Compcache - Yea or Nay

[Guest wabe]

Have tried both with and without compcache - no big difference. Cannot say I've noticed any huge difference in battery life either but no systematic evalution of this

[Guest tone-fu]

It's been better without for me since 3.0

:)

[Guest blackcoffee85]

Disabled compcache, and followed the instructions at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=622666 - device seems faster but I think it's slower to resume. I don't tend to want/need many apps open at once so I think this setup is best for me.

[Guest PhonePersona]

OK after seeing so many agreeing on without compcache, I too disabled and have to admit that my Hero was a bit responsive than that was with enable.

Anyway a great idea and development IMO about default memory management here in xda forum http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=622666. Currently I'm testing with CONTENT_PROVIDER=36MB and EMPTY_APP=40MB . I long stopped using 3rd party taskkiller and was looking for something like this.

BTW, thanks for starting this thread.

You're very welcome :)

[Guest deeone]

I'm using MoDaCo 3.0, what's the easiest way to disable compcache? I just wanna try what everybody is talking about so i can give my opinion too

[Guest lemmingzappa]

I'm using MoDaCo 3.0, what's the easiest way to disable compcache? I just wanna try what everybody is talking about so i can give my opinion too

Using the online kitchen to bake your own ROM :D

[Guest Soaa-]

Just a quick note: compcache increases the amount of available memory, while tweaking minfree reduces it. The two tweaks are basically polar opposites. It all comes down to how many apps you want running concurrently.

For me, I don't multitask a lot so my phone is snappier when it runs less processes as once, so I tweaked minfree. For someone who runs a lot of apps at once, and switches apps frequently, it could be better to use compcache. The problem is that the Hero doesn't have a very powerful processor, and a consequence of running so many apps at the same time is the phone being sluggish. Hence, the existence of automatic task killers, and... pretty much defeating the purpose of compcache in the first place!

I figure it could be useful on more powerful phones like the Nexus One, or to keep well-behaving apps running in background, but I'd rather my Hero take smaller bites and actually swallow.

[Guest deeone]

Using the online kitchen to bake your own ROM :D

Eheheh thank you but i want to disable it in my 3.0 existing rom, can anyone help me?

[Guest polonius]

Should be working like this:

Open shell:

adb pull /system/init.d/ramzswap.sh c:\hero\

Edit ramzswap.sh like this:

/system/xbin/insmod /system/lib/modules/tun.ko

/system/xbin/insmod /system/lib/modules/lzo_decompress.ko

/system/xbin/insmod /system/lib/modules/lzo_compress.ko

/system/xbin/insmod /system/lib/modules/xvmalloc.ko

#/system/xbin/insmod /system/lib/modules/ramzswap.ko disksize_kb=131072

#/system/xbin/swapon /dev/block/ramzswap0

#echo "10" > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

echo "performance" >  /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor

[/codebox]

adb remount remounted /system read-write

adb push c:\hero\ramzswap.sh /system/init.d/

(in other words: uncomment the three lines with "#")

... and yes, the speediness IS a difference! :D

[Guest starfarer]

Just a quick note: compcache increases the amount of available memory, while tweaking minfree reduces it. The two tweaks are basically polar opposites. It all comes down to how many apps you want running concurrently.

For me, I don't multitask a lot so my phone is snappier when it runs less processes as once, so I tweaked minfree. For someone who runs a lot of apps at once, and switches apps frequently, it could be better to use compcache. The problem is that the Hero doesn't have a very powerful processor, and a consequence of running so many apps at the same time is the phone being sluggish. Hence, the existence of automatic task killers, and... pretty much defeating the purpose of compcache in the first place!

I figure it could be useful on more powerful phones like the Nexus One, or to keep well-behaving apps running in background, but I'd rather my Hero take smaller bites and actually swallow.

hmmm...I always thought otherwise. Compcache actually decreases the available "actual" RAM as it uses certain % of RAM for swap . Since the programs are compressed when pushed as swap, the system can accommodate more swapped apps on compache than would be with normal swap process ie in other words system have more "virtual" memory than actually present physically. Accessing RAM is lot faster than ROM but as apps are compressed, CPU power is needed to de-compress and put back on RAM. Hero got 528Mhz powered CPU which IMO is far enough to do the job without using 100%. I actually doubt the process needs more than 20% of CPU power.

Anyway, teknologist's compcache have only swappiness of value = 10 (variable = 0 to 100), and in such not much paging been done unless absolutely necessary.

"Minfree" tries to claim back actual memory which is not used but occupied by apps (not running) and not pushed to swap. Unless you change the first 3 values, Android will go down very low on memory depending on memory requirement of visible app until at point (set on first 3 variables) it start it's task killing process by killing apps present in order from last 6th value freeing initially the amount set in variable 4th (HIDDEN_APP) and if required until to variable 6th (EMPTY_APP).

CPU is not responsible for slugginess as programs are run from RAM. It's the limited RAM. At the moment, IMO most apps in market doesn't require lot of CPU horsepower. It is my belief (since WinMo days) that 500Mhz is good trade off between power and battery life but 512MB RAM is a must.

Agree on Task-killers defeating the purpose of phone which is multi tasking.

Just my thoughts...could be totally wrong.

[Guest WonderStivi]

My virgin post...

I disabled compcache, and like others I feel the phone is snappier and more responsive. I've only read bits and pieces about compcache before noticing this post. Thanks for the heads up!

[Guest woutur]

I have a lot of apps on my phone, and noticed the home screen always lagging for about 5 seconds before i could do anything with it after returning to it when ending an application. This caused a lot of frustration on my end, and I really wanted to revert to the stock rom. Now I have disabled the compcache and the lags are minimized, to less of a second.

Using modaco 3.1 btw.