system_server crash leading to recurring reboots

Waterdrop

Hello friends.

I've been using Google Pixel 6a with GrapheneOS for several months and everything was working without any issues. Currently the phone is running GrapheneOS 2025011500 (the latest version at the time of writing). However today in the afternoon, out of a sudden (I am not aware of any change I made to the phone - I haven't installed any new application, neither have I changed any setting), the phone started rebooting itself. After the reboot I see a notification "system_server has crashed". And I am asked for a password to unlock the phone.

I feel that my issue is similar to the following:

Until I unlock the phone everything works without any issues. However once I unlock the phone, it starts misbehaving, it does not respond properly and after few seconds it reboots itself. I am not even able to change any settings or uninstall any application.

I tried to start the phone with SIM, without SIM, enabling Airplane mode, disabling Airplane mode, connecting the phone to charger, booting to Safe Mode, but I always end up with the same problem.

Please do you have some idea how I can diagnose what's the issue? I'd be happy to provide logs from the phone, however I am not really sure whether I can collect the logs in this state - is it possible to use adb / somehow collect the logs / interact with the phone via command line?

Please do you have some other ideas what could I try? I was wondering, since Android phones now use A/B partitioning, would it be possible to switch to another partition, which may have older version of the OS installed?

I'd be very grateful for any suggestions or help.

Thank you very much and have a nice day.

sometango

Hi I am facing the same issue on my 7a since an hour ago. Did you find a solution to this?

sometango

@GrapheneOS Is there any way to fix this please?

sometango

Bump.
Issue still persists even in safe mode. Also tried side loading the OTA update and it still didn't work
The issue I am facing seems to be very similar to this https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/3251

sometango

I am completely unable to get error logs because it soft reboots very quickly. And it seems that the error is always OOM but the stack trace is different.

sometango

Could this be the issue as well? https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/3200 . I enabled share hostname with the wifi network before my phone started to bootloop.

sometango

I have asked on the IRC (@cavober776) and bluesky (@bluestriker.bsky.social) https://bsky.app/profile/bluestriker.bsky.social/post/3lgyatnxude23

owlrazor9

Just happened to me on my pixel 8. Instead of system server restarting though, I don't even get a notification at all - black wallpaper on lock screen, doesnt show the battery percentage or how much is left, lets me go to pin and everything like normal but i "unlock" the phone and it goes to a black screen - doesn't actually unlock the phone, it basically put a black image over the entirety of the pin screen, so i can press and vibrate the phone as if the buttons are still there (just not visible) and lets me click on the emergency button (which actually brings it up). I can double tap my power button to open the camera app, works as intended surprisingly, open up my recently taken photos and can view details, delete, but cant access other photos, and if i try to do "open with," says the process system isn't responding.

I have tried fastboot, adb in recovery mode, rescue mode options, and etc. The device is locked so i cant flash anything onto it, usb debugging is NOT enabled so i cant do any adb commands other than reboot, ive rebooted a thousand times and nothing has changed, ive tried swiping down from the top to click on the settings icon (makes me do pin again) and only asks me to keep putting in my pin forever, keeps bringing me to same swipe down menu / lock screen as if i didnt input my pin at all. Keeps restarting itself on its own after about 30 seconds of it booting.

I have so many pics and vids on this device and I have tried to retrieve them thru adb connected to my desktop, doesn't show in file system, "error: closed" on pretty much every adb command, and so on.

If i have to resort to fac resetting this and i dont know why it even did this in the first place (i wasnt even on my phone when this occured, no recently installed apps, no nothing, only had taken pics with the built in camera app that day), i genuinely dont think i can trust to use graphene OS anymore, as unfortunate as it is as gOS truly is my favorite OS for mobile. I just wish i knew why this even happened so i can avoid it again in the future. If anyone has any remaining tips, id greatly appreciate it, thank you.

owlrazor9

owlrazor9 oh, i forgot to mention, i also sideloaded the latest update of gOS stable and signed onto it as well, didn't change anything / fix anything

Novalissoide

owlrazor9 fastboot, adb in recovery mode, rescue mode options, and etc

Did you try Safe Mode?

theguy

It would seem I am also now facing the same issue as described above. I'm on a pixel 7 running 2025121701, and my device is no longer usable. I was able today get into the OS just long enough to kill the WIFI (along with having removed the SIM card, even though I could already guess these were Hail-Mary steps after perusing the forums on this topic), but my phone is otherwise unusable.

The problem persists in safe mode and started occurring yesterday. I'm not sure when the phone was last updated, but it seemed to occur randomly in the course of normal use. Yesterday I was also able to just barely glimpse the error log from the "system_server has crashed" notification and it is indeed an outofMemory error.

I tried sideloading the most recent stable channel via adb in recovery mode, but it failed telling me that the timestamp was older then the currently instaled version (by exactly one). I don't know if that means that I was sideloading the same version onto the device which can't be done, or if this is some other concerning bit of behavior.

At this point, my main hope is that a new version, sideloaded onto the device, will restore enough functionality for me to perform a complete backup. I saw a forum post about another person who was trapped in a similar bootloop (although theirs was not caused by an outofMemory error) who managed to get a few days of functionality before the problem returned. I'm planning on doing more research, making a proper post, trying to get the full logs, and perhaps reaching out to a dev later before resorting to a factory reset, which seems to be the only solution (albeit, with the loss of data) that consistently restores functionality to the device once this has occurred.

Novalissoide

theguy 2025121701

Grab the beta and try, it is at 2025122500 now

de0u

theguy I tried sideloading the most recent stable channel via adb in recovery mode, but it failed telling me that the timestamp was older then the currently instaled version (by exactly one). I don't know if that means that I was sideloading the same version onto the device which can't be done, or if this is some other concerning bit of behavior.

The security preview releases are +1. At present they don't show on the release web page, but URL editing will allow downloading.

other8026

Without knowing how to reproduce the issue and without logs, there's nothing for the developers to work with in trying to fix it. If anyone with the issue can provide any logs at all, they could be helpful. There was mention of a popup saying that a process wasn't responding. If you can see details about that process not responding, that may or may not be helpful too.

This is a shot in the dark, but is it possible to swipe down and see the notification shade or quick settings tiles? At the bottom of that shade, you can see a gear icon and if you tap on that you'll be taken to the settings app. You might even try to do that in safe mode if you can't when starting up regularly.

If you're trying to connect via ADB, could you have also made any changes to any of the settings there? Some of those settings are known to be buggy which is one reason we advise people not to mess with those settings. If you can get to the Settings app, you could try disabling developer options to reset almost all of the settings there to their default values.

If those things don't work, then we'd need to know how to reproduce the issue. Maybe you and that user on the forum are using the same 3rd party launcher, or maybe you have the same widgets that are misbehaving, for example.

And just saying there's no way to downgrade, so finding an older release won't help.

theguy I'm planning on doing more research, making a proper post, trying to get the full logs, and perhaps reaching out to a dev later before resorting to a factory reset, which seems to be the only solution (albeit, with the loss of data) that consistently restores functionality to the device once this has occurred.

This would be helpful. So far I'm not seeing anything here that I think the developers can work with.

theguy

Thanks for the responses guys.

So I (kinda) got the logs. If it wasn't clear, I only get about 15 or less seconds of barest functionality after a full shut down, with shorter and shorter periods on successive reboots (by the second or third, I can barely enter my pin before it crashes and reboots). Thus, my incredibly janky method was to bring the logs up on the notification off of a fresh power down, and then take a picture of them with another device and read them off of that picture.

Thus here's what I have, more or less.

type: crash

SystemUptimeMS: 216989
Process: system_server
Timestamp: 2025-12-26 19:36:29.100-0400
Build: google/panther/panther:16/
BP4A.251205.006/202512170:user/release-keys
Crash Handler: com.android.internal.os/RuntimeInit$Kill
ApplicationHandler
Loading-Progress: 1.0
Dropped-Count: 0

java.lang.OutOfMemoryError : Failed to allocate a 48 byte allocation to with 4363408 free bytes and 4261KB until OOM, target footprint 536870912, growth limit 536870912, giving up on allocation because <1% of heap free after GC.
at
android.util.ArrayMap.allocArrays(ArrayMap.java:279)
at android.util.ArrayMap.put(ArrayMap.java:603)
at
android.os BaseBundle.putString(BaseBundle.java:966)
at
com.android.server.usage.IntervalStats.deobfuscateEvents(IntervalStats.java:597)
at
... Continues on for awhile

other8026

theguy Continues on for awhile

Can you share the rest? Understand that you can't exactly export and save the logs easily, but pictures or a video of what you can get may provide additional helpful information.

theguy

And the end of the crash report begins with com.android.server.ServiceThread.run(ServiceThread.java:46). That might not be particularly helpful to discerning the issue since all this tells me is that this is occurring when a thread runs (ei: when the OS tries to do basically anything), but I figured I'd throw it in there anyways. I was gonna write out more of the logs, but I don't think the full crash trace will be particularly useful here and I also had to go out to eat diner.

Anyways, I saw @Novalissoide's suggestion to try the beta, but I'm gonna do a little more research first and maybe try it tmrw, even though I suspect I've already read all of the relevent forum / github issues documentation on this problem. Still, doesn't hurt to be thorough.

de0u

theguy And the end of the crash report begins with com.android.server.ServiceThread.run(ServiceThread.java:46). That might not be particularly helpful to discerning the issue since all this tells me is that this is occurring when a thread runs (ei: when the OS tries to do basically anything), but I figured I'd throw it in there anyways. I was gonna write out more of the logs, but I don't think the full crash trace will be particularly useful here and I also had to go out to eat diner.

Actually, a few lines just before (above) that line might be helpful. Or maybe not -- it's hard to say!

theguy

In that case, let me write out at few more then.

Repeating lines referring to UsageStatsService & UsageStatsDatabse above this, then...

com.android.server.usage.UsageStatsService$H.handleMessage(UsageStatsService.java:2144)
at
android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:132)
at android.os.Looper.dispatchMessage(Looper.java:333)
at android.os.Looper.loopOnce(Looper.java:263)
at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:367)
at
android.os.HandlerThread.run(HandlerThread.java:139)
at
com.android.server.ServiceThread.run(ServiceThread.java:46)

theguy

Actually @other8026 had the far better idea- I'll just upload the pictures

First half: https://ibb.co/JFkMxqrR
Second half: https://ibb.co/N6nBm8dR

Apologies in advance for the quality- my webcam was the only thing I had