Develop Bugs

"Who is this 'Mediaserver' and why is he sucking my battery dry?"

Just solved a really annoying battery drain issue. Figured I'd post the results...
I noticed last week that my phone was going through the battery MUCH faster than normal. A check of Settings/About Phone/battery use told me that the "Mediaserver" was using over 35% of my battery, surpassing the phone standby -- which is saying a LOT given what my T-Mo reception is like.
Now, I'm still learning, so when the description says is does something with running apps, I assume that the issue is an app I recently installed, so I remove apps I recently installed or updated. Nope.
I saw another post about a laggy G2 that seemed to also have battery issues. It recommended using Watchdog Lite to see what was happening. So, off to the Android Market.
After installing Watchdog Lite, I saw that the CPU was 0% idle with 75-95% "nice." Well, no idle = battery suckage, so off to see what tasks are using CPU. The initial check didn't show anything -- until I enabled monitoring "Phone Processes." The alerts for the "mediaserver" "linux task" showed that this process was taking every cpu cycle it could. Off to Google.
Did a search on "android mediaserver loop" and found a couple of bugzillas that essentially said that a corrupt media file (pic, movie or sound) could send mediaserverover the edge. So, I started to move *every* picture off the sd card onto my computer's HD.
Knew I was on to something when mediaserver stopped going crazy once usb storage was turned on. So, I moved all the image and movie files off and turned off usb storage. The CPU spun back to100% busy, but slowed back down to about 9o% or more idle.
Now all I have to do is find the bad file or files, and I can add it to the bugzilla.
EDIT: It seems that this has also made the cooliris gallery wake up and start updating again. So anyone seeing that the gallery isn't updating may need to see if their mediaserver linux task is unusually busy. If so, offload as many media files as possible and see whap happens...
Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using Tapatalk

Very useful post. Thanks!

I saw this sucking down battery for me as well while playing around with CM7 nightlies, but never thought too much about it. Good find!

I've noticed this issue with mediaserver too but never managed to find what's causing this.
Thanks for the tips

there might be a difference here but media server from G1 (htc dream) was the music stock music player. it might be different here but thats what it was in the G1

lil-devil said:
there might be a difference here but media server from G1 (htc dream) was the music stock music player. it might be different here but thats what it was in the G1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
actually the stock music player is /system/app/music.apk on all vanilla android phones.

I believe that music player depend of mediaserver.
I have installed system panel and noticed a 30% cpu usage when I play some music with Cyanogen 7 RC2.
I will try with another Rom to compare the result.

I found my cause for the problem
I got really frustrated with the Galaxy S2 because of this mediaserver issue...
From wat i have researched, I found that once the 'gallery' is opened and closed,
Phone keeps using the cpu 100%.
Phone's back becomes red hot.
The battery drains rapidly in 2-3 hours.
I plug it on to a charger it doesn't charge up
the mediaserver process comes up in the 'battery usage' with 60% usage
Now, I switch off the phone. Boot it up. Charge the phone to 100%. Its all perfect and no heating up too. After 7 hours of usage, no mediaserver process in 'battery usage'.
I went into the gallery once. Browsed some photos. And Closed it.
Now it all started again. I've tried this 3 times now.
And I have no idea wats wrong with the gallery.

Do what I did and either move all the media files off the sd card or drop ". nomedia" files in strategic locations. (Don't forget to look all over the card because they could be in unexpected places.
Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using Tapatalk

could this mediaserver also be caused by lots of Pandora listening?

Mr. Turbofan said:
could this mediaserver also be caused by lots of Pandora listening?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It seems to be related to streaming audio also. I'm trying to figure out why since moving to GB my battery is being drained by media server when I never had this issue on Froyo. It only seems to take up the majority of the battery time when I'm listeing to Pandora over Bluetooth during the day.

Very interesting and usefull find, indeed.

Solving the problem lies in the options build.prop
must be changed:
---
media.stagefright.enable-player = true
---
to:
---
media.stagefright.enable-player = false
---
If this option is not in the file, it is necessary to add.

stopservice said:
Solving the problem lies in the options build.prop
must be changed:
---
media.stagefright.enable-player = true
---
to:
---
media.stagefright.enable-player = false
---
If this option is not in the file, it is necessary to add.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't think that is the cause. Mine is already set to false and still have the problem.

Is there a process we can freeze to stop this.

You really *don't* want to kill this process as it is the cataloger for *both* the music player and the picture gallery. Your best bet is to do something like I did to work around the issue.
Sent from my HTC Desire Z using Tapatalk

I started having the same issue (on Galaxy Note) today. Glad I found this thread in any case.
Once thing I noticed is PowerAmp plays sound files from games if you don't give it a media folder to stick to. I can only assume that it's using the media server to find these based on what someone in this thread said.
So it would seem that the .nomedia file method is definitely the best (to stop game sound files being found).
[Edit:] Oddly the behaviour stopped now. Mediaserver is no longer raping my battery. What do you think of the idea of putting .nomedia in every folder and then removing it from only folders you need (images, video and audio folders)?
You can easily do this by running:
Code:
for i in *; do cp file $i; done
from cli in Android (I think). "file" = <path to .nomedia>

No inherent reason you can't do that...
Sent from my HTC Desire Z using Tapatalk

mediaserver was not a notable issue for me untill 2 days before i installed "sprit fm".... then boom ...... mediaserver just gone mad and taking upto 65% of my battery..... now uninstalling "spirit fm" and will see what happens.

Mediaserver and Arel WARS
Hey all! Glad I found this thread. Got a Samsung Galaxy SII Skyrocket I727 from AT&T. From what I researched mediaserver is part of a standard for DLNA. I am a newb on xda so I cannot post links however search on youtube "Android DLNA MediaServer" and you can get a downlow as to what it is meant for.
Anyways mediaserver gets to be 400+ and sometimes even 500+mb according to Watchdog when playing a GAMEVIL game called Arel WARS. This is the first time I have ever had a problem with mediaserver and ONLY happens when I play Arel WARS. I reboot my phone and see mediaserver at 2.7mb. I start Arel WARS and BAM 100+mb already. After playing for about 20 minutes my phone becomes laggy and the game freezes up. I check Watchdog and it shows 400+mb being used by mediaserver. I then kill Arel WARS and mediaserver is still sucking 400+mb. I try several types of app killers but none can even see the process in order to kill it. I try an app called "reboot" that is supposed to simulate a reboot by killing apps and processes but mediaserver is still sucking the life out of my phone. Bottom line the only way I can kill mediaserver is by rebooting the phone and then its back to 2.7mb and it stays that way ONLY until I start playing Arel WARS. I can launch gallery all day long and media player and mediaserver is good.
Just giving my two cents. I emailed Watchdog dev to see if he can help me out since Watchdog seems to be the only app that can actually see mediaserver and also emailed GAMEVIL to see if they might have a memory leak problem somewhere. I will update when I get word from either.
UPDATE:
I recorded my phones screen to show you mediaserver and it sucking the life out of my phone. There is no way to kill it to my knowledge and the more I play Arel Wars the more it consumes precious ram. Copy this link into your browser to download the video. Its about 10 minutes long and about 18mb.
dl.dropbox.com/u/6778642/Android/Mediaserver_ArelWars.mp4.
You should be able to play it in your browser.
BTW I am still waiting on either GAMEVIL or the dev of Watchdog to hit me up with an email so I'll update if and when I get word.

what is "media server" on this phone?

and why does it hope a lot of battery % ?
is it supposed to be running all the time?

It could be a number of things from playing media (Pandora, PowerAMP, moves, etc.) and/or the leftover service from the media hanging. You can use an app like OS Monitor to kill it and see if it calms down.
I've also read that it can be a sign of corrupt files on your SD Card. Try backing it up and formatting it, or removing recently taken photos/videos if it just started happening.

[Q] Media server

When I check my battery status from "settings->battery->*press battery graph*" I notice something called "mediaserver, consuming 80% of my battery. the stats show it keeping the phone awake almost right throughout. I googled this up but couldnt find anything meaningful apart from some forums calling it an android bug.
one of the forums said it is to do with Music player (any music player not just the stock player) that continuously looks for details of tracks and gets stuck with a bad mp3 . I deleted all songs from my phone and also uninstalled "tunein radio". The media server is still not going away and keeping the device awake.
Anyone else experiencing this? If this is an android bug then this is extremely frustrating.

[Q] Media service contiuously running

I have a 7100 with a 32GB card.. with around 1500 songs. My phone is always warm to touch and the battery drains like anything.. from 100% to zero in 6 hours or so. I've check the stats and it seems like the process Media runs ALL the time.. keeping the phone from going into deep sleep, and consuming CPU cycles and battery.
I've tried removing the SD card.. formatting it.. copying everything back, and putting it back in. No difference.
I tried stopping all Media related services, clearing the cache and data, and restarting the phone. No difference.
My phone is virtually unusable now. If I force stop the media service, then any new songs I add don't show up in my media library. When that happens, even running a SD card scanner doesn't do anything. It just runs forever and I have to kill it.
Any ideas how to solve this problem?
Running 4.1.2 DDDLK6, Build XXDMB2

J_Kirk said:
I have a 7100 with a 32GB card.. with around 1500 songs. My phone is always warm to touch and the battery drains like anything.. from 100% to zero in 6 hours or so. I've check the stats and it seems like the process Media runs ALL the time.. keeping the phone from going into deep sleep, and consuming CPU cycles and battery.
I've tried removing the SD card.. formatting it.. copying everything back, and putting it back in. No difference.
I tried stopping all Media related services, clearing the cache and data, and restarting the phone. No difference.
My phone is virtually unusable now. If I force stop the media service, then any new songs I add don't show up in my media library. When that happens, even running a SD card scanner doesn't do anything. It just runs forever and I have to kill it.
Any ideas how to solve this problem?
Running 4.1.2 DDDLK6, Build XXDMB2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Always been a problem with Samsung devices:
1. Install a startup manager from Play and go into system apps and disable Mediastorage.
2. Install Rescan Media Root. Open and enable it, close it and you`re done.
Reboot and that should fix you problem.

Thanks a lot.. just a little clarification. In Rescan Media Root, there are two buttons.. Re-Enable Media Scanner, and Disable Media Scanner. Which one do I click?

Disable media scanner
Sent from my GT-N7100 using xda premium

Ok thanks a lot.. will do and let you know how it goes. Hopefully that would solve the problem!!

The underlying problem is with one of your media files being corrupt... it can be hard to pinpoint though there is software that can assist (faster to find something for your pc) in locating corrupt media. Using a bandaid (disabling the scanner) can have negative implications...

Yes I've figured that there is a problem with a file.. but how to pinpoint it? I don't recall when it started happening.. disabling the scanner is not ideal. Now if I add more media, I'd have to manually scan the card, right?

J_Kirk said:
Yes I've figured that there is a problem with a file.. but how to pinpoint it? I don't recall when it started happening.. disabling the scanner is not ideal. Now if I add more media, I'd have to manually scan the card, right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No rescan Media Root should do that automaticaly.

You can put a ".nomedia" file in the directory you don't want to be scanned. It's works very well to prevent media scanning. Disable media storage in the app manager is not a good idea, you lose all multimedia, can't play video and music or view pictures with stock apps, can't change ringtone and notification.

You have a corrupted file on the internal or external SD card.
Sent from my GT-N7100 using xda premium

mediaserver

So a few weeks after getting my Nexus 7, I noticed my battery lasted nowhere near where it did when I had first got it. I discovered the culprit to be media server. I have researched quite a bit what it is, and tried many thing to rid myself of this battery draining task. My nexus hardly even lasts a full 24 hours anymore. It seems it runs, and restarts itself no matter what I do. I even unlocked my bootloader (completely erasing the device) and the problem still persists. It seems like the only way I can actually get the service to stop is when I plug the USB into a PC as a media device (for obvious reasons).
What can I do to make my Nexus 7 useful again?

The problem may or may not be Mediaserver itself.
Mediaserver is quite buggy and if you have media files (music, videos) that it doesn't like (e.g. with tags that it has problems decoding), you may get the battery drain (mediaserver is trying to index your files). Try to remove all media files and clear the Mediaserver data/cache.
Mediaserver is also used for audio/video playback/recording and some other app may cause it to run.

The only music I have on my device were pinned through the Play Music App (and probably within some apps n stuff)
I pretty much have no files on it currently regardless.
How to I clear the apps cache? It doesn't even show up as an application in the settings.

SLUSHIE said:
How to I clear the apps cache? It doesn't even show up as an application in the settings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The app is called 'Media Storage'.