Excessive Rebooting...

[waleslie]

I have a Polaroid PTAB7XC (stock rom with gapps added) that has been running fine for quite some time now. For some reason, it has taken to rebooting a lot. At times it's only up for a few minutes before it reboots. On seemingly alternating reboots, the wi-fi doesn't work.

Any ideas? I'm hoping it will stay up long enough to do a full Titanium Backup of all the apps and data, then I'm open to almost anything...

[dolorespark]

I have a Polaroid PTAB7XC (stock rom with gapps added) that has been running fine for quite some time now. For some reason, it has taken to rebooting a lot. At times it's only up for a few minutes before it reboots. On seemingly alternating reboots, the wi-fi doesn't work.

Have you ever gone into Recovery and let it sit there a while? If you have CWM installed, you might want to run its backup routine for the purpose of exercising the machine. If it reboots in Recovery, you probably gave a hardware problem.

If it's stable, then a software issue is more likely. Assuming you have CWM, clear the cache partition, and more important, clear the Dalvik-cache then reboot. This won't have any effect on your apps and data but may possibly fix the problem.

[waleslie]

I do not have CWM on it yet. I've been looking around to make sure I have a way of getting it back to stock before installing custom recoveries or roms.

I was really hoping to get a full Titanium backup done before messing with anything, but it's seeming unlikely I'll be able to do that before it reboots.

[waleslie]

Re: Excessive Rebooting...

I got CWM up and running. No reboots while in recovery.

I tried clearing the cache and dalvik, but I still have the rebooting issue.

So, presumably I've got a software problem of some sort. What next? Some sort of startup manager? Is there a way to find the last few things installed?

[dolorespark]

presumably I've got a software problem of some sort. What next? Some sort of startup manager? Is there a way to find the last few things installed?

If you want to identify the culprit without without necessarily fixing the underlying problem, here are some things to look at. You may not understand exactly what you're seeing, but you should be able to spot when something goes really wrong.

• dmesg - a log of info and errors messages generated by the kernel; you'll want to look for where it mounts all those loop devices. Run adb shell dmesg > dm.txt The file will be created in the same directory as your command prompt. Note: you'll probably have to use Notepad to view this; in Wordpad, it's one very long line.
• logcat - the system's general-purpose logging facility; this can get very long and it's tedious to scan, but informative. Run adb logcat > logcat.log wait a few seconds, then press Ctrl-C to kill it - otherwise it will just sit there and keep logging (I'm assuming you're still using the stock ROM, correct?)
• /data/tombstones - this directory should have a file for each time a program (vs an app) crashed. Pretty much the only thing of use to you is at the top where it identifies the program's name.
• /data/dontpanic - I'm not 100% sure of this, but I believe this is where the kernel puts a log when it crashes. I don't have anything in this folder (happily) so I can't tell you what to look for.

As I've implied elsewhere, I think the real cause is swapping the internal & external SD cards. The solution is a custom ROM that repartitions NAND to better serve your needs, i.e. one that gives you a much bigger /data partition. With a custom ROM you could also install a script I located on xda-developers that moves your Dalvik cache from the /data partiition to the /cache partition. If you really have so many apps, that might free up 100mb+.

P.S. - how much stuff is in your /cache partition now? I suspect that giving it 512mb (the way the stock ROM does) is a huge waste of space.

[waleslie]

• dmesg - [...]
• logcat - [...](I'm assuming you're still using the stock ROM, correct?)

Yes, it is the stock rom with gapps/Play Store installed. I've attached the dm.txt and logcat.txt (I had to zip this to be able to attach it)... To be honest that's a lot of info and I'm not even sure what to look at.

• /data/tombstones - [...]

I had 10 files in the tombstone directory (I zipped and included one), all dated a couple of days ago. (possibly no older ones due to clearing the cache / dalvik?). They don't seem to call out one particular program... part way down the file, they each mention a few (seemingly random) apks. I'm certainly seeing some apks mentioned in there for programs that shouldn't have been running at the time (a few games and such).

• /data/dontpanic - [...]

The dontpanic directory was empty.

As I've implied elsewhere, I think the real cause is swapping the internal & external SD cards. The solution is a custom ROM that repartitions NAND to better serve your needs, i.e. one that gives you a much bigger /data partition. With a custom ROM you could also install a script I located on xda-developers that moves your Dalvik cache from the /data partiition to the /cache partition. If you really have so many apps, that might free up 100mb+.

P.S. - how much stuff is in your /cache partition now? I suspect that giving it 512mb (the way the stock ROM does) is a huge waste of space.

The /cache partition is essentially empty (two empty folders... lost+found and recovery), again, probably because I wiped the cache & dalvik yesterday with CWM.

While I understand that I could shift some data or partitions around we're still just talking about approximately 1 to 2gb of the 4gb total memory being allocated to the "internal storage." This is a far cry from swapping the stock 1gb internal with the 16gb physical SD card.

Yes, the swapping could be part of the problem, but my other kid with the same tablet is doing the same kind of stuff without this weird rebooting deal. The Polaroid threads on xda where instructions on how to make this swap in the vold.fstab file were given don't seem to have anyone reporting problems with it.

Bottom line is, I don't necessarily have to fix it (although, obviously, it would be nice to). If I can just get it to stay up to be able to run a full Titanium Backup, then I'd be free to wipe the tablet, possibly install a custom rom, and be on our way with a new clean setup. We could then restore apps in chunks to possibly find the culprit (if indeed it is a particular app causing the problem).

Is there a startup manager or something like that that would allow me to basically turn everything that's running in the background off, hopefully resulting in a stable tablet that could get through a backup? (Sort of like safe mode in Windows) ... or (I'm guessing less likely/possible) is there a way to extract/restore individual apps and their data from a CWM backup?

[dolorespark]

I've attached the dm.txt and logcat.txt (I had to zip this to be able to attach it)... To be honest that's a lot of info and I'm not even sure what to look at.

The goal was for you to look for a smoking gun. Since you posted them, I did look them over and couldn't find anything obvious - except that your system keeps restarting. I did a search for the specific error message that prompts the process manager to kill everything & restart but found only questions, not answers.

Bottom line is, I don't necessarily have to fix it (although, obviously, it would be nice to). If I can just get it to stay up to be able to run a full Titanium Backup, then I'd be free to wipe the tablet, possibly install a custom rom, and be on our way with a new clean setup. We could then restore apps in chunks to possibly find the culprit (if indeed it is a particular app causing the problem).

All you should need to preserve is your /data/data directory tree, assuming parts of that don't get moved. If you got all these apps from PlayStore, you shouldn't have to back them up - they should all be listed there when you go into your account

Is there a startup manager or something like that that would allow me to basically turn everything that's running in the background off, hopefully resulting in a stable tablet that could get through a backup? (Sort of like safe mode in Windows)

I don't know of any startup manager but there a few things you might try (these are WAGs). Based on something I saw in logcat.log, you may want to turn off Wifi to keep apps from "calling home" and/or to keep the Google stuff from checking for updates - there seemed to be something odd going on. Also, I wonder what would happen if you turned on USB storage to keep the system from accessing your internal or external cards.

[waleslie]

Re: Excessive Rebooting...

Well, with the vold.fstab changes, the /data/data should be on my physical SD card, so that's easy to preserve. Not the easiest or cleanest way to backup/restore, but it will work. I'm pretty much at the I give up point... it's nearly impossible to do anything before it reboots.

Approximately every other reboot, the wi-fi is off, so I don't think "calling home" is the problem. Although that doesn't mean the act of trying to call home isn't a problem.

I'm probably just going to go ahead, check that my data is safe, and wipe it...

[dolorespark]

Well, with the vold.fstab changes, the /data/data should be on my physical SD card, so that's easy to preserve.

I really don't think so - your data partition is a completely separate entity from either your internal or external SD cards. After I moved a couple of apps to the internal SD card, their .apk's were gone from /data/app but their data remained in /data/data (though the app's lib directory and any contents did move with the apk).

Moving those apps also answered another question I had: each relocated app resulted in the creation of one loop device and one "dm" entry when I ran cat /proc/partitions. So, if you had 165 loop devices listed, you've probably moved 165 apps.

One last thought: if you are set up for ADB, you may want to get into CWM and then run an fsck on your /system and /data partitions in case there's some filesystem error causing your problems. To do so, you'd run adb shell, then from the shell prompt you'd run /sbin/e2fsck -y /dev/block/nandd to check /system and /sbin/e2fsck -y /dev/block/nande to check /data. Running chkdsk in Windows on your external card probably wouldn't be a bad idea but I'd wait until /data/data was backed up before I'd try it.

[matt]

Just curious and lurking, what method was used to transfer the apps from internal? Moving system apps, antivirus, widgets, and market tsrs can create havoc....

The stock system/apps allows only some to be moved. App2sd can move some that shouldn't be.

[waleslie]

Re: Excessive Rebooting...

I really don't think so - your data partition is a completely separate entity from either your internal or external SD cards. After I moved a couple of apps to the internal SD card, their .apk's were gone from /data/app but their data remained in /data/data (though the app's lib directory and any contents did move with the apk).

Yeah, I realized my data wasn't there after the post...

Moving those apps also answered another question I had: each relocated app resulted in the creation of one loop device and one "dm" entry when I ran cat /proc/partitions. So, if you had 165 loop devices listed, you've probably moved 165 apps.

Yeah, sounds about right.

One last thought: if you are set up for ADB, you may want to get into CWM and then run an fsck on your /system and /data partitions in case there's some filesystem error causing your problems. To do so, you'd run adb shell, then from the shell prompt you'd run /sbin/e2fsck -y /dev/block/nandd to check /system and /sbin/e2fsck -y /dev/block/nande to check /data. Running chkdsk in Windows on your external card probably wouldn't be a bad idea but I'd wait until /data/data was backed up before I'd try it.

I've scanned the external card and it comes up clean.

On a good note, I did manage to run a full Titanium Backup without it rebooting as well as syncing all the data to dropbox with a program called Data Sync (a really great program that I highly recommend).

So, I will probably do a bit more investigation. I'm a little bit confused... you say "get into CWM" but list adb commands?

[waleslie]

Re: Excessive Rebooting...

Just curious and lurking, what method was used to transfer the apps from internal? Moving system apps, antivirus, widgets, and market tsrs can create havoc....

The stock system/apps allows only some to be moved. App2sd can move some that shouldn't be.

I've been moving them with Titanium Backup, but anything remotely system related, I leave where it is (widgets, wallpapers, adobe stuff, file managers, utilities, etc).

[matt]

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ccc71.pmw

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=imoblife.startupmanager

A couple I have used...

With es file explorer the date shown for apps seems to be the install date. Sdcard/android/data on my nexus 7, not sure on my pmid701x10. (Opera mobile recently installed is 1/12/2013)

[dolorespark]

I'm a little bit confused... you say "get into CWM" but list adb commands?

You can connect to the tablet via ADB when booted normally or when booted into CWM recovery. You'd want to check the "disks" while in CWM because they aren't mounted - fsck can make whatever changes are needed to fix things. When booted normally, they're mounted and in use - fsck may be able to identify errors but it can't change anything.

[waleslie]

You can connect to the tablet via ADB when booted normally or when booted into CWM recovery. You'd want to check the "disks" while in CWM because they aren't mounted - fsck can make whatever changes are needed to fix things. When booted normally, they're mounted and in use - fsck may be able to identify errors but it can't change anything.

It reports "clean" for both of them. I think I'm just going to go ahead, flash a new rom, and start clean.