WinterBoard creates significant lag in 2.1 firmware

[reznor9]

I KNEW IT!!!!! I've been saying this for months. In an earlier thread the "cydia vs installer" i said it was cydia and it components that made my phone lag, calls drop and apps crash on a regulary basis. I was "advised" it was apples firmware that did it...yeah freakin right. Everytime I upgrade my phone and re pwn it...it runs worse and worse with each upgrade. I never had ANY of these problems with Ziphone and installer!!!! I sure wish it was available now....i'de rather have a standard ole boring phone that worked as it is suppose to than a cute little theme with my apps constantly crashing and freezing up. Guess I need to give Zibri some extra cash so he releases a working program that doesn't crash your phone. Sorry dev team but I think you as well as apple are releasing programs to fast.

Why dont you just use the pwnage tool and go into advanced/expert settings and just chose the option to make a custom firmware without installing cydia... just install installer 4 if thats what you want... then you can see if cydia is your problem or not. Please let us all know, and try not to just blame the dev team and cydia without testing your theory.

and FYI, zibri is a liar, theif and media whore... not to mention a moron that has no reguard for the saftey of his software. His software screwed up one of my 2G iPhones... lost the wifi, phone signal, IMEI and everything.. wiped clean... email after email and he refused to help. He even deleted messages I posted on his blog for help. I have no respect for him. I sometimes wonder if pwnage tool or iLiberty would have restored function to that old phone, but I gave it away for parts after obsessing over it and working on it almost non stop for 2 months.

[pj_rage]

For some reason winterboard inadvertently did affect signal, but I think only because of power management issues. If winterboard takes up so much cpu/battery, it possibly ends up degrading the signal.

Interestingly, a full reboot of my router and setting SSH as an "allowed application" in the router fixed the wifi/ssh issues. ive rebooted the pc my iphone, installed Cydia updates, left the house, etc... I come in and open the iphone and wifi now connects instantaneously and SSH connects.

I think the lag is more of an issue with 3G iphones becasue my son's 2G now synced with app store apps 1,000 songs and winterboard installed, seems much snappier than my 3G. He does not have categories yet nor five icon dock this iphone has been modded every which way and unlocked at one point since 1.1.3. I always thought this was a better iphone than my other 2G that was originally a 1.0.2.

mediaserverd has to do with iphones core audio. I remember on my old 2g having an issue with mediaserverd eating my battery. I found it running every time I used the ipod or played a game with sound. I had installed sysinfo (obviously not available on 2.x) and killed the process, then i learned that a respring killed teh process and installed BigBoss respring app. I got in the habit of respringing before putting the iphone to sleep after using ipod or even safari and mail as well.

Anotehr method is to fully close the application by holding the home button for 5-10 seconds until it switches back to springboard as opposed to just clicking the home button. Battery life much better.

Good theory regarding the signal/battery problems, but I'm not sure that's the case - at least not for me. As I've mentioned, my battery goes down insanely fast, even when not using the phone at all, due to my mediaserverd problem (or whatever the hell else 2.1 did/does). BUT, my signal has been AWESOME since 2.1. I used to have 1-2 bars 3G pretty much everywhere, but now I have 4-5 bars in the same places. I have definitely NOT noticed any sort of correlation between signal and my rapid battery drain. Signal appears perfect and unaffected by the battery problems. Additionally, my 3G and edge data have both been functioning perfectly, whereas I had alot of problems on 2.0.2 with 3G data just not working, even with good signal.

I also believe that the mediaserverd process is connected to more than just sounds. Or, at least, it runs during more than just sound related stuff (not including when it's running rogue). I think an example of something that uses it is springboard when it loads your icons/background/etc. I think the process literally serves the media to the OS or something like that. Any time the phone is going to display a media file (pic/video/audio/etc) it goes through mediaserverd. Or so it seems.

In other news, I can't wait to get some time this weekend (I hope) to play around with the phone and find the source of this battery/mediaserverd problem. Today I lost 20% battery in 2 hours with only 40 mins ipod use (screen off), and nothing else. Checked out the processes running, and sure enough, mediaserverd was chugging away at 3-4%. This particular case seems like it killed more battery than usual, so I'm not sure if mediaserverd is the actual root of the problem, or just a symptom of a bigger (related) problem. Either way, I killed it and the battery has since only lost 2% in the last 8 hours of not using it at all, while in airplane mode. Which is pretty normal, I think, and about what I expect +/- a percent or two.

And now that I've experienced the sweet snappiness that is the phone without winterboard, I'm becoming much more determined to manage the artwork file replacement myself and ditch winterboard. Lately it's been getting more and more annoying when I exit one app, click the next, and instead of launching it, it lags a second and then it thinks I pressed and held, and the icons start wiggling. Hopefully I'll get to try to fix it this weekend also and I can report back on whether or not I can get a "theme" without the performance hit of winterboard.

[bhz1]

What command are you using to see how much mediaserverd is using? I admit I'm a bit of a novice at unix and googled and discovered the ps -e command. I can read what is running but am not sure what else is there.

yes since 2.1 signal has been impeccable. Prior to this my signal was degrading to the point my phone was totally unreliable. It seemed to be worse when I needed it the most. Today I just drove 4 1/2 hours from the Philly suburbs to the Finger Lakes region of NY state. Once north of Allentown, there was no 3G, just Edge and for the first time I actually had GPRS (at least the GPRS dot icon) Since I was riding i spent a good portion of the trip playing with the iphone, It seemed to switch back and forth seemlessly between edge and gprs. i was using Safari, email and even youtube worked fairly well on edge. Interestingly, I was able to open safari pages and email on gprs. seemed quicker than edge was before 2.1. Checked in at the motel here with free wifi, the iphone latched right on to the wifi signal. We come here a few times a year and I have always had trouble getting both phone (edge) or wifi here.

I switched to numerical battery last night. I lost 4 % in 5 hours in sleep mode. Today, I had it plugged into the car charger the whole trip but unplugged it around 2:00 with 100% showing. I checked weather twice, received 2 texts and sent 2 texts, ran speedtest once. It is now 4:45 and I'm at 89%. I did respring before putting to sleep.

Another thought, what do you have set as timing for your screen lock? I have kept mine on "never" but alwasy manually put it to sleep. All of my apps open in 2 -3 seconds. quite a bit better. i find that the more I respring/reboot, the better the iphone runs and then I no longer have to respring or reboot so often.

All this improvement since rebooting my home router. Doesnt make sense to me. I'm 250 miles from home an dmy iphone is snappier and had a better signal than ecver. What would my home network have to do with this?

[461am]

What command are you using to see how much mediaserverd is using?

Found out how to make top work. It's almost ridiculously simple. Install the top package, install mobileterminal, and just type top in. It's easier to observe through ssh though.

Today I lost 20% battery in 2 hours with only 40 mins ipod use (screen off), and nothing else. Checked out the processes running, and sure enough, mediaserverd was chugging away at 3-4%.

I just can't recreate this. Mediaserverd for me peaks at 35% and above (as soon as I start playing audio) and then stabilizes at 3-4% usage. Seconds after I stop the audio, it goes right back to 0%.

[pj_rage]

Found out how to make top work. It's almost ridiculously simple. Install the top package, install mobileterminal, and just type top in. It's easier to observe through ssh though.

Exactly. Install the top package from cydia. Best to use insomnia (so you can ssh in when the phone is asleep) and SSH, then just type "top" and it opens up. Press o then type "time" or "cpu" to sort by those columns so you can find the culprits. Then press q when you want to quit. As mentioned you can do it from mobile terminal also, but it's hard to view all the info that way. Once you see the process id number on the left in top, you can quit top and type "kill <id>" where <id> is the id number" ie "kill 223". This is what I do when I see that mediaserverd is continually running.

My timing lock is set to 1 minute, but I always manually lock it. Losing 4% in 5 hours non-airplane mode without touching the phone is probably pretty normal, maybe a little worse than I would personally expect, but every battery is a little different I'm sure, plus fetch/push settings, brightness, etc. Losing 11% with the little bit of usage you had in 2:45 seems a little too much compared to what I was getting pre-2.1, but again I guess it could be normal.

[pj_rage]

Here's an update on my battery situation. Bottom line, battery life still sucks.

I didn't uninstall winterboard this weekend, but instead, I simply unapplied all themes. This has not stopped my mediaserverd running rogue problem, but I have noticed the phone being more responsive and loading the general apps (safari, sms, contacts, phone, etc) faster. I think it has to do with RAM. It's as if there is more ram available more often. A big thing I've noticed is that safari does not have to refresh the page every time I go into it. Almost every single time, it has kept the exact view I had last time. So, I'm liking this performance increase.

I also removed Dock, because I don't use it and figured perhaps it had something to do with it. This had no effect either. I refuse to remove quick gold, which I suppose could be causing this problem. Frankly, quick gold is the primary reason I do not want to be unjailbroken, and if it IS causing the battery issue, then I'm willing to sacrifice battery for it But I don't think it's the problem.

I also found that I have extra folders in /private/var/stash. Two Application/Ringtones/Themes/etc folders. I deleted the extra Application folder, because it was easy to identify which was the "real" one being used (file /Applications returned the symlink to the real Application folder) but I couldn't be bothered to remove the others. This didn't help, and I doubt removing the others would either.

I have noticed something else that I didn't know before, that is changing the way I investigate this mediaserverd problem. When I run top from mobile terminal, mediaserverd seems to always be running. Unless I kill it in mobile terminal and then run top again, and even then, most times it runs again. I think it's possibly "normal" that it does this. It seems to be related to opening the top program, and/or to playing a keyboard sound as I type the word top in. So, I can't *really* tell if mediaserverd has been / is running rogue simply from mobile terminal. I have to turn insomnia on, ssh in, and run top that way. This is a little less convenient for keeping an eye on it "on the road." I can still view the total cpu time to see if it's absurdly higher than it should be. Also, when mediaserverd is confirmed to be running rogue, the usage stats DO seem to be reflecting this by being much higher than actual.

I'm honestly growing really tired of this, and as much as I absolutely positively do not want to restore as new phone and set everything up again, I'm thinking I'll have to try that soon, because this is getting out of hand. I barely use the phone (maybe 1 hour per day actual usage) and the battery is nearly 50% before I charge it, whereas it used to be like 80%+ before 2.1. I'm mostly worried about seriously degrading the lifetime of my battery. Instead of the battery lasting me 2 years or whatever, it's going to last me half of whatever it would have. It already seems worse. Today, the phone has been on for 2.5 hours, made one 30 second phone call, rebooted the phone once, and ran top for a total of like 1 minute. In other words, like 2 mins usage, 2.5 hours standby. Battery is at 84%, lol. A couple weeks ago, even with mediaserverd running rogue, it would have been like 95% now. I'm going to end up with a crappy battery after all of this, because it's pretty much constantly being drained at a pretty significant rate

I don't see myself having the time in the near future for a full restore, but when I do, I'll try it, and report back.

In the mean time, has anyone else seen this problem? It's so weird that I'm the only one? Has anyone not confirmed this problem, but had a noticeable battery problem after 2.1, and fixed it by restoring?

[461am]

I refuse to remove quick gold, which I suppose could be causing this problem. Frankly, quick gold is the primary reason I do not want to be unjailbroken, and if it IS causing the battery issue, then I'm willing to sacrifice battery for it But I don't think it's the problem.

It's funny you should mention quickgold; its the only application that makes my mediaserverd go rogue.

[pj_rage]

It's funny you should mention quickgold; its the only application that makes my mediaserverd go rogue.

A joke?!

If not, that would be a relief to know that's the problem. Then I could make the developer aware and hope for a fix. Or at least figure out exactly which action in quick gold causes the problem?

[CaptainChaos]

If winterboard is causing battery issues then this is bad for me. It is the ONLY reason I pWNED my phone. It is something I will just have to live with though because I will not look at the hideous theme on the stock phones.

[461am]

it's the only application that does it to me, and that to only every now and then. In the past 3 days, I've noticed it twice. Each time it went back to 0% usage after about half an hour. After which it wouldn't go rogue again, making me originally dismiss quickgold as just being on at the wrong time, coinciding with some other happening. But it happening twice makes me think otherwise.

[pj_rage]

it's the only application that does it to me, and that to only every now and then. In the past 3 days, I've noticed it twice. Each time it went back to 0% usage after about half an hour. After which it wouldn't go rogue again, making me originally dismiss quickgold as just being on at the wrong time, coinciding with some other happening. But it happening twice makes me think otherwise.

Thanks for the help anyway. I did originally look at quickgold as a potential culprit, but I quickly ruled it out because I had SSH'd in, ran top, and then individually opened and closed all the apps I thought it could be, including quick gold. And mediaserverd did not go rogue during that test session. I had concluded that none of those apps were the culprit (including quickgold) but since the problem came back, I have no idea what to think. During that test session I had literally used everything I could think of that I had been using when mediaserverd was definitely rogue, and I just couldn't replicate it. It has to be some elusive combo of opening/closing stuff. Maybe I'll reluctantly remove quick gold for a bit and see what happens anyway.

Do you have battery problems also that you are tracking down? Or did you just happen to notice mediaserverd running when the phone was "sleeping?"

To be honest, I'm not even sure that mediaserverd running rogue is my only problem. Even when it's not running lately my battery has been significantly worse than before 2.1. I do have location services on, but I've never turned it off since I got the phone. Did they change something about it that I don't understand? I mean, pre-2.1 it asked me if I wanted to turn it on only one time (in maps or something) and I hit yes, and it didn't ask again, I just left it on because I never had battery problems. After I upgraded, I still haven't touched it, and I've never seen another message about it, but now my battery is worse. Did they change something I'm not understanding, or should my particular situation be the same before and after 2.1?

[461am]

no battery issues, just noticed it running, like I said, it went to 0% itself after awhile.

[pj_rage]

Just tried playing around with it again and could not get quick gold to have mediaserverd run rogue. Or anything else that I tried. The process shut down normally after being locked no matter what I tried. I did confirm that it runs during mobile terminal (even without typing or doing anything, just looking at the shell) at about the same cpu levels as rogue mediaserverd does. But as soon as I exit terminal, it shuts down normally. Don't know what's causing it.

But as I said, even without it running rogue, my battery is absolutely worse than ever today. It's the single worst battery day since I got the phone on launch day. Normally at this point in the work day, my battery is around 97-98%, potentially it's at 93-95% if I've listen to ipod for a bit. On a "bad" day it might be at around 75-78% right now.

However, at this moment, it's at 33% and falling. Fast. Usage stats show 7hrs 29 mins standby, of which, 5 hours was in airplane mode untouched. And 2 hours 32 mins usage. Approx 1 hour of that usage was mediaserverd running rogue (or at least an otherwise innaccurate usage number because it said 1 hr when I only used it 1 min). I had killed off the rogue mediaserverd when the battery was at about 84% as I mentioned earlier today. Approx 1 hour of the mentioned usage time was using the ipod through headphones at a mid volume level. The rest of the usage was me putzing around on the phone (ssh, top, checking usage, finding new song on ipod, etc). The only data that would have occurred during the 2.5 hours it wasn't in airplane mode would be fetch email at 30 min intervals. I didn't try loading any data or mail, or any web pages or anything else.

This is remarkably bad!

It's a little funny, I snapped a few screens in the last 10 mins. One is 43% battery, 2 hours 25mins usage. The next, 2 hours 30 mins usage 38%, the next, after a restart, 2 hours 30 mins (still) battery 33%. Lost 10% battery in 5 mins usage and one restart. I would immediately think that something is seriously wrong with my battery (hardware wise), but this problem started DIRECTLY in line with my upgrade to 2.1. I had NO problems with battery AT ALL before 2.1, and since, I've only had like 1 completely normal battery day.

I guess I HAVE to try a full restore. Maybe even leave it non-jailbroken a day or two and see what happens. Then jailbreak and see again. If neither works, I guess I'll try to go back to 2.0.2 and see what happens. And finally, try a new phone I guess.

[461am]

Well, I'd suggest a new battery. New phone seems kinds drastic.

[pj_rage]

Well, I'd suggest a new battery. New phone seems kinds drastic.

I'm not sure what you mean? The battery isn't intended to be replaced.

And the phone is under warranty, so I'd just have apple swap it.

I'm reading all over the web again, and tons of people are having terrible battery problems since 2.1, some even worse than mine. But no one seems to have found an "end all be all" solution. Many people refer to push email, which I have never used. I guess they turn it on/off and/or delete their exchange account. I only have a gmail account linked and only use 30 min fetch. Others have mentioned that a restore worked, but some had no luck with a restore. Sigh.

Lol, just looked down and to my surprise, my battery is up to 41% from 33%.

[461am]

oh, I didn't know you were under warranty.
In any case, if you weren't you could send it in to apple to have them switch out your battery.

[CaptainChaos]

I'm not sure what you mean? The battery isn't intended to be replaced.

And the phone is under warranty, so I'd just have apple swap it.

I'm reading all over the web again, and tons of people are having terrible battery problems since 2.1, some even worse than mine. But no one seems to have found an "end all be all" solution. Many people refer to push email, which I have never used. I guess they turn it on/off and/or delete their exchange account. I only have a gmail account linked and only use 30 min fetch. Others have mentioned that a restore worked, but some had no luck with a restore. Sigh.

Lol, just looked down and to my surprise, my battery is up to 41% from 33%.

What do you mean the battery isn't intended to be replaced? I thought the 3G battery was installed without solder unlike the 2G battery.

[461am]

What do you mean the battery isn't intended to be replaced? I thought the 3G battery was installed without solder unlike the 2G battery.

Still doesn't make it user-replaceable.

[CaptainChaos]

Still doesn't make it user-replaceable.

Granted most users would probably not want to attempt it, but some of us aren't as gun shy. The post I was referring to made it sound like once the battery was worn out it couldn't be replaced.

[asmodeus_dhoine]

Ha!.. My phone was lagging SO bad, I removed WB (before I found this thread) and here we go - no lags!

So, yeah, I second this thread.