Managing NAND partitions

[Guest TheLostSwede]

For whatever reason LG seems to have been stingy in terms of users accessible memory on the NAND, as after having removed a couple of apps that I don't need that comes pre-installed, I have about 25MB of free space in the System directory, but I only have about 15MB free for my own apps and the phone starts complaining once that drops below 12-13MB and gives me an annoying little icon that can't be disabled.

Now my question is, is there any way to shift say 10MB of the space from the System directory to the Apps directory? Or can you install apps into the System directory somehow?

[Guest TheLostSwede]

Never mind, found a way people.

So if you have a lot of space in your System directory, this is how to do it

Make sure your phone is set to USB debugging mode.

Go in to the directory where you have adb installed and type:

adb shell

# su

# mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system

# cat /sdcard/com.dropbox.android.apk > /system/app/com.dropbox.android.apk

# mount -o remount,ro -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system

# reboot

Now this means that you have to copy an already installed app from /data/app to /sdcard and then you're moving it from there into the /system/app directory by doing the command above. You would of course replace com.dropbox.android.apk with whatever app you'd want to move and I just used dropbox as an example above.

This is a great way to make use of some of the additional space available on your handset and it also means that these apps will be located under applications rather than downloads.

Edited August 8, 2010 by TheLostSwede