few additional bloaties removes, and have dreaded altering anything without the bootloader unlocked, as this is my second device, the first returned returned DOA. I appreciate your testimonials guys, our stories will save the devs a few headaches, and will give titanium devs some live input on the batch operation. If Pzouza or Chevy has any comments on it, the input would be welcomed, as this is the first most of us have heard of it
Droid 1 Rooted (ChevyNo1 0.9MV Kernel, LGB2.6)
Droid 3 Rooted (Stock Kernel, Custom lite De-bloat)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 Droid3 rooted and de-bloat via titanium
Same thing happened to me. Not very pleased. Titanium Backup usually warns against dangerous options. This batch option not having one gives a false sense of security. I'm restoring a month old nandroid backup via clockworkmod now and then hopefully restoring my TB backups.
same thing on my Galaxy S:
- home button does not work anymore
- Market "Server Error", this has been cleaned through "Clear Data" under Manage applications
- lost 3G settings, it was necessary to enter the APN configuration manually
- screen lock does not work anymore
- lost the facebook authentication
- some other apps have lost her settings
Titanium Backup DB modes
Rooted Droid 3 with TB pro
Power button only lists two entries rather than I think the three or four it had.
Home button not working
Search button not working
Screen lock not working
Some other apps have lost their settings
-> Widgets needed to be readded
-> All email accounts had to resync
What I did:
Wokeup, saw TB update, downloaded & installed, tried new feature in TB for faster databases.
Ran the "Convert DBs to Rollback Journal mode (works on all ROMs)" batch process. It completed successfully.
Ran the "Convert DBs to WAL mode (faster, slightly bigger, Android 2.3+ only)" batch process. It completed successfully.
Hit the home button, tried to open an app. Force Close. Tried a few more apps, all force closed.
Restarted.
The white animated "DROID" screen infinitely repeated itself.
Removed battery.
Powered On.
Successfully reached Home screen (ADWLauncher EX).
My fault for trying these new features without looking into it first, but I did not think they would be dangerous.
Now, are Journal mode and WAL mode the two available types of DBs. Could I just run the Rollback Journal mode to revert back? Is this safe?
Their wiki says it's safe but has anyone tried this? matrixrewriter.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=TB+-+Technical+FAQ&highlight=rollback%20journal
(#32 and #33)
Woah, glad I googled this before running it on my Galaxy Tab. Will avoid.
From Titanium Support:
We're truly sorry about this issue. Yes, today we discovered a terrible bug in the SGS2 stock ROM, which explains what happened. Titanium Backup has converted your databases to WAL fine, but the SGS2 stock ROM itself does not support WAL properly: instead of opening the WAL databases, it will silently erase them and then claim that the open has succeeded!
Before allowing any conversion to WAL, Titanium Backup performed a verification, which we have tested and properly fails on older ROMs. On the SGS2 though, the verification passes because the test database is fine after the conversion - well yes it's fine, but it's empty.
We have improved the WAL testing code and we will release an updated version as quickly as possible. The new version has been tested well on SGS2 and detects the problem properly (ie: it prevents conversion to WAL format). This only applies to stock ROMs though, as CyanogenMod (for example) does not contain the buggy Samsung code and fully supports WAL without issues.
If you have no backups of the erased databases, we're very sorry to confirm that it cannot be recovered, unfortunately. Please accept our deepest apologies for this issue. If you would like a refund, please let us know because we stand behind our product.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I converted back to journal mode but this did not fix any of my issues. I'm guessing that the lockscreen, home button, and search buttons had some kind of association to a database from the manufacture install which I don't know how to recover. Any ideas?
Bad Titanium Pro!
GldRush98 said:
Woah, glad I googled this before running it on my Galaxy Tab. Will avoid.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ditto to that, I was just about to hit that button and thought maybe I should do some googling...
All, the standard rule to all root users, is to do full nandroid backups before making any serious changes to your phone. changing database formats is a major change. You should have all done a full nandroid, then a full tb backup. That's the main rule of thumb if you start down the road to root. Anytime you play with root focused apps, you're playing with fire. At some point we all get burned. I have plenty of times, but always get back with a nand restore. we all learn eventually. I know I've messed up a few phones this way, but that's the joy of going the root route. Its all in fun.
I wasn't aware of this feature and definitely will be trying it now that its been posted.
Sent from my DROID3 using XDA App
Ok, after doing a full nandbackup, and TB backup of User Apps. I did successfully migrate all the DBs to WAL format. I then rebooted right into CWM, formated the cache to avoid any old data crap, rebooted back into normal phone. Ran my most common apps and had no issues I've got 217 user apps on my phone, I think I ran 20 of the core apps I use. no issues in the first 1 hour. I did confirm all the previously posted issues and experience none of them within the first hour of testing. This is probably due to me not messing with the system apps. I'll test that next for the fun of it and report back. But, I can safely say, in my case, I had no issues with this conversion of "user" apps.
Power button only lists two entries rather than I think the three or four it had.
Home button not working
Search button not working
Screen lock not working
Some other apps have lost their settings
Widgets needed to be readded
All email accounts had to resync
Stay tuned for round 2 of testing
---------- Post added at 10:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:39 PM ----------
Ok Round 2 WAL conversion and testing completed.
Everything works perfectly. Not sure why everyone else is having issues. I would say anyone else should be free to do the conversion. Again, this is how I did mine. I did a full nandbackup, in case i screwed things up and messed my phone up. Did a full TB backup of system apps. Then did the conversion to the system apps. Immediately after rebooted into CWM. I formatted the cache. Rebooted, let my phone load up. I did notice during the first 5-10 seconds of the loading home apps and widgets half of the widgets gave a widget error, but I was patient enough to let the phone get fully loaded. After that all widgets did start back up just fine. I tested all reported bugs and errors everyone else had, and I had no issues with anything. I'll keep an eye on things for the next few days. I'm a heavy, nerdy user of my phone, and am constantly tweaking it so i'll know if I screwed something up and report back.
Widgets all loaded fine after reboot.
Search works as it should
Long Press Power button pulls up standard 4 options.
Home works fine
Long press home pulls up all recent items (do keep in mind if you reboot there are no recent items so you have to go into apps for it to tell you recent items)
Lockscreen works as it should.
I would say this WAL conversion for both System and User apps works just fine. But, that is only in my case apparently. I am using Steel Droid 3 (v1).
Good luck to the rest of you. Oh, and I have no affiliation to TB, but I must admit that its one of my most used Root apps since it helps me unscrew myself when I do fudge things up. It is just so much faster to fix mistakes than a full nandrestore. Albeit the NandRestore is my Plan B fix it solution TB is plan A.
Where exactly is this option? I havent seen anything and just redid apps for data
WAL DB Conversion Success
I followed Izeltokatl's information by performing a full backup with Titanium Backup and ClockWorkMod via ROM manager, then updating the system and app DBs to WAL via TB, then immediately booting into recovery and wiping the cache.
I'm happy to report complete success updating my Ideos U8150 running Gingerbread 2.3.7 to WAL DB without any problems.
Even after wiping cache, the quick search function was force closing, so I just restored it from TiBu.
So what are real benefits of Wal or Rollback Journal databases of android. Is it really faster? Are there any reasons to make Rollback journal conversion on unsupported roms?
Has anybody tested it?
Some good reading.
http://www.sqlite.org/draft/wal.html
The ROM I was running was using SQLite version 3.7.2, and I unchecked 'force system SQLite' in preferences and it upgraded to the TiBu optimized version which is quite a bit newer. Seems to speed things up slightly if you convert to WAL.

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