Guest chucky.egg Posted August 20, 2010 Report Share Posted August 20, 2010 (edited) I just put r8 rc1 on last night (thanks to some helpful advice). The ROM i baked had A2SD, but when I look at the apps it only shows one as being on the SD card. I have an ext2 partition on the SD (left over from my Hero, but wiped) Am I missing something? I was expecting most/all apps to be moved over when I reinstalled after flashing? List of apps might be useful: Sky Force (this is the only one listed on SD card) Spare Parts Archipelago AndExplorer SugarSync Bluetooth Switch Bookmark Sort and Backup Seesmic GTasks Barcode Scanner CoPilot Live 8 Enigma Bubble Defense Vibrate During Meetings Nintaii Call Log Calendar Timer * DoggCatcher iReader Pocket Racing Google Maps Facebook for Android Edited August 20, 2010 by chucky.egg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Shizophren Posted August 20, 2010 Report Share Posted August 20, 2010 If you want to look, wich apps are on sd you dont't have to look into the Application menu on your phone. You need root explorer e.g. to look into your a2sd partition. The "Apps on SD card registercard" inside the Application menu shows you only the apps that froyo moves on sd-card, not you a2sd apps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chucky.egg Posted August 24, 2010 Report Share Posted August 24, 2010 Er, that might well be right, but when I attach to a laptop as a Disk Drive only the apps that are shown as "Moved to SD" lose their icons. That seems to suggest that the others are really still on the phone. Can I wipe the card partitions and plug it back in to trigger A2SD, it do I need to reinstall everything? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest persko Posted August 24, 2010 Report Share Posted August 24, 2010 Er, that might well be right, but when I attach to a laptop as a Disk Drive only the apps that are shown as "Moved to SD" lose their icons. That seems to suggest that the others are really still on the phone. Can I wipe the card partitions and plug it back in to trigger A2SD, it do I need to reinstall everything? You will not be able to see your ext2 partition like that. If you have the developer kit installed, you can try the command: adb shell ls -l /system/sd/app then you can see the apps moved to SD Per Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chipyy Posted August 25, 2010 Report Share Posted August 25, 2010 Er, that might well be right, but when I attach to a laptop as a Disk Drive only the apps that are shown as "Moved to SD" lose their icons. That seems to suggest that the others are really still on the phone. Can I wipe the card partitions and plug it back in to trigger A2SD, it do I need to reinstall everything? If you are running A2SD(+), the old skool not the Froyo type, then if you press the move to SD card button, it will move it to the FAT32 partition of your card, i.e. Froyo A2SD. If you press move to internal storage then A2SD will handle making sure it's on the ext3 partition although the phone will think it's in internal memory. And as far as I know, when you use USB mass storage only the FAT32 partition is mounted in Windows, so widgets on your ext3 partition remain available and don't lose their icons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest foxmeister Posted August 25, 2010 Report Share Posted August 25, 2010 Er, that might well be right, but when I attach to a laptop as a Disk Drive only the apps that are shown as "Moved to SD" lose their icons. That seems to suggest that the others are really still on the phone. Can I wipe the card partitions and plug it back in to trigger A2SD, it do I need to reinstall everything? You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how legacy A2SD works! If you are putting your apps onto an EXT partition, as far as the OS is concerned they are still on the phone, although in reality they are on the EXT partition of the SD card. If you use the "Move to SD" option in the OS, all you are doing is moving the app from the EXT partition to the FAT32 partition. When you mount the phone as a disk drive, the phone loses access to the FAT32 partition, but not to the EXT partition which is why all your other apps don't disappear. Regards, Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chucky.egg Posted August 25, 2010 Report Share Posted August 25, 2010 Ah, didn't realise it only mounts the FAT32, thanks for explaining that! So if I move apps (using the Froyo function) from the SD to the Phone, and the reported phone free storage space doesn't reduce, then I know that my A2SD and my EXT partition are OK? Does that make sense? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chipyy Posted August 25, 2010 Report Share Posted August 25, 2010 You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how legacy A2SD works! If you are putting your apps onto an EXT partition, as far as the OS is concerned they are still on the phone, although in reality they are on the EXT partition of the SD card. If you use the "Move to SD" option in the OS, all you are doing is moving the app from the EXT partition to the FAT32 partition. When you mount the phone as a disk drive, the phone loses access to the FAT32 partition, but not to the EXT partition which is why all your other apps don't disappear. Regards, Dave Is that not exactly what I just said? :huh: Ah, didn't realise it only mounts the FAT32, thanks for explaining that! So if I move apps (using the Froyo function) from the SD to the Phone, and the reported phone free storage space doesn't reduce, then I know that my A2SD and my EXT partition are OK? Does that make sense? Yep, that's right. The way I make sure it's working is to download Quick System Info from the Market. This shows you among other things the amount of A2SD space you have left, i.e. space on your ext3. You can make sure this is going down after you install stuff, then you know it's going to the right place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest afiorillo Posted August 25, 2010 Report Share Posted August 25, 2010 Yes, it makes sense. However, be aware that a small amount of storage is eaten up by each app even if "old school" A2SD(+) is active, due to the /data/data partition that cannot be symlinked to the sdcard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Matt Ots Posted August 29, 2010 Report Share Posted August 29, 2010 Yes, it makes sense. However, be aware that a small amount of storage is eaten up by each app even if "old school" A2SD(+) is active, due to the /data/data partition that cannot be symlinked to the sdcard. When you say "a small amount" how much/little are we talking? I have around 90 apps installed, which according to Quick System Info are taking up 170MB of my A2SD storage. However, they are also using about 124MB of my internal storage, which doesn't seem at all right to me. (I'm using r5 with A2SD+). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest erosco Posted September 3, 2010 Report Share Posted September 3, 2010 I too am trying to understand all this better. Using R8 with app2sd+. Based on the above my question is this.. Why does settings ->applications show internal memory total 144M free 111M if the directory is merged with the ext3 partition.. I have a 2G ext3 (of which about 150M is in use). I would have thought with app2sd linking the two dirs (onboard and sd) together the internal memory count would have been fooled to be the sum of both directories free space?! Thanks erosco Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest woti17 Posted September 4, 2010 Report Share Posted September 4, 2010 When you say "a small amount" how much/little are we talking? I have around 90 apps installed, which according to Quick System Info are taking up 170MB of my A2SD storage. However, they are also using about 124MB of my internal storage, which doesn't seem at all right to me. (I'm using r5 with A2SD+). i have around 70MB in /data free have a look at /data/data, almost everything is in there from /data (124MB), there are no apps, only prefs, data ... (beside /data/local which has maybe the bootanimation.zip) in terminal cd /data/data du -kh |more ie google earth data has about 17MB just to make it clear /data/app /data/dalvik-cache /data/private-app don't take space from /data - they are physically on ext partition on sdcard Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest woti17 Posted September 4, 2010 Report Share Posted September 4, 2010 (edited) I too am trying to understand all this better. Using R8 with app2sd+. Based on the above my question is this.. Why does settings ->applications show internal memory total 144M free 111M if the directory is merged with the ext3 partition.. I have a 2G ext3 (of which about 150M is in use). I would have thought with app2sd linking the two dirs (onboard and sd) together the internal memory count would have been fooled to be the sum of both directories free space?! Thanks erosco they aren't linked together the internal memory is NAND (correct me if im wrong), ro (/system) and rw (/data) /dev/block/mtdblock3 on /system type yaffs2 (ro,relatime) /dev/block/mtdblock5 on /data type yaffs2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime) and the ext partition is mounted in /system/sd /dev/block/mmcblk0p2 on /system/sd type ext3 (rw,noatime,nodiratime,errors=continue,data=writeback) so system apears in size NAND-memory system + EXT3 (which size you choose on your own) and /data is what is the size of the socalled "internal storage" (exept /data/app data/calvik-cache and /data/private-app which are on ext3) Edited September 4, 2010 by woti17 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Matt Ots Posted September 9, 2010 Report Share Posted September 9, 2010 I'm afraid the last couple of replies have just confused me :P Can anyone explain this in layman's terms? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest spammyspam Posted September 9, 2010 Report Share Posted September 9, 2010 (edited) Once upon a time there was the default Android way of installing apps. For the sake of keeping this story simple, at that time all apps would go into the /APPS folder in local (and so un-upgradable) storage. This wasn't great for those of us who like to install apps, because once the local storage is full you wouldn't have been able to install any more apps in /APPS. Linux has the ability to make any folder seem to be located in any other place. They call this symlinking. So for example, I could symlink /apps/opt/plop/bin to /plopbin, and then use the latter in any copy, delete or read actions. Whatever I placed in the symlinked /plopbin, would appear in /apps/opt/plop/bin (and vice versa). In fact this is how Linux does away with drive letters - everything is simply a folder on root; your SD card is /sdcard for example. So some clever people thought "if local storage is running out of space, why don't we point APPS to somewhere else with more?". This "somewhere else" is the ext partition on your SD card that you're asked to create. The A2SD script symlinks that partition to APPS, and so whenever you install a file into that directory, it actually goes into the ext partition on your SD card. The important thing to remember is that Android doesn't know this. As far as it (and your file explorers etc) are concerned, all apps are still going into APPS which it thinks is local. Little does it know that they're being redirected to the SD card via a symlink. But then it doesn't have to know really, because it can still do anything it wants with APPS without having to know where it really is. IN fact if you ask Android where your apps are, it will say "they're in APPS which is a local folder". But it's not really, not any more. And since there's no longer any APPS directory on local, ALL apps will always go to the ext partition on your SD card. There's nowhere else that Android knows to put them. So we're all happy now, and have been for a while. Well those of whom can be bothered to root, install a ROM and partition their SD cards. What about a normal user? That's where Froyo comes in. Google decided to allow users to move apps "natively", which means explicitly and with the blessing of the operating system. This uses a folder called sdcard/APPS (which is thus on on your normal partition), which in turn brings as a few other benefits/drawbacks. The point is that it's explicit and trackable, and so Android, when queried, will tell you where an app is, and whether or not you can move it (not all apps can live on the normal partition for a number of reasons). And so an app can now either live in APPS or sdcard/APPS. But what if you have A2SD on Froyo? Well due to Froyo apps, may still live on either APPS or sdcard/APPS. But due to A2SD, the former is actually on the ext partition on your SD card (despite Froyo still thinking it's local). Because of the symlink magic, APPS behaves as usual and so all the Froyo functions will still work - you can copy apps from APPS to sdcard/APPS, but in reality what you'd actually be doing is copying from your ext partition to sdcard/APPS. In terms of local storage then, there's no real point in doing this. I'm not sure what your original question is by the way, but generally there's no real need to use both A2SD and Froyo's app manager at the same time. If you pick A2SD, then install all apps locally and don't bother moving them, knowing really that they're going to ext anyway. If you prefer to use native (there's a few advantages including performance and how A2SD seems to be corrupting SD cards in Froyo in some situations), then turn A2SD off and keep APPS local so that the Froyo tools reflect reality. Edited September 9, 2010 by spammyspam Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest DragosP Posted September 9, 2010 Report Share Posted September 9, 2010 (edited) Edited September 9, 2010 by DragosP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest spammyspam Posted September 9, 2010 Report Share Posted September 9, 2010 I just realised I added nothing to this thread. Sigh. Well I hope it's useful for someone anyway! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest manisa236 Posted September 9, 2010 Report Share Posted September 9, 2010 (edited) Hah ha nice explanation :P A quick quection tho, I have prebaked R8 with A2SD. Although Quick System Info shows that my A2SD storage (ext3) is dropping as I install apps, some big apps like Copilot clearly goes to internal storage (I am down to 100 MB from original 133 MB now with just a handfull of apps). Is there a way of forcing ALL apps to go to A2SD (ext3) storage? Thanks.. :) PS: I'd say maybe my A2SD+ is not working properly, but I created an ext3 partition and wiped everything before flashing R8 and drop in size means some apps are going to ext3. Edited September 9, 2010 by manisa236 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Bladtman242 Posted September 13, 2010 Report Share Posted September 13, 2010 Hi :P Is there any way (with the adb for example) to move installed apps from the ext 3 partition to the internal memory, and vice versa, or does the symlinks destroy all hope for that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest spammyspam Posted September 13, 2010 Report Share Posted September 13, 2010 AFAIK it's all or nothing I'm afraid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest DragosP Posted September 13, 2010 Report Share Posted September 13, 2010 Hi :P Is there any way (with the adb for example) to move installed apps from the ext 3 partition to the internal memory, and vice versa, or does the symlinks destroy all hope for that? Yes, you can, but only in recovery mode. Basicaly, if you make in reverse what a2sd script does. And, of course if you remove the symlink /data/app -> /sd (or/and /data/app-private). But, is a or | or situation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest postwarbreakout Posted September 15, 2010 Report Share Posted September 15, 2010 I hope it's okay to use that thread - since I'm running r9 with a2sd+, the new apps won't install on the ext partition.I had too less memory yesterday to update a app, so I checked back and all the apps I installed after running titanium backup were installed on the phone. Is there some option in r9 or a bug or what's going on there? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest DragosP Posted September 16, 2010 Report Share Posted September 16, 2010 That's a common problem when you don't have the right partition on the sdcard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest postwarbreakout Posted September 16, 2010 Report Share Posted September 16, 2010 but it worked fine before? I now got back to r8 and still have the problem. could it be that the partition is full? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest The Virus 2013 Posted September 16, 2010 Report Share Posted September 16, 2010 Use Quick Info from the market to see space on the ext partition Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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