Is the Oreo update for TVs safe?

[lgcebr]

I’ve just received an emal from Sony inciting me to update my TV to Android Oreo.  My TV has automatic updates turned off because past updates had bugs which disrupted the TV functionality.  I have seen large numbers of posts on here saying the Oreo update is buggy and has disrupted many functions from video playback to sound and ARC.  Does the Sony email inviting updating mean that the Oreo update is now fixed and safe to use.....  or is it still risky?  Thanks

[zer0ner0]

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@Kuschelmonschter wrote:

- The Linux kernel now uses a Z-RAM (compressed RAM drive) as swap area. That should improve things when there is need for memory

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Sony should consider debloating their system. I removed some useless crap (like Samba, Sony Select, DIAL, BIVL, IRB, interactive) and gained 250M of RAM.

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By "removing" do you mean disabling or actually uninstalling a system app? And how?

[mickyt]

Not for me, messed my wifi up. Cannnot connect after Oreo 8. Had to perform factory reset, now have lost some action menu options. 

[stormyuk]

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@Kuschelmonschter wrote:

It really depends on what you need. Here are some things that I always remove:

u0_a114       7514  1250 1711856  17832 SyS_epoll_wait      0 S tv.samba.ssm
u0_a66       21470  1250 1717384  30224 SyS_epoll_wait      0 S com.sony.dtv.dialservice
u0_a30       20972  1250 1702680  30520 SyS_epoll_wait      0 S com.sony.dtv.irbservice
u0_a73       19666  1250 1699716  24956 SyS_epoll_wait      0 S com.sony.dtv.bivlinfo
u0_a65       20183  1250 1706884  29460 SyS_epoll_wait      0 S com.sony.dtv.youview
u0_a127      19514  1250 1712276  33500 SyS_epoll_wait      0 S com.sony.dtv.sonyselect
u0_a101       3333  1250 1731676  34484 SyS_epoll_wait      0 S com.sony.dtv.interactivetvutil
system        6482  1250 1696276  13844 SyS_epoll_wait      0 S com.sony.dtv.interactivetvutil.output
u0_a100       6497  1250 1705260  18556 SyS_epoll_wait      0 S com.sony.dtv.interactivetvplatform

If you don't need the Video app, you can also remove that plus alle the flaky DLNA (Huey) modules. If you don't need integrated tuners, you can also remove a lot of that stuff.

DIAL is an old thing and has been superseded by mDNS. Never experienced any issue in the way I use the TV.

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My XE9005 with Android 7 doesn't let me disable half of those? I can force close but nothing else???

[Kuschelmonschter]

I use ADB to uninstall those packages. More info here.

[zer0ner0]

I was thinking that it should be an ADB method.

Thanks for the link.

I ain't going to run the *.bat file, but I might try to uninstall some of the apps that you 're suggesting and I have already force-stopped.

[Jecht_Sin]

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@zer0ner0 wrote:

I ain't going to run the *.bat file, but I might try to uninstall some of the apps that you 're suggesting and I have already force-stopped.

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We can't unisntall system apps. One needs root for it. The method suggested in reddit, the same I was talking about, disables them, though. Force-closing doesn't achieve much. They may restart automatically even without rebooting.

Also instead of running the .bat file you may copy and paste the lines for the apps you want to disable. What I never understood is how one can enable them again, without a factory reset. But I didn't investigate much.

[Kuschelmonschter]

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@Jecht_Sin  schrieb:

Also instead of running the .bat file you may copy and paste the lines for the apps you want to disable. What I never understood is how one can enable them again, without a factory reset. But I didn't investigate much.

Do a

adb shell pm list packages -f

and you will get for each installed package the APK, e.g.

package:/system/app/SonySelect/SonySelect.apk=com.sony.dtv.sonyselect

To re-install, do

adb shell pm install -r --user 0 /system/app/SonySelect/SonySelect.apk

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[Jecht_Sin]

@Kuschelmonschter  I forgot the command was "pm uninstall". I was sure it was "pm disable". But so what does it do exactly? The apps are in /system, which is mounted read only (unless of yet another stupid trick that installs them in /data/apps instead).

Anyway, thanks for the command to reinstall/reenable them!

[Jecht_Sin]

And also netflix goes banana... It keeps running (fully) in a CPU core, apparently. This is the extract from "top" command (Android 8 has a MUCH better Unix shell, now. Quite complete):

Tasks: 342 total,   1 running, 307 sleeping,   0 stopped,   2 zombie
Mem:   1603708k total,  1468428k used,   135280k free,    18044k buffers
Swap:  1196348k total,   446384k used,   749964k free,   306820k cached
400%cpu   3%user  48%nice  65%sys 282%idle   2%iow   0%irq   1%sirq   0%host
  PID USER         PR  NI VIRT  RES  SHR S[%CPU] %MEM     TIME+ ARGS
 5209 u0_a143      20   0 2.0G  65M  20M S 95.3   4.1 126:31.92 com.netflix.ninja
 1650 root         RT   0    0    0    0 D  8.6   0.0 165:38.29 [MLVdo_thread]

Obviously Netflix isn't running. Sure it must be on background, but "Recent apps" is broken, so.. Actually "Recent apps" doesn't even show it.

And to the void also Netflix goes.. I have an Apple TV 4K anyway! 

[Kuschelmonschter]

Sony stopped the OTA rollout ... again