BackupManager causing my phone to reboot

Question

Every ~2 hours my phone reboots itself, it started doing this 2-3 days ago, I may have installed/uninstalled some apps around that time but I don't remember exactly.

I've gotten a screenshot of the logcat the instant after the phone reboots and 3/3 times it has been exactly after the BackupManagerService activates: http://i.imgur.com/HOXan.png

I can also cause the reboot by calling "adb shell bmgr run" as seen here: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?q=lag&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20Stars&id=25780

Is there any way to manage or at least see what apps are 'queued' in the BackupManager? Is there a way to completely disable the BackupManager?

Phone: -Galaxy Nexus 4.0.1 -Kernel 3.0.1-ga052f63

Edit: Well, I figured out how to disable the BackupManager (I think), in "Settings" -> "Backup & reset" -> uncheck "Back up my data". I would still like to figure out the cause of the problem though.

Answer 1

Googles Backup-API uses the directory /data/backup to queue outstanding backups (which are not yet transferred). So if your device is rooted, you could investigate this directory for any files contained, and probably remove them if they cause trouble (I'm not sure if/how it then will be handled to figure out which backups it has to repeat, though -- so it's your own risk).

But from your LogCat I'd say BackupManager already cleared that directory (the second black line reads clearing pending backups, followed by beginning backup of 3 targets) -- so I rather assume there's some faulty implementation with one of those 3 apps. I'm not a developer, though, so I cannot say.

You can check your history of installed apps (the App Appmonster IMHO offers to see the installation date; I'm not sure where to find this information with stock apps) to see, which ones you installed last, and "roll back" until the problem disappers (or you left the "probable time frame").

EDIT: Do you have some more lines of that LogCat? It stops just when it's becoming interesting. I'd follow those lines belonging to PID 181 here, so you probably can figure out which app is causing the problem. Fifth line from the bottom up e.g. shows a wallpaper being backed up, along with the wallpaper's API call (android.app.backup.WallpaperBackupHelper -- I guess that's rather some Android internal to backup wallpaper settings, but again: I'm not a developer, I can only make guesses). There might be more lines like this, giving clues.