Root Unwanted apps

[Necron80]

I am going to apologize now for the noob type question. The last phone I owned was a nokia 5400.

I am looking for a bit of info and/or a tut on how to remove apps with the rooted 2.1 for the Eris ( BTW thanks to all the dev's for their hard work).

I have installed the rooted 2.1 with out a hitch. I have been looking around to find out how to uninstall a few of the apps (amazon, stocks, tweet) and found people that say to use SDK's ADB or terminal. I understand what the terminal is and the SDK that google offers is but not the ADB. I also understand that there is a chance to brick by removing the wrong things. So I don't want to just make a careless mistake. So if anyone could point me in the right direction it would be a great help.

Thanks for the time.
Mike

 

[GrdLock]

Go to a command prompt and type "adb shell"

You should see a # sign, that's the root terminal on your phone.

In order to remove apps, you need to remount your system folder on the phone with write permissions. To do this type "mount -o rw,remount /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system" (it won't say anything it will just go back to a # sign again)

Now type "cd /system/app" and then "ls"

That will list all the apk files, which are the applications.

You can remove them by typing "rm -r Whatever.apk" (it's case sensitive)

Amazon is amazonmp3.apk
Twitter is HtcTwitter.apk and com.htc.TwitterWidget.apk
Visual VM is VVMStub_v3.apk

BE VERY CAREFUL doing this. Don't just go around deleting apps. Some may not be safe to delete as they are connected with other apps, etc. Those three I posted are safe to delete.

 

[Rrrracer]

Hey Grdlock, have you deleted more than just those three? Any idea how much memory you have freed up?

I have the leaked 2.1 on mine, the thought of root has me salivating LOL...

 

[GrdLock]

I've deleted a lot of stuff, changed a lot of stuff, bricked my phone a few times, reflashed it a few times. It's been fun.

Never paid attention to how much memory deleting apps freed up though.

 

[Necron80]

Thank You GrdLock that was what I was looking for.

 

[Rrrracer]

I've deleted a lot of stuff, changed a lot of stuff, bricked my phone a few times, reflashed it a few times. It's been fun.

Sounds like it (with a tinge of jealousy in my voice ) So what have you found that should NOT be deleted?

 

[GrdLock]

Footprints shouldn't be deleted I do know that. Deleting apps you shouldn't most likely won't cause catastrophy, but might cause other apps with dependencies to crash, etc.

Another no-no is trying to install the N1 live wallpapers. That sent my phone into an endless reboot cycle.

 

[gnarlyc]

I've removed the three apps that GrdLock list earlier in the thread (AmazonMP3, VisualVM, and Twitter). So far, it's worked well. I've also copied VisualVM back ('adb pull' and 'adb push'), and it appears to work.

I'm getting ready to test removing a few more that I will never use. It's good to know not to remove Footprints! That WAS next on my list.

 

[IzelTokatl]

Once everyone figures out whats not good to remove, we should put up a sticky thread stating: Removable apps, mandatory apps.

wish I waited on the leak... now im standing on the sidelines to get root access

have fun all!

 

[Scynthetic78]

Out of curiosity, what happened when you removed footprints? Was it tied into another app? If so, which one?

 

[Ruh17]

Out of curiosity, what happened when you removed footprints? Was it tied into another app? If so, which one?

What I have read is that footprints is tied into the camera. Not sure what negative affects it would have if deleted tho.

 

[yELLOcAKE]

I've deleted Footprints and honestly nothing seems wrong.
The camera still works fine and so does the camcorder.
The only thing funny that happened was after I deleted it using the Terminal Emulator a HTC screen popped up and then it re-loaded my homescreen.
I deleted it the first day the root came out and my phone is just fine.

 

[hallstevenson]

You can remove them by typing "rm -r Whatever.apk"

Is it that crude ? No "installer" system like 'apt' ? That would be much better if Android had done it that way.... Doing "apt-get remove footprints.apk" would tell you

app-x depends on footprints.apk
app-y depends on footprints.apk

so you know what packages depend on what other packages.

(it's case sensitive)

That will throw people for a loop. Just wait !

 

[GrdLock]

I should have clarified. Many of the apps that are linked to other stuff may not cause any catastrophic failure and cause your phone to implode into a black hole.

We have found deleting footprints to cause issues with Navigation though.

@hallstevenson: Android has a pseudo-installer. Not anything near what apt is though, so you don't get any dependency errors or anything.

 

[TheAtheistReverend]

Forgive me this probably stupid question, but I opened cmd from "run" in the start menu and typing "adb shell" gives me nothing but "adb is not recognized as an internal or external command..."
is there another command prompt I should be opening? or maybe type adb shell under a different drive?

 

[gruss]

Forgive me this probably stupid question, but I opened cmd from "run" in the start menu and typing "adb shell" gives me nothing but "adb is not recognized as an internal or external command..."
is there another command prompt I should be opening? or maybe type adb shell under a different drive?

Don't work without some outside help in windows. See here:
[HOW-TO] ADB for Dummies(How-To Learner's Guide) - xda-developers

That was just a quick google of "sdk adb" but it should get ya going in the right direction. I think there are some threads around here explaining it as well.

 

[TheAtheistReverend]

all I get is "rm: cannot remove 'VVMStub_v3.apk' : Read-only file system"
and then
"#"

 

[fungalMonk]

mount -o rw,remount /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system

Sounds as if you didn't remount the filesystem first with the command above.

 

[Heliotropic]

So is the option to install/run apps from the SD card being looked at? Has it been done before on android?

 

[gohamstergo]

for the safe apps to remove: can we also remove the .odex files of the same names? im assuming yes but just want to be sure

 

[screennamie]

if I install a terminal emulator on my eris can i input these commands and get the same responses with out having to connect the phone to my computer?

 

[sc00bz]

if I install a terminal emulator on my eris can i input these commands and get the same responses with out having to connect the phone to my computer?

Yes. It's what I do.

 

[kbeep]

so i'm curious as to what bloatware you could remove and still have the phone stable......i'm starring at the list of system apps right now just itchin to remove some.

 

[Necron80]

When looking thought the list I see .odex
as in Htc.Twitter.odex or Stocks.odex
Can and or is it safe to remove these.

 

[magicelf]

So getting rid of Stocks and Teeter is ok?