21/Dec 1.91 - Teknologist kernel with tun.ko, ext4, cifs, and compache ramzswap for GSM Hero

[Guest chuti98]

Thanks everyone for the great work provided! I'd like to use that custom kernel very much but there are things I want to be sure of before I do anything.

I'm running MCR 2.8 without swapper nor App2SD. My SDCard has a single FAT32 partition. Applying teknologist's kernel with this card won't be a problem, right? As Ramswap does its job in the ram, I will benefit from the improvements provided by the kernel, am I correct?

One last question, do the nandroid backups include the kernels? I mean if I apply the kernel and it doesn't work, can I just do a nandroid restore? I really don't want to swipe my phone. I don't have the time for that and it's too much pain.

Thanks to anyone who will take their time to respond!

Its run fine on pure FAT32 and nandroid backup deffinetly include karnel

[Guest gavinfabl]

Just upgraded 6 hours ago from Paul's 2.7 to 2.8. Followed instructions at androidandme.com for crcreating ext4 . Decided to do a fresh install. Can't get over the difference, fxxking amazing job. ! Very impressed. !

[Guest teknologist]

The kernel worked great when installed on top of MCR 2.8.

However, whenever apply it on stock HTC ROM the device hangs for good on the first Hero splash image.... is it incompatible with the stock ROM?

Haven't tried with stock ROM but I can imagine it won't work...all work was done and tested with Paul's MCR 2.8

Stock ROM's aren't even rooted so if you wan't to enjoy speed, you need to install MCR 2.8 then apply the kernel update package.

I am pretty sure you won't be disappointed !

MCR 2.8 is already a lot faster than stock ROM.

Cheers,

-Eric

Edited November 1, 2009 by teknologist

[Guest teknologist]

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what a Kernel is in the grand scheme of things! I'm going to do the wipe and slowly add in my apps and widgets and see if I can pinpoint anything causing problems. I've had a problem with quick office for a while so this would be a good excuse to get everything sorted out.Thanks for the reply(replies), I'm sure everyone appreciates them, I certainly do.

EDIT: Quick Office is working again. :D Still setting things up but I think this fresh start will be a good thing.

The kernel is the core of your system's operating system. It is launched just on boot and handles every I/O , calculations, memory allocations, peripherals etc.

sort of the engine of a car.

[Guest holywood]

Hi, i just installed the 1.7 version of the kernel, and it seemed to me, that everything is fine... but now i ran into some doubts, but i'm not sure if i'm not paranoid :D

the problem is, that i have checked the /proc/ramzswap file, i think this was the one that Teknologist was pointing out in the beginning, before erasing info about it details for userinit.sh, and what i got was the disk size of 94mb and all other parameters were 0. Then i looked at the log and what greeted me at the very beginnig..

I//system/bin/sh( 37): sysctl: /etc/sysctl.conf: No such file or directory

I//system/bin/sh( 37): modprobe: chdir(2.6.27-mck-teknologist-1.7): No such file or directory

I//system/bin/sh( 37): /system/bin/a2sd: /system/bin/rzscontrol: not found

I//system/bin/sh( 37): swapon: can't stat '/dev/block/ramzswap0': No such file or directory

So it seems that ramzswap is not working.. from what i understood it should be working with phisical memory on the device in 1.7 release, am i wrong?

i'm quite new to android etc, so maybe someone can clear that out for me? and possibly tell me where did i take the wrong turn :P

phone is running on MCR 2.8, i upgraded from 1.4 kernel version, with userinit.sh changed according to information found in the first post, at the time, to work without swap partition. before upgrading to 1.7 i have deleted userinit.sh that i have pushed to /system/sd before... maybe i shouldn't have done that? if so, any ideas what can i do now?

thanks in advance, and big thanks to Teknologist for great work!

[Guest kroosh@android]

Haven't tried with stock ROM but I can image it won't work...all work was done and tested with Paul's MCR 2.8

Stock ROM's aren't even rooted so if you wan't to enjoy speed, you need to install MCR 2.8 then apply the kernel update package.

I am pretty sure you won't be disappointed !

MCR 2.8 is already a lot faster than stock ROM.

Cheers,

-Eric

Hi Eric

I didn't mention that the stock ROM i used is already rooted by Paul. When tried your kernel on MCR 2.8 it was pretty good...

Keep up the great work.

[Guest kroosh@android]

Haven't tried with stock ROM but I can image it won't work...all work was done and tested with Paul's MCR 2.8

Stock ROM's aren't even rooted so if you wan't to enjoy speed, you need to install MCR 2.8 then apply the kernel update package.

I am pretty sure you won't be disappointed !

MCR 2.8 is already a lot faster than stock ROM.

Cheers,

-Eric

Hi Eric

I didn't mention that the stock ROM i used is already rooted by Paul. When tried your kernel on MCR 2.8 it was pretty good...

Keep up the great work.

[Guest masterpfa]

Just upgraded 6 hours ago from Paul's 2.7 to 2.8. Followed instructions at androidandme.com for crcreating ext4 . Decided to do a fresh install. Can't get over the difference, fxxking amazing job. ! Very impressed. !

Hi I too did a complete wipe. I had originally installed teknologist-1.7 Kernel over my existing MCR 2.8 and boy was the phone fast

But not being satisfied I wanted to try and get my ext3 converted to ext4 on my 8GB card to see if any further improvements could be made.

I had a spare Micro SD 4GB card, so I decided to start from afresh formatting the card via the Ubuntu 9.10 route,

with just the 2 partitions, Fat32 - 3371MB and ext4 - 512MB

Card formatted OK but ended up with the dreaded boot loop... DOH!!!!

So started again, but this time using Amon Ras' Recovery v1.2.3 to format to the original suggested 3 partition format

Fat 32, ext2 and swap, because this had worked for me in the past.

Flashed with MCR 2.8, radio and teknologist 1.7 kernel and with minimal apps installed.

Once I was satisfied this was all working as it should be, I turned my attention to the card I had in my phone.

I decided to use the adb shell and Amon Ras' Recovery v1.2.3 route and the guide on Android and Me

http://androidandme.com/2009/08/news/how-t...ndroid-apps2sd/

to format my Micro SD 8GB card with the new layout Fat 32 & ext4. I then copied the files on the 4GB card, via my PC to the 8GB card

placed this in the phone and confirmed that I had a fully functional phone, running MCR 2.8 Rom, 1.7 Kernel with Fat 32 & ext 4.

(I make it a point of saving all the contents from my SD card to the PC as a backup, so I am always able to restore via My Back Up pro, Astro etc, by copying the Backup folders these apps use, back to the card in my phone)

The other benefits of the fresh install are the gains in the memory department. Before 92mb free, now after, having installed all my apps again and 1.7 and phone fully functional 120mb free.

!!!RESULT!!!!

P.S. am I the only one who keeps coming back here to check if MCR 2.9 or 1.9 Kernel have been released :D

[Guest teknologist]

Hi, i just installed the 1.7 version of the kernel, and it seemed to me, that everything is fine... but now i ran into some doubts, but i'm not sure if i'm not paranoid :D

the problem is, that i have checked the /proc/ramzswap file, i think this was the one that Teknologist was pointing out in the beginning, before erasing info about it details for userinit.sh, and what i got was the disk size of 94mb and all other parameters were 0. Then i looked at the log and what greeted me at the very beginnig..

I//system/bin/sh( 37): sysctl: /etc/sysctl.conf: No such file or directory

I//system/bin/sh( 37): modprobe: chdir(2.6.27-mck-teknologist-1.7): No such file or directory

I//system/bin/sh( 37): /system/bin/a2sd: /system/bin/rzscontrol: not found

I//system/bin/sh( 37): swapon: can't stat '/dev/block/ramzswap0': No such file or directory

So it seems that ramzswap is not working.. from what i understood it should be working with phisical memory on the device in 1.7 release, am i wrong?

i'm quite new to android etc, so maybe someone can clear that out for me? and possibly tell me where did i take the wrong turn :P

phone is running on MCR 2.8, i upgraded from 1.4 kernel version, with userinit.sh changed according to information found in the first post, at the time, to work without swap partition. before upgrading to 1.7 i have deleted userinit.sh that i have pushed to /system/sd before... maybe i shouldn't have done that? if so, any ideas what can i do now?

thanks in advance, and big thanks to Teknologist for great work!

With version 1.7 I use a /data/ramzswap.sh init script to activate the compressed pool at an earlier stage.

You were right to delete userinit.sh as it is not used anymore.

The following errors are normal:

I//system/bin/sh(   37): sysctl: /etc/sysctl.conf: No such file or directory


 I//system/bin/sh(   37): modprobe: chdir(2.6.27-mck-teknologist-1.7): No such file or directory


 I//system/bin/sh(   37): /system/bin/a2sd: /system/bin/rzscontrol: not found

But this one is not:

I//system/bin/sh(   37): swapon: can't stat '/dev/block/ramzswap0': No such file or directory

And yes you are right. In 1.7, when the device starts, compcache reserves a pool in RAM and makes it compressed, then activates it as swap. This is the command that fails for you. Could you post the output of:

cat /proc/swaps

cat/proc/ramzswap

and the output of command

free

Have you tried reinstalling the 1.7 update ?

[Guest AndiTails]

Superb work.

Teknologist - thank you.

Paired with Paul's MCR, this just makes the Hero the ultimate, super-speedy, and dare I say it, very reliable, phone.

Love it - thanks guys!

[Guest Musicmannetje]

What's going wrong with downloading the 1.7 version... It takes ages here to start downloading and it never completes (drops into timeout).

Other MoDaCo downloads are really fast, so this one is obviously doing something wrong.

[Guest Fok@]

I have problems to install this update. 1st problem - can't create ext4 partition - acronic disk suite doesn't have the option, under linux (ubuntu) I used gpartition and there is lock key showing and I can't do anything with my SD. So what I did is format SD to Fat32 and then created Ext3 and then install this update. What I'm getting is Looping between hero logo and HTC. Any Ideas ? Do we actually need Ext partition to get A2SD

[Guest GodsDevil]

You don't necessarily need ext4 to install 1.7 Kernel but you do need a ext partition to use A2SD.

The easiest way to do it to use Amon RA's 1.2.3 recovery image from XDA forums. It has a built-in support for creating these partitions in the recovery mode. All you need to do is flash Amon's recovery image. Partition your card and then flash Paul's 2.8 ROM and then this kernel on top. Things should work fine then. :D

D

[Guest teknologist]

What's going wrong with downloading the 1.7 version... It takes ages here to start downloading and it never completes (drops into timeout).

Other MoDaCo downloads are really fast, so this one is obviously doing something wrong.

Changed the download to a fast mirror

Apologies for the inconvenience.

[Guest Fok@]

You don't necessarily need ext4 to install 1.7 Kernel but you do need a ext partition to use A2SD.

The easiest way to do it to use Amon RA's 1.2.3 recovery image from XDA forums. It has a built-in support for creating these partitions in the recovery mode. All you need to do is flash Amon's recovery image. Partition your card and then flash Paul's 2.8 ROM and then this kernel on top. Things should work fine then. :D

D

Yes Thanks BUT

I had already installed RA-hero-v1.2.3 Recovery.However it has option to create fat32+ext2+swap (and then we can convert ext2 to ext3) or only fat32. But we don't need swap partition after updating this kernel. Also I think to get the best performance it is recommended to have ext4. So which Program/Software is the best to get Fat32 and ext4 compatible with Hero?

Thanks

[Guest teknologist]

Yes Thanks BUT

I had already installed RA-hero-v1.2.3 Recovery.However it has option to create fat32+ext2+swap (and then we can convert ext2 to ext3) or only fat32. But we don't need swap partition after updating this kernel. Also I think to get the best performance it is recommended to have ext4. So which Program/Software is the best to get Fat32 and ext4 compatible with Hero?

Thanks

Ext4 is not needed. it's only a geek thing. Perf improvements due to ext4 are far from proven...But A2SD is recommended. Just have RA-Hero make your ext2 partition for you.

Also swap partition is not needed at all as this kernel doesn't use it. Also remove swapper if you have it.

if swap partition exists, it will be ignored, but kernel will run anyway (don't worry about having it or not!).

hope this helps !

Edited November 1, 2009 by teknologist

[Guest holywood]

Could you post the output of:

cat /proc/swaps

cat/proc/ramzswap

and the output of command

free

Have you tried reinstalling the 1.7 update ?

Thanks for replay! but now i'm really confused... i checked free, swaps and ramzswap now, after the device is running more than 10 hours, and to my surprise /proc/ramzswap changed and started to look more like it should, from what i can say... but i rebooted my hero, and the strange message is still there, also, the total size reported by free is the amount of phisical memory, i don't know if this should be like that... anyways, here's what i had before last reboot: for /proc/ramzswap:

DiskSize:	   94208 kB

NumReads:		6203

NumWrites:		8564

FailedReads:		   0

FailedWrites:		   0

InvalidIO:		   0

NotifyFree:		 708

ZeroPages:		 393

GoodCompress:		  78 %

NoCompress:		   4 %

PagesStored:		7395

PagesUsed:		2410

OrigDataSize:	   29580 kB

ComprDataSize:		9501 kB

MemUsedTotal:		9640 kB

for /proc/swaps

Filename				Type		Size	Used	Priority

/dev/block/ramzswap0					partition	94200	30948	-1

and free:

			  total		 used		 free	   shared	  buffers

Mem:	   196152	   176348		19804			0		   48

Swap:		94200		30684		63516

Total:	   290352	   207032		83320

after reboot swaps stays the same, only shows that 0mb of it is in use, ramzswap shows as described before, total memory and all other zeros, and free shows also 94mb's of free swap space. so maybe it is working for me after all? but still, this message from logs confuses me a bit, especially, that ramzswap does not appear through out the whole startup in any other place in the log. so i'm still not sure what is going on actually :D

[Guest teknologist]

Thanks for replay! but now i'm really confused... i checked free, swaps and ramzswap now, after the device is running more than 10 hours, and to my surprise /proc/ramzswap changed and started to look more like it should, from what i can say... but i rebooted my hero, and the strange message is still there, also, the total size reported by free is the amount of phisical memory, i don't know if this should be like that... anyways, here's what i had before last reboot:

for /proc/ramzswap:

DiskSize:	   94208 kB

 NumReads:		6203

 NumWrites:		8564

 FailedReads:		   0

 FailedWrites:		   0

 InvalidIO:		   0

 NotifyFree:		 708

 ZeroPages:		 393

 GoodCompress:		  78 %

 NoCompress:		   4 %

 PagesStored:		7395

 PagesUsed:		2410

 OrigDataSize:	   29580 kB

 ComprDataSize:		9501 kB

 MemUsedTotal:		9640 kB

for /proc/swaps

Filename				Type		Size	Used	Priority

 /dev/block/ramzswap0					partition	94200	30948	-1

and free:

			  total		 used		 free	   shared	  buffers

 Mem:	   196152	   176348		19804			0		   48

 Swap:		94200		30684		63516

 Total:	   290352	   207032		83320

after reboot swaps stays the same, only shows that 0mb of it is in use, ramzswap shows as described before, total memory and all other zeros, and free shows also 94mb's of free swap space. so maybe it is working for me after all? but still, this message from logs confuses me a bit, especially, that ramzswap does not appear through out the whole startup in any other place in the log. so i'm still not sure what is going on actually :D

You phone works perfectly, as ramzswap does. Swap is used after some time, so to beign to see stats in /proc/ramzswap you have to use your phone for some time ! Forget about the message on the log. It is normal !

You definitely don't understand ramzswap, I advise you read post in this topic and MCR 2.8 topic If you really need to understand the geeky thing.

If not, rest assured, your kernel 1.7 install works perfectly.

Cheers,

--Eric

PS: I am in the process of setting up a website to explain all this in an clearer way than posts in topics...I'll post here and tweet as soone as it is ready !

[Guest holywood]

ok, glad to hear that, thought so at the beginning, but then i got confused... :D thanks for makeing it clear!

[Guest teknologist]

ok, glad to hear that, thought so at the beginning, but then i got confused... :D thanks for makeing it clear!

i'm curious, Didn't you notice a performance boost ???

[Guest plun]

Hi all

I have a RA-HERO setup with partitions, converted to EXT4.

How do I change ownership for this partition, read-only for the moment.

Thanks for all work with this kernel and also Modaco 2.8.

[Guest phillevy]

Thanks so much for your work Teknologist! I have updated 2.6 to 2.8 (no wipe) and then put on the 1.7 kernel. I have an EXT3 partition for my apps and all is working as before with no issues. All is smooth and responsive although I can't honestly detect any major improvements compared to before. Apart from converting my partition to EXT4, is there anything else I can do to utilise the new kernel?

[Guest teknologist]

Thanks so much for your work Teknologist! I have updated 2.6 to 2.8 (no wipe) and then put on the 1.7 kernel. I have an EXT3 partition for my apps and all is working as before with no issues. All is smooth and responsive although I can't honestly detect any major improvements compared to before. Apart from converting my partition to EXT4, is there anything else I can do to utilise the new kernel?

Only improvement is responsiveness/speed.

You don't need to moved to ext4 if you don't want. Ext3/Ext2 work fine too.

Don't you see a performance boost ?

What does it say in Settings/About/kernel ?

What does cat /proc/ramzswap output ?

[Guest teknologist]

Hi all

I have a RA-HERO setup with partitions, converted to EXT4.

How do I change ownership for this partition, read-only for the moment.

Thanks for all work with this kernel and also Modaco 2.8.

Shouldn't be read-only ...

What did you do to convert to ext4 ?

Between, ext2/ext3 work fine.

[Guest plun]

Shouldn't be read-only ...

What did you do to convert to ext4 ?

Between, ext2/ext3 work fine.

Followed this guide:

http://androidandme.com/2009/08/news/how-t...ndroid-apps2sd/

Step 8

When I mounts the SD-card FAT32 is fine but my EXT4 partition is read-only.

I am using Ubuntu 9.10