[Android Apps and Games] wbedard:
CollegeDev,

This is a follow-up to my post below, after having conducted some extensive investigation into the matter.

The problem I am experiencing I think may run at least a bit deeper than what I described but I believe may come down to corrupted PDroid Extension (PDE) settings. What concerns me is whether the settings architecture for PDE is somewhat "fragile" since the device in question is a "casual use" device and is not the subject to regular flashing, hacking or related activities. The problem below occurred during a "shake-down" period of my new ROM which included support for PDE. Up until the issue below, it had been running near flawlessly.

I started looking at logcats using the aLogcat app, which has been around a while. I noticed that it was not outputing as much data as I was used to seeing in a logcat and I confirmed that finding by comparing it to a logcat via adb. So, my next step was to capture a boot-time logcat via adb and see what was going on with aLogcat, since it seemed like a possible permission issue. The settings for aLogcat in PDE are "real", with nothing blocked.

While reviewing the boot-time logcat, I first noticed the following line:

W/PackageManager( 335): Not granting permission android.permission.READ_LOGS to package org.jtb.alogcat (protectionLevel=50 flags=0x8be44)

Although this looked odd, I confirmed that it was likely accurate from a PDE standpoint, since the "systemLogsSetting" file in the app's directory under /data/system/privacy did in fact contain a "0". I followed up with a command (find /data/system/privacy -name systemLogsSetting -exec grep -i 1 {} \; -print) which listed (I assume...) all the apps which PDE was allowing access to the system logs. This list, although mostly accurate, did not correlate 100% with the apps that I had allowed in the PDE app. Not included in the list was aLogcat and aLogrec, which were both having problems capturing logcats so I thought I was on the right track. The list also included an app that I had blocked access to system logs in PDE. Using adb with the device in recovery, I made the relevant corrections to the settings files and rebooted. However, aLogcat, which used to provide a snippet of information, now displayed nothing. There was no change to aLogrec, which still wasn't capturing anything.

While running another logcat via adb, I ran aLogcat and noted the following output:

I/System.out( 2504): tainted command part 0: logcat

I/System.out( 2504): tainted command part 1: -v

I/System.out( 2504): tainted command part 2: long

I/System.out( 2504): tainted command part 3: *:V

After much Googling with little results, I narrowed those messages down to part of the PDE patch to ProcessManager. Since you are far more familiar with the function of your patch than I am, I was wondering if you could shed some light on what might be going on here and perhaps suggest a direction I could head in that would help me to correct the problem. I'd like to determine a "technical" fix to the problem rather than a simple "factory reset" of the phone. As a said, I'm concerned whether the current design of PDE is fragile enough that problems like this might be recurring.

Thanks in advance!

R/

wbedard