Question

I am aware that force killing an app is very bad, but the client requires it. I am required to implement a force reboot of sorts for the app. This is how I implemented it:

I create a BroadcastReceiver in my Application’s (not Activity’s) onCreate method. I have it wait for the REBOOT command to be broadcast. Upon receipt, I have it broadcast another message that has the services call stopSelf so that threads and services have a chance to exit cleanly. I then have an AlarmManager call my main activity 5 seconds later. Finally have my application kill itself with Process.kill(Process.myPid()). For the most part, it works, and I just need to add some extra waiting time before it kills the process (maybe by waiting for a TERMINATE broadcast from each running Service). My issue is this: while reviewing the logs, I found out that the system schedules the services to reboot. I’m worried about conflicts. Is there a way to terminate the services without any chance of it rebooting?

Answer 1

I fixed this by having the Receiver wait for all the services to finish their onDestroy() calls before having it die. I also changed from Process.kill() to ActivityManager.killBackgroundProcesses().

As a side note: I know it’s wrong, but it really does feel cool killing the processes hehehe.