Guest Speckles Posted June 23, 2010 Report Posted June 23, 2010 I'm toying with the idea of only moving some applications to SD card, rather than all of them. I know 2.2 (Froyo?) supports this, but we don't have that and since apps have to note it as an ability, I'm not sure it'll even work anyway. [someone else has probably done all this already, but doing it myself is more fun, plus I'm learning too! Can't be bad] So this is what I've done: Partitioned my SD card (using RA-recovery) so I've got a 512MB EXT2 partition and a 1.5GB FAT32 partition Found the associated mount point (/dev/block/mmcblk0 seems to be it) and confirmed with fdisk the partition layout Mounted the secondary (p2) partition of the sd card to /system/sd (for some reason, the fat32 partition is mounted on /sdcard ?) Create sys_app and data_app dirs on the ext2 partition Remounted /system as rw Moved a load of files from /system/app and /data/app to the sys_app and data_app dirs on the ext2 partition Created links (ln -s) in there original directories so hopefully everything can still find them Ran 'sync' and then remounted /system as ro My new apps now install without error messages! (hence why I'm doing all this) and I still have ~30MB free Now, I'm assuming that the ext2 partition is not going to be remounted on the next reboot, so I need to hackup a startup script to insert my mount command. I see there's a /etc/init.d as usual, so I was going to throw a script in there to hopefully do the mounting on bootup. Does anyone see a problem in this? Is my phone likely to catch fire next time I reboot it?
Guest DanWilson Posted June 23, 2010 Report Posted June 23, 2010 Is my phone likely to catch fire next time I reboot it? Yes. Enjoy the burny Pulse!
Guest BigBearMDC Posted June 23, 2010 Report Posted June 23, 2010 I'm toying with the idea of only moving some applications to SD card, rather than all of them. I know 2.2 (Froyo?) supports this, but we don't have that and since apps have to note it as an ability, I'm not sure it'll even work anyway. [someone else has probably done all this already, but doing it myself is more fun, plus I'm learning too! Can't be bad] So this is what I've done: Partitioned my SD card (using RA-recovery) so I've got a 512MB EXT2 partition and a 1.5GB FAT32 partition Found the associated mount point (/dev/block/mmcblk0 seems to be it) and confirmed with fdisk the partition layout Mounted the secondary (p2) partition of the sd card to /system/sd (for some reason, the fat32 partition is mounted on /sdcard ?) Create sys_app and data_app dirs on the ext2 partition Remounted /system as rw Moved a load of files from /system/app and /data/app to the sys_app and data_app dirs on the ext2 partition Created links (ln -s) in there original directories so hopefully everything can still find them Ran 'sync' and then remounted /system as ro My new apps now install without error messages! (hence why I'm doing all this) and I still have ~30MB free Now, I'm assuming that the ext2 partition is not going to be remounted on the next reboot, so I need to hackup a startup script to insert my mount command. I see there's a /etc/init.d as usual, so I was going to throw a script in there to hopefully do the mounting on bootup. Does anyone see a problem in this? Is my phone likely to catch fire next time I reboot it? In fact, this is pretty much exactly what the A2SD script does (except that the script scans the fs for errors before mounting). It should work without problems. If you feel like it, you can add the mount commands to the init.rc (of the boot image's ramdisk), but I guess that makes not much difference ;) BTW, its normal that the fat partition of the SD card is mounted to (/system?)/sdcard :D Offtopic, one very intersting thing would be to copy the whole Android OS to /system/sd, and boot Android fully off the SD :( Theoretically this should work if you directly create symlinks to the SD card after the basic fs structure has been loaded (I think - correct me if I'm wring :) ). Best regards, BigBear
Guest DanWilson Posted June 23, 2010 Report Posted June 23, 2010 (edited) (I think - correct me if I'm wring ;) ). Best regards, BigBear You're wrong! But wouldn't this fix our RAM problem? Nothing on the RAM - cos it's all on SD? Please? Edited June 23, 2010 by DanWilson
Guest Speckles Posted June 23, 2010 Report Posted June 23, 2010 Thanks BigBear ! DanWilson: I think your getting RAM and FLASH (or is it DOC?) mixed up.
Guest BigBearMDC Posted June 23, 2010 Report Posted June 23, 2010 You're wrong! But wouldn't this fix our RAM problem? Nothing on the RAM - cos it's all on SD? Please? Sorry, my Pulses onscreen keyboard is a typpo - magnet ;) This would fix our ROM, but not RAM problems, sorry :( But wouldn't it be cool to switch between 1.5 and 2.1 by exchanging the SD card? :-D
Guest Speckles Posted June 23, 2010 Report Posted June 23, 2010 I think it would be perfect for you whilst you are working on getting 2.2 fully operational :( Once you had enough for the night, you could just exchange with your 2.1 SD and walk away ;)
Guest Speckles Posted June 23, 2010 Report Posted June 23, 2010 (edited) Update: All the icon for the apps I moved disappeared. I rebooted into recovery to wipe the dalvik cache. After that it rebooted again and it just sits on the (unanimated) Android logo. Update2: After noticing my script wasn't executable (doh!), I ran chmod 755 on it and reran it, and then 99complete. It then proceeded to boot into the home screen. My icons are now back and everything works as before! W00T! Selective Apps2SD ;) Now all I need is an app that can manage what stays in phone memory and what stays on SD card... Thats a project for another day. Edited June 23, 2010 by Speckles
Guest BigBearMDC Posted June 24, 2010 Report Posted June 24, 2010 (edited) Update: All the icon for the apps I moved disappeared. I rebooted into recovery to wipe the dalvik cache. After that it rebooted again and it just sits on the (unanimated) Android logo. Update2: After noticing my script wasn't executable (doh!), I ran chmod 755 on it and reran it, and then 99complete. It then proceeded to boot into the home screen. My icons are now back and everything works as before! W00T! Selective Apps2SD ;) Now all I need is an app that can manage what stays in phone memory and what stays on SD card... Thats a project for another day. I guess you could just write an app that makes a list of all apps and lets you choose them. The chosen ones just get moved to /system/sd/app. I don't have a programming environment set up yet, once I have I'd like to help you :( Best regards, BugBear Edited June 24, 2010 by BigBearMDC
Guest Basher52 Posted June 24, 2010 Report Posted June 24, 2010 Would be real great improvment ;) Question: How fast is the internal memory reading and writing random files? Wouldnd it be faster splitting the rom in two parts? framework, core etc. on internal mem, all apps on SD card. I had a trie one this yesterday, but ended up in epic fail. Greets
Guest gusthy Posted June 24, 2010 Report Posted June 24, 2010 Would be real great improvment ;) Question: How fast is the internal memory reading and writing random files? Wouldnd it be faster splitting the rom in two parts? framework, core etc. on internal mem, all apps on SD card. I had a trie one this yesterday, but ended up in epic fail. Greets The internal rom is faster than my class2 sd card :(
Guest Basher52 Posted June 24, 2010 Report Posted June 24, 2010 Class 6 is faster i think or better, "feel". The internal NAND has specific flash memory issues like getting slower when more filled up. Question to all 2.1 Custom Rom buolder like FLB or Oscilation: How does apps2sd has been changed compared with 1.5? i found 2 different a2sd folders, but both didnt work for me.
Guest Speckles Posted June 24, 2010 Report Posted June 24, 2010 I looked at a2sd, but when I read about the fc's, you must have minimum class 4 card, you must run fix at every reboot etc, and the fact that I couldn't find an installer (everywhere I read it involved installing a new custom rom with it built in), I decided to try and work it out for myself, and to be honest, I'm glad I did. Now only infrequent apps are on sd card, so the speed isn't that much of an issue any more ;) I've just installed Co-Pilot (came free with the phone but never had enough space to install it as it's > 10MB), so now time to see if that app will work from the sd card. I don't see why not as it's already downloaded 230MB to my sd card on the fat32 partition.
Guest goce.nakov Posted June 24, 2010 Report Posted June 24, 2010 I looked at a2sd, but when I read about the fc's, you must have minimum class 4 card, you must run fix at every reboot etc, and the fact that I couldn't find an installer (everywhere I read it involved installing a new custom rom with it built in), I decided to try and work it out for myself, and to be honest, I'm glad I did. Now only infrequent apps are on sd card, so the speed isn't that much of an issue any more ;) I've just installed Co-Pilot (came free with the phone but never had enough space to install it as it's > 10MB), so now time to see if that app will work from the sd card. I don't see why not as it's already downloaded 230MB to my sd card on the fat32 partition. Here is your link mate http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=670087 That's AP2SD working in FLB ROM and Oscillation ROM
Guest DanWilson Posted June 24, 2010 Report Posted June 24, 2010 BugBear Proving your point BugBear? ;)
Guest Speckles Posted June 24, 2010 Report Posted June 24, 2010 Here is your link mate http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=670087 That's AP2SD working in FLB ROM and Oscillation ROMThanks, but to be honest, I think prefer selective movement of apps rather than all of them.
Guest BigBearMDC Posted June 24, 2010 Report Posted June 24, 2010 Proving your point BugBear? ;) Blame me for that :( I really need a hardware keyboard ... xD
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