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I have a Samsung S20FE with Android 11 and rooted with Magisk.

I have installed 'autostarts' from F-droid wanting to disable the Spotify app which pops up at each boot. When browsing through the app list, in section "After startup", there was this Knox system app which is some kind of encrypted vault and which is not working anyway on rooted phone, and I just clicked on it to remove the "after startup permission".

Then this screen immediately appeared : enter image description here

"Phone Locked (4224) [...] because Device Services was uninstalled without authorization"

... and I could not find a way to get rid of it.

What I still can do:

  • Power off and restart the phone
  • take screenshots!
  • receive Signal calls
  • probably many other things since it seems everything is running fine below this locking window
  • and most important, connect via adb and enter commands with a rooted shell

I have tried via to 'pm install-existing' a few systems apps, to change permissions like 'xxx_BOOT_COMPLETED' to com.samsung.android.knox.kpecore, but it either did not do anything or it just said ok but did not work after a phone restart.

Any idea ?

  • more precisely, how 'autostarts' works? is it just a GUI equivalent of 'pm grant/revoke' ?
  • can I fix /data/system/users/0/package-restrictions.xml ? I tried to access it but it is binary format and not sure how to manage it. I read that deleting it will just create a brand new one at the next boot.
  • any idea of system app or permission to change ?
  • if my last option is a factory reset, what would be the less intrusive option to avoid messing with personal data inInternal storage and or SD card ?
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1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Ok I finaly found the solution :

I just had to delete package-restrictions.xml and Android just recreated it at the following boot.

/data/system/users/0 # mv package-restrictions.xml package-restrictions.xml.disab

I was afraid to do so, and wanted to try just before the factory reset and it finally worked. I just had to grant again some permissions for some apps at the following reboot.

Such a shame that Samsung installed this stupid malware which locks your phone when the permissions for an useless app do not please them.

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