dalvik-cache

[Guest Dan Mullen]

Just a quick one... I was wondering why the dalvik-cache sits in /data rather than /cache? I know it can be moved manually - I'm just curious as to why it's located where it is.

Cheers,

Dan

[Guest Dan Mullen]

Just a quick one... I was wondering why the dalvik-cache sits in /data rather than /cache? I know it can be moved manually - I'm just curious as to why it's located where it is.

Cheers,

Dan

Any thoughts on this guys and gals? Moving it to /cache would seem like a no-brainer to me - it'd free up 65MB internal storage for me.

I'm only concerned as I went down to single figures for internal storage today and had to uninstall a few apps. With A2SD, space shouldn't be an issue. Having the dalvik-cache in /data limits how many apps you can install.

[Guest lemmingzappa]

I'd also like to know about this.

[Guest ptruman]

I'd also like to know about this.

Your free memory and free cache space are different - the phone has set limits for it's cache (VMs). RAM only affects how many things you can run at one time, not how much you can store.

Cache on SD will only free up some space, and only be (allegedly) any good if you've a good, fast, SD card (i.e. Class 6 or higher).

I have around "20" MB of "memory" available at any one time, but still 96MB of internal storage, as my apps are on SD. An SD card won't give you more running memory :)

[Guest Dan Mullen]

Your free memory and free cache space are different - the phone has set limits for it's cache (VMs). RAM only affects how many things you can run at one time, not how much you can store.

Cache on SD will only free up some space, and only be (allegedly) any good if you've a good, fast, SD card (i.e. Class 6 or higher).

I have around "20" MB of "memory" available at any one time, but still 96MB of internal storage, as my apps are on SD. An SD card won't give you more running memory :)

Yes, I'm aware of all that. My apps are also on SD, but I had to uninstall some today as I was down to around 6MB internal storage free. (This freed up some space used by the .dex files in the dalvik-cache). Also, I typically have around 18MB RAM free at any one time.

I don't want to move my dalvik-cache and other caches to SD - I'm aware that it will affect performance. What I'm talking about is the 130MB /cache mount point. I currently have 128MB free and was wondering why dalvik-cache has been placed in /data rather than /cache.

Edited December 21, 2009 by Dan Mullen

[Guest venturerider]

Just a thought. You can boot into recovery and clear the dalvik cache from there, a hopefully gain some space back. Of course, the system will have to recreate all of your VMs and will be a bit slow at first, but some folks have regained some space that way.

[Guest Dan Mullen]

Just a thought. You can boot into recovery and clear the dalvik cache from there, a hopefully gain some space back. Of course, the system will have to recreate all of your VMs and will be a bit slow at first, but some folks have regained some space that way.

I tried it a couple of days ago - I managed to reclaim about 2MB :)

I don't know enough about the internals of the ROM really, but it seems a shame to have an ext partition to hold all your apps - meaning you can install a LOT without affecting phone storage - but have the dalvik-cache eating internal storage with each app install. I have no idea what /cache is meant to be used for - not a lot on my phone. If we have 128MB to play with, why not make good use of it?

Here's the contents of my /cache:

# ls -al

ls -al

drwxrwx---	1 1000	 2001		 2048 Apr 19  1980 .

drwxr-xr-x   12 0		0			   0 Dec 21 21:03 ..

-rw-r--r--	1 10018	10018	   30297 Dec 21 21:36 downloadfile-1.jpeg

-rw-r--r--	1 10018	10018	   17433 Dec 21 14:24 downloadfile.jpeg

drwxrwx---	1 0		0			2048 Apr 19  1980 lost+found

drwxrwx---	1 1000	 1000		 2048 Apr 19  1980 recovery

[Guest clarkEEE1]

How the hell have you managed to get your storage down to 6mb with apps2sd I have 86mb left with modaco 3 with over 130 apps some big one's as well. If it wer'nt for modaco taking up that extra 30mb i'd have 116mb I have all my caches on sd and davlik on sd never noticed any differant in speed even on games no lag I have got san disk class4 8gb.

[Guest masterpfa]

How the hell have you managed to get your storage down to 6mb with apps2sd I have 86mb left with modaco 3 with over 130 apps some big one's as well. If it wer'nt for modaco taking up that extra 30mb i'd have 116mb I have all my caches on sd and davlik on sd never noticed any differant in speed even on games no lag I have got san disk class4 8gb.

I agree. something is not quite working as it should be.

I did notice when I was using HTC Mail and a POP3 account. All e-mails were being stored on the phone. Once this was removed Internal Memory increased accordingly, also you may have the issue of the Album cache accumilating. This cache can be cleared safely.

IMAO as long as you phone doesn't come out with the low memory warning you should be OK :)

[Guest Dan Mullen]

I agree. something is not quite working as it should be.

I did notice when I was using HTC Mail and a POP3 account. All e-mails were being stored on the phone. Once this was removed Internal Memory increased accordingly, also you may have the issue of the Album cache accumilating. This cache can be cleared safely.

IMAO as long as you phone doesn't come out with the low memory warning you should be OK :)

I've removed a number of apps that I don't really use and that has freed up some storage space. I also cleared the Album cache, recovering 7MB. Another thing I noticed was that CoPilot was taking up twice the amount of space it used to - I installed the latest update and it went back down to normal size, so that recovered another 7MB. All in all I'm back up to about 40MB free ;)

I'd still be interested to know if we could make more use of /cache.

[Guest clarkEEE1]

I've removed a number of apps that I don't really use and that has freed up some storage space. I also cleared the Album cache, recovering 7MB. Another thing I noticed was that CoPilot was taking up twice the amount of space it used to - I installed the latest update and it went back down to normal size, so that recovered another 7MB. All in all I'm back up to about 40MB free :)

I'd still be interested to know if we could make more use of /cache.

I have co pilot its stored on system/sd weird how its not been moved still you should have way more room on your internal storage, if your using amon 1.5.2 there's an option on there were you can move apps2sd see that frees up more room.

[Guest Dan Mullen]

I have co pilot its stored on system/sd weird how its not been moved still you should have way more room on your internal storage, if your using amon 1.5.2 there's an option on there were you can move apps2sd see that frees up more room.

CoPilot data is stored on my SD card - around 207MB in total. However, there is also a directory in /data/data called com.alk.copilot.marketplace.eu.major that takes up around 7MB.

[Guest kendon]

CoPilot data is stored on my SD card - around 207MB in total. However, there is also a directory in /data/data called com.alk.copilot.marketplace.eu.major that takes up around 7MB.

make that 660mb for the europe map. the size on the sdcard depends on the map, the apk-size is always 7mb.

Edited December 23, 2009 by kendon

[Guest Dan Mullen]

make that 660mb for the europe map. the size on the sdcard depends on the map, the apk-size is always 7mb.

That 7MB in /data isn't the .apk though - the .apk has been correctly moved to my ext partition. The data was showing as 14MB until after the recent update they released.