Can't Disable Bloatware

[mddvul22]

Hi, I'm new to Oandbackup. I'm having trouble with the disable feature. I've got a rooted phone running Android 2.3.3. Trying to use oandbackup to disable some of the bloatware on my phone. However, when I click on disable, select the 0 id user (I'm the only user on the phone), and hit ok, nothing seems to happen. The app isn't disabled. The oandbackup.log file seems to trying to kill the app, but it isn't disabled:

2014/03/03 - 09:11:55 [1] Killed pm disable --use... [com.microsoft.mobileexperiences.bing]
2014/03/03 - 09:11:55 [com.microsoft.mobileexperiences.bing]

Any ideas?
Thanks!
Bryan

[jensstein]

hi. actually it seems the system kills pm. pm is an android-built-in script which calls the java program com.android.commands.pm.Pm which then talks to the package manager.
as far as i know this is the only way to do things like disabling packages without having the same signature as the system image. unfortunately, pm has a few bugs and there is also a chance that your version of pm simply doesn't have this feature.

could you please try to run this command in a terminal emulator on your device (or through adb): pm disable --user 0 com.microsoft.mobileexperiences.bing (it has to run with su privileges), and send me the output.
you can also try to look in your pm's usage instructions for the feature: pm 2>&1 | grep enable.

[mddvul22]

Hi, thanks for the reply. Here is the output from the terminal:

pm disable --user 0 com.microsoft.mobileexperiences.bing

[1] Killed pm disable --user 0
com.microsoft.mobileexperiences.bing

I agree, it looks like pm is getting killed. I'll do some more digging
around and get back to you.

Thanks!
Bryan

On Mon, March 3, 2014 10:18 am, jensstein wrote:

hi. actually it seems the system kills pm. pm is an android-built-in
script which calls the java program com.android.commands.pm.Pm which then
talks to the package manager.
as far as i know this is the only way to do things like disabling packages
without having the same signature as the system image. unfortunately, pm
has a few bugs and there is also a chance that your version of pm simply
doesn't have this feature.

could you please try to run this command in a terminal emulator on your
device (or through adb): pm disable --user 0 com.microsoft.mobileexperiences.bing (it has to run with su privileges),
and send me the output.
you can also try to look in your pm's usage instructions for the feature:
pm 2>&1 | grep enable.

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[jensstein]

could you maybe also try it without the --user 0 part?
and it would also be nice if you could see if pm gives a proper error code here. please run echo $? after running the disable command.

[mddvul22]

OK, running the command without the --user 0 gives the exact same result.

Then I ran the "echo $?". It returned "137".

For now, I've been able to disable the app using another app called
RootAppDelete from the Google play store. However, I'd be happy to enable
it again, if you are interested in tracking this problem down.

Thanks,
Bryan

On Mon, March 3, 2014 1:59 pm, jensstein wrote:

could you maybe also try it without the --user 0 part?
and it would also be nice if you could see if pm gives a proper error code
here. please run echo $? after running the disable command.

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[jensstein]

oh well, there probably isn't much to do then. either your pm has a bug or doesn't have the feature at all (you can check the latter by looking at the usage instructions - just run pm by itself).

ultimately it would be nice to find out how other apps do, if they are actually able to make it work on your device. it could be that the app you reference just edits package-restrictions.xml directly. i'll consider working on a fallback to such a method (though this is not documented so it could just introduce more bugs).

also, if you want to get rid of bloat with oab, i think the best method would be to just uninstall it. then you get more space and you can always make a backup first. the enable / disable feature is meant more as a tool for devices with several users.

[mddvul22]

Good point on just backing up and then removing. By the way, thanks for your work on this app. Love the open source backup!

• Bryan

On March 4, 2014 1:01:43 PM GMT+00:00, jensstein notifications@github.com wrote:

lso, if you want to get rid of bloat with oab, i think the best method
would be to just uninstall it. then you get more space and you can
always make a backup first. the enable / disable feature is meant more
as a tool for devices with several users.

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