yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] liveandlearn_again:
Would be great if it was fixed in the newest version of touchwiz Android 4.2.2. Was thinking about recommending this to my brother and parents.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] ssewk2x:
Sorry about the necro, but ..

I am running a 4.3.0 AOSP ROM on my AT&T note 2, and I have been experiencing the same hotboot -> runaway gsiff_daemon issue as well. I am currently experimenting with having renamed the binary. So far, I think everything is reasonably ok with one possible exception - my compass seems to indicate that my phone is in a constant state of rotation now. I will try again at some point to see if restoring gsiff_daemon fixes that problem.

But .. this is STILL an issue and it looks like little to no progress is being made :(
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] lgkahn:
stock rooted 4.1.1 not 4.1.2 issue today just renamed.. didnt have a hot boot either..
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] ssewk2x:
I renamed and replaced with a shell script that just logs something like "GSIFF daemon is disabled" once when it's executed. My plan is to see how often I see that message in a logcat after a couple days.

So far, so good.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] hpka:
I too need a solid option. Have tried:

* ES File Explorer - Root granted - tried to rename, "Task Failed"

* AirDroid (wow, AirDroid can do this) - device admin granted (didn't prompt for root, suspicious of that) - permission denied (likely because of root)

(Note: Dont own Root Explorer which is the other big suggestion in this thread)

Thoughts?

Happening on stock 4.3 then rooted, knox disabled.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] EL_REY666:
i have root explorer, just download it off another site...

i also have stock 4.3, root66, knox removed, root injected rom...

getting the battery drain but i do use the GPS with sygic and navigon when i need it... would this mess up those apps?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] hpka:
If found, if this happens, it's simply easier to power off the phone (power off, not restart) then power it back on again. No renaming needed and now I have the habit, I've not been affected.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] ssewk2x:
So, it's been a long time, and I've upgraded my Note 2 to a KitKat ROM.

And .. gsiff_daemon still goes run-away after a soft-reboot. I did find a way to reliably reproduce the behavior, too. I installed the XPosed framework, and using its "soft reboot" option will make gsiff_daemon lose its sh** every time. I've also found that disabling the service negatively impacts some of the sensors (especially the compass).

So, I've started trying a little something different. I wrote a script to be placed under /etc/init.d (or under /data/local/userinit.d if your phone is CM based). It starts a background process that checks gsiff_daemon's CPU usage and kills it if it's using more than 10% CPU. The daemon normally always shows 0%, and once killed, the system re-starts it immediately. The net effect is that if gsiff_daemon is over 10% for more than a minute, my script/service will automatically clean it up.

It would still be draining your batter during that minute, but hey .. a minute is better than hours, right? Plus, now you don't have to think about it.

The source for the script can be found here: https://github.com/Efpophis/Efpophi...e7796798a31b/data/local/userinit.d/91gsif_mon

You've got to install it under either /etc/init.d or /data/local/userinit.d and make it executable.

adb push 91gsif_mon /data/local/userinit.d
adb shell chmod 755 /data/local/userinit.d/91gsif_mon

Reboot your phone for it to take effect.

It's still a butt-ugly-hack, so if anyone has anything better, feel free to share.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] bradford89:
"Gsiff_daemon" battery drain solved, I believe

okay so I experienced the battery drain caused by Gsiff_daemon. my battery would go from 100% to 0 in roughly 8 hours, compared to the usual day and a half. But I found restarting my phone, turning it off and then back on, taking the battery out, I actually did a factory reset, but every time it would come back and destroy my battery.I had noticed as some of you mentioned that it was something to do with locations, so what I figured out was every time I use my GPS or one of my apps that use the GPS, it would show up on my battery and it would drain severely. so here's how I fixed it if you use GPS or if your location is even on, it will show up. So either go without having location on or the following steps.you will have to turn location off, plug your phone up to the charger, and restart your device. I usually let my phone charge all the way, I'm not sure what will happen if you don't let it charge all the way. This works for me everytime and it beats buying a new phone. Let me know how it works for you.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] drothenberger:
Removing gsiff_daemon causes lag?

I didn't really find anything that didn't work. Screen rotation worked fine, for example. However, scrolling (e.g., in Tapatalk) seemed very "laggy". It's hard to be quantitative about it, but for now I've restored the /system/bin/gsiff_daemon file.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] yokken:
Checked out my BetterBatteryStats today and found gsiff_daemon at the top of Processes. I rarely ever have screen rotation on, so I'm a little confused. But my battery is dropping a little fast. Not outrageously fast... but still noticeable.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] drothenberger:
The other day I tried killing gsiff_daemon when this happened to me. It restarted, but stopped using a lot of CPU. Try it yourself. I used System Tuner, but you could do it from Terminal Emulator, too:

app_158@android:/ $ export PATH=/data/local/bin:$PATH
app_158@android:/ $ su
app_158@android:/ # ps gsiff
USER PID PPID VSIZE RSS WCHAN PC NAME
system 252 1 36072 5024 ffffffff 400fc73c S /system/bin/gsiff_daemon
app_158@android:/ # kill 252
app_158@android:/ # ps gsiff
USER PID PPID VSIZE RSS WCHAN PC NAME
system 10347 1 36068 4996 ffffffff 4002d73c S /system/bin/gsiff_daemon
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] yokken:
Just killed the process. We'll see if my battery drains any slower.

What ROM/kernel are you running?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] drothenberger:
Stock rooted UCALG1 ROM and kernel.

The last time it happened, my phone "hot booted". I think that's the term. Everything hung, then the launcher and rest of the UI acted like it was just started from a boot, but I never actually saw the boot animation (I was watching the whole time). It was pretty similar to the time I tried Hot Boot through the Quick Boot app.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] yokken:
WHOA. My phone did that today when I was playing music through the stock Music player application. It just stopped, appeared completely off, so I held down the power and it vibrated like it was gonna boot. Then the screen just came on, but all my radios had reset and stuff. I fully rebooted my phone after that happened. What the hell? I'm running FreeGS3 (fiveohfox version, based off UCALEM) with ICS Domination and the KT747 kernel. First time it ever happened..
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] jcejohnson:
gsiff_daemon was killing me too. A few days ago, I I stalled the Nostalgia ROM. A bit later, I removed a handful of the stock apps (some were replaced with their stock ICS counterparts). I haven't had gsiff_daemon run wild since but it could be coincidence.

This is the list of what I removed or replaced:

AccuweatherDaemon.apk.bak

AccuweatherWidget.apk.bak

AccuweatherWidget_Main.apk.bak

AnalogClockSimple.apk.apk.bak

AnalogClockUnique.apk.bak

ChatON.apk.bak

DeviceHelp.apk.bak

Di Exchange.apk.bak

Kies.apk.bak

KiesAir.apk.bak

SecEmail.apk.bak

SecMms.apk.bak

Talk.apk.bak

YahoonewsDaemon.apk.bak

YahoonewsWidget.apk.bak

YahoostockDaemon.apk.bak

YahoostockWidget.apk.bak

kieswifi.apk.bak

gitalClock.apk.bak

DualClockAnalog.apk.bak

DualClockDigital.apk.bak
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] murdermonkey9000:
Every time my phone "hot boots" gsiff_daemon starts murdering my battery, I haven't had It happen for a few days now, but when I see it I power off, restart doesn't seem to have the same effect.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] wankelrx:
My battery was dropping at about 1% every 4-5 minutes. I had it plugged into a computer and the battery was still dropping.

View attachment 1205238
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] drothenberger:
If you're rooted, try killing gsiff_daemon with a tool like System Tuner. My guess is it will fix your problem.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] wankelrx:
ok thanks. rebooting kills it but I would like to find out what is causing it to start or hang.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] drothenberger:
Yeah, I agree it would be nice to just avoid it. But I like that I can have a simple script to run to fix the problem when I notice it (usually because my phone is hot) instead of having to reboot.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] ingenious247:
I wonder if this could have something to do with the "motion" features? (settings > motion)

I see everyone keep mentioning auto-rotate, but what if you have motion turned on for several features (direct call, flip to mute, etc)

I wonder if that could at least play a part?

FYI I don't have this issue but just trying to help trouble shoot
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] blue265:
I had the same problem today with the gsiff_daemon and killed my battery in 3 hours. I streamed grooveshark through the mobile website and think it was the culprit. Even after closing the site it kept running I think and phone got pretty warm. Were any of you with the issue streaming music when you saw this killing your battery ?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Genomic:
So, I'll start off this by saying that I have identified this problem on two different phones, and on one of them I found the root cause.

Alright, so, on my first phone I noticed this was eating up battery like nobody's business (I did the math on the battery usage to account for the Cell Standby misreporting). I couldn't do much to tame it either. This was on stock, with not much installed on the phone at all. I tried to look it up and barely found anything, so I shrugged, rooted my device and proceeded to remove apps that (from what others had said) were safe to remove. Tested it the next day with this new setup. Still had the issue. From there I attempted other roms, and even stock again over the next few days. Absolutely none of this worked. Note that at this point I should mention that I tried this with and without the tethering mod, just for good measure. All in all this took about 9 days of my time testing before I figured I had a defective phone. Went back to best buy, exchanged the phone, and all seemed fine. Tested it for two days without rooting before going for the root, just for good measure. After I rooted it, I flashed the cell standby fix alone, tested it for a day. All values reported fine, normal battery usage. It was fantastic. The next day, for testing purposes, I put in the tethering mod... That's when it blew up. Battery drained like crazy and I wasn't even doing anything (tethering was off). So, I rolled myself back to a backup I did before the tethering mod, and all is fantastic again.

To sum it up, from my experience with it, if you have tried tons of things to no avail, you potentially have a defective phone. Go exchange it. I'll also take this chance to say that even on stock, apps were randomly crashing (things like settings) on my first phone. I figured it was just something I was doing.

If you have been constantly running this with the tethering mod, try it without it, see how it fares.

Once again, this is just my experience with this issue, it may vary with yours. I hope this helps some people.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mobilehavoc:
I'm on UCALG1 stock (AT&T) and I've had this problem twice now - 3rd one just happening which is how I found this thread. Based on what people are showing in logs, I'd bet 100% it's the Motion option in the settings. I've run the phone for 10 days before straight without having this bug but only started happening after i played around with some motion settings.

I just powered off and on. I'm going to try turning off some of the Motion settings. If it happens again I'll try turning all of them off. I don't really use many if at all.

My best guess is a possible culprit could be the "Shake to Update". I had that checked recently but didn't have it when I first got the phone. But it could be any of them.

Good hunting :D
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] wankelrx:
I've had the motion turned off most of the time I've had the phone so I don't think it's that.

It happened to me twice today, Once while in flipboard and once while in facebook. It did the "hot reboot" both times.

I

View attachment 1207597
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mobilehavoc:
True. But I've had it run 10 days of hard use with ton of those apps being used without this happening and then towards the end it happened. Now I have it happen almost every 1-2 days (hot reboot and runaway daemon). I used to have most of the motion off but had them on recently. Didn't connect the two until I saw the logs that showed it was somewhat related to sensors.

You could be right too.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] NICKJR:
i had the same thing drain my battery, it seemed to be the CPU sleeper script or the app. i deleted it and it went away. it was driving me crazy too

---------- Post added at 12:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:33 PM ----------

also , might want to watch the accuweather too, in regards to the temp notification
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] obutto:
This is a problem that is literally bugging me out. I love my S3...but every other day this keeps happening. It's been a lot worse these last 5 days.

I've rebooted plenty of times...but it keeps happening. Sometimes it's not as bad, but other times it will literally eat away my battery in five hours.

I'm almost 100% sure that it is related to the Samsung Media Player or charging Alarm, possibly a combination of the two. My phone literally spikes about 5 degrees Celsius once I turn on any type of music and then it's literally drain city from there. I keep checking battery stats and Android System is always 2x everything else with Media following it.

At first I thought the heat & battery problems was due to my kernel choice, but it wasn't. Went through every possible kernel for T-Mobile. Was going to change ROMs, but it seems like that did no help for people here.

I think I'll be taking my phone back to Costco and exchanging it for a new one.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] NICKJR:
Do you have the CPU sleep app or script installed? Or Accuweather that has temp notification active?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] obutto:
I don't have CPU sleep app installed. However I do have a HTC Clock Widget imitation. It uses weather.com information from what I'm seeing so that should not be the problem.

From what I'm seeing, for almost all of us the phone gets extremely hot when the drain happens, correct?

There is definitely some sort of memory leak with Gsiff_daemon, but right now we have no idea what this process is used for. I'll try disabling motion activation stuff and see what happens. If I get a new phone and I get the same results, that basically confirms that this problem exists in all S3's and certain usage patterns are triggering it.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Beknatok:
What makes you think the issue with Gsiff_daemon is specifically a memory leak? Do you even know what a memory leak really is? Have you confirmed that Gsiff_daemon continues to grow & consume additional RAM - that's the simple definition of a memory leak.

The heat would be a side-effect of your phone continuously running, presumably maxing out your CPU and consuming battery power. That's simply a resulting symptom, but not a root cause.

The fundamental questions that needs answering is what does Gsiff_daemon do/control & what is triggering it.

To those of you experiencing this issue, please use aLogCat to grab & share system logs about what your system is actively doing while the daemon is active.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mobilehavoc:
I don't think it's a memory leak. It seems more like a race condition or a loop that keeps the CPU active. A reboot fixes it and someone already posted logs which show it is trying to read the motion sensors on the phone.

One other thing to try is calibrate tour gyro in Settings and see if that may help.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] obutto:
Reason I believe it's some sort of memory leak was because whenever I do Quadrant tests while my battery is draining, I score under 3.5k while OC'd to 1.8k, which is extremely low for this phone. But I guess you're right, it's probably maxing out my CPU instead of my memory.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] drothenberger:
I had a "hot reboot" happen to me yesterday while using Google Voice. The phone locked up, then hot booted, then gsiff_daemon went nuts. I killed gsiff_daemon with System Tuner and all was fine after that. I know that rebooting also works, but this was faster and less disruptive.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] obutto:
Exchanged my phone today. Not 1 hot reboot and gsiff_daemon is nowhere to be seen. I guess it wasn't my usage pattern but the phone itself...Maybe others will have different experiences though.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mobilehavoc:
I've had it on two different phones so I don't think it's the hardware. Just hasn't happened to you yet.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mobilehavoc:
Just happened again. Not sure why. I've turned off motion now to see if that helps.

Edit: This issue happens frequently lately so I'm thinking its a bad app but no clue what it could be
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] obutto:
I still haven't gotten it yet. I switched from SetCPU to System Tuner Pro. Maybe it's on-demand mode is stopping me from getting it (if it's not the same script lol)? Probably speaking too soon though; I've only owned the phone for about 10 hours. I just pray I don't get this stuff again
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] J M L:
The reason your quadrant scores go down when your phone is hot is because something (probably gsiff_daemon) has one core maxed out. Go into settings, development, and check show cpu usage. You'll see gsiff_daemon at the top. Kill it, using some app, or the terminal, and things will return to normal.

I had been having frequent hot boots and gsiff_daemon problems, so I installed watchdog to automatically kill it when it ran away, but I haven't had any problems since installing watchdog. It's not logging anything, so it's just a coincidence.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mobilehavoc:
Anybody had this issue after motion is completely turned off?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] drothenberger:
I have. I had my phone hot reboot while I was using Google Voice and then gsiff_daemon went nuts. All motion turned off.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mobilehavoc:
Crap. So it looks like it's something else.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mobilehavoc:
Do you have other features enabled like Voice Cmd for Apps ? That's one I used to have off and recently turned on. I'm going to try turning that off. I'm almost positive its app related but I can't remember when it started and what apps I had installed around that time.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] drothenberger:
Only the two hand gestures (screen shot and mute). I'm pretty sure my last incident was due to a system crash. The last three times this has happened to me it's been after a hot boot.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] VirtuaPirate:
Same gsiff_daemon issue

Well, add me to the list of gsiff_d(a)emon victims. Even I have been monitoring gsiff_daemon for the past few days. It goes nuts every time my cell phone goes through the so called hot boot. The hot reboot occurs when my phone is kinda hung/frozen and then suddenly I see the lock screen and phone searching for n/w provider as if I just restarted my phone. I have been using System Tuner, BetterBattery Stats to keep a check on it and kill it. Normally the second core is at sleep, but when gsiff_daemon goes crazy, both the cores max out. Arghhh. I hate it. Its been hogging on my battery like hell.

@ J M L: How did you set watchdog to kill it automatically? I was not able to find gsiff_daemon under processes. I must be missing a toggle to expose kernel processes maybe. Can you help me with that?

Just an FYI, I am on VZW.

Edit: I tried disabling motion gestures and what not to pinpoint the culprit, all in vain. It just seems to be random!
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mobilehavoc:
So I've tried various things and this hot reboot followed by gsiff_daemon going nuts is happening very very frequently now. Almost too frequently. I fully believe it's an app. The only app I've added recently that's constantly running so I'm going to try quiting that and pray it's just that because if it's another app i don't know what it could be.

Anybody else have theories?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] VirtuaPirate:
How about..

How about we list all our apps and shortlist the common ones..then move ahead from there, striking out ones from the list, that do not resolve the issue on disabling?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] J M L:
I've set watchdog to monitor all phone processes. I checked every option for the type of process to monitor. Then I set it for a system process cpu threshold of 40%. I finally had a runaway gsiff_daemon, and watchdog warned me about it, but it won't kill it. I guess it won't kill system processes. At least it will vibrate to let me know something is wrong, so I can manually kill it. Perhaps there is another similar app which will automatically kill system process.

I've tried motion control off, on, etc., and it seems like whenever there is a hot boot gsiff_daemon runs away. My guess is the hot boot occurs when some system watchdog (don't confuse it with the app, it's a generic term) detects something isn't responding so it forces a restart of certain processes. My second guess is that due to a bug in gsiff_daemon, or in the way/order things are restarted something goes wrong and causes gsiff_daemon to go into a run away state. That isn't based on any data, just my intuition from years of Linux sysadmin experience.

If I had a way to force a hot boot, then it should be possible to capture a log and see if there is any clue as to what is going wrong. I don't think what causes the hot boot is the root of the problem. Sure,it's an unstable app that triggered the phone's protection mechanism so the phone doesn't crash. Whatever caused it is bad, but that is probably lots of different things on different phones. The problem is the bug in gsiff_daemon or in the hot boot restart.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mobilehavoc:
Have you tried just deleting gsiff_daemon or at least changing permissions so it can't run ? I wonder if it serves any critical purpose ?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] jiggytom:
I also experienced this yesterday. I had a hot boot while navigating. Not sure when the gsiff daemon started eating the battery, but I noticed it at the end of the day. I was also using a "level" (to check if something is level) program for 2/3 minutes, so maybe that has something to do with it.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mobilehavoc:
Will take a while to hunt down the app but anybody else have 'LinkedIn' app installed? It just hot rebooted while launching that app from a fresh restart - quickest hot reboot I've ever seen.

It might not be that app but then I went to the Play Store page and there are tons of 1 star reviews because the last update failed on people's phones - more interestingly the most recent comment is from a GS2 user who says latest update reboots his phone.

I've uninstalled it and I doubt I can be that lucky that it's that app and I find it so quickly but crossing my fingers.

Again I highly doubt this is the culprit but I think we're going to have to go through process of elimination.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] drothenberger:
I tried that. Everything still appeared to work, but scrolling felt "laggy". Try it yourself. It won't break anything.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] mobilehavoc:
Does deleting it stop the hot reboots or just the runaway process. ?