Hi there,
I've got everything working on my newly reflashed Sprint Hero. (Thanks to everyone that contributed to the gigantic thread....read all (currently) 28 pages...you guys made it easy).
My question is whether apps 2 sd is actually working?
I've put completely bare ROMs on my hero (reverted back to stock ROM, wiped it, wiped & partitioned the sdcard to fat32, ext2 & swap, then flashed with 1.1). I then go to install an app and it doesn't show up on the SD card and my internal memory decreases (indicating that its not on the SD card?)
Don't think I've missed any relevant details, but Im keen to get this working.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
It sounds like you did everything correctly.
try this:
adb shell
mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
cd /system/sd
ls
This should say:
[0;0mapp [0m
[0;0mapp-private [0m
as in /system/sd/app
/system/sd/app-private
then type:
cd /system/sd/app
ls
this should list the programs on the ext2 partition of your sdcard and, if you type:
cd /data/app
ls
you would still see the programs listed, but it is just telling you what you have installed they are not actually there, from what I understand.
Also, the internal memory on my phone also went down, but it went down 5 or so mb instead of 20 or so mb.
While I'm here would you mind telling me if when you said
dom2114 said:
(reverted back to stock ROM, wiped it,...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
do you mean you reverted to a Nandroid backup then you performed a factory reset, and then flashed with 1.1, because I was wondering if this is possible?
hi there crake
really appreciate the detailed reply.
did everything you said and everything was exactly as you described, except that in /system/sd, i also have a lost+found folder
did the next 2 steps you outlined and yes, /data/app was a duplicate of /system/sd/app. I didn't realize that these were the locations (one being the actual location and the other being the 'symlink') of the ext2 partition.
One final question for you. How big was your fat32 partition? It didn't look like there was a way to control how big you want the fat32 partitions relative to the ext2 partition (& the swap partition...not sure what that is).
In answer to your question: yes, thats exactly what I did.
I wanted a 100% free implementation of modaco 1.1 (i.e. no apps etc). Here's what i did just FYI:
Flashed my nandroid backup back on
Hard reset it
Turned the phone on and just put my basic gmail/facebook login details in
Turned it off and decided to take another nandroid backup in case I wanted to go back to this state...(so I now have 2 nandroid backups)
Enabled USB transfer and copied this new backup off
Wiped the SD card & dalvik cache and then partitioned the card to fat32, ext2 and swap
Transferred the Modaco ROM to the SD Card
Flashed the phone w/ Modaco
End result was a 100% 'stock' Modaco ROM...if that makes any sense.
Appreciate an answer and any info as to the partition sizes.
EDIT:
Realized that this 'new backup' I performed (in the 4th step above) is useless if I end up wiping/repartioning the sdcard as this ROM refers to apps that the modaco ROM moved to the SD. These will obviously be removed after a format/repartition.
Thanks for the info, I used the 2gb (1.8-ish) sd card that came with my phone, after partitioning, the fat32 partition was somewhere around 1.4 gb. There was no option to modify partition size so I assumed it partitions the ext2 to a predetermined size and the rest is partitioned as fat32.
crake001 said:
Thanks for the info, I used the 2gb (1.8-ish) sd card that came with my phone, after partitioning, the fat32 partition was somewhere around 1.4 gb. There was no option to modify partition size so I assumed it partitions the ext2 to a predetermined size and the rest is partitioned as fat32.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe its around 450MB, mine is like 446MB as ext2, the rest of my 8GB sd card is FAT32. It automatically did this, but when I go to All Applications, Apps to SD isn't even listed as an installed application. I went to the market place and installed Apps to SD 2, and it told me I needed to read the tutorial (wtf ?).
So my guess is, the MoDaCo ROM does all the work for you that the Apps to SD program would normally do, and it just always saves it to your SD card.
simplyphp said:
I believe its around 450MB, mine is like 446MB as ext2, the rest of my 8GB sd card is FAT32. It automatically did this, but when I go to All Applications, Apps to SD isn't even listed as an installed application. I went to the market place and installed Apps to SD 2, and it told me I needed to read the tutorial (wtf ?).
So my guess is, the MoDaCo ROM does all the work for you that the Apps to SD program would normally do, and it just always saves it to your SD card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, thats the conclusion I came to. In the adb shell, if you type apps2sd, something starts happening...Im not smart enough to know what though. Figured Id mention if someone wants to play around
Thanks you all for the info. This was exactly what I was looking for. Wanted to know the size of the ext2 partition and how to control it if we even could but looks like it's automatic as stated. Then to find a way to check to make sure the apps were getting installed on the partition.
I installed the MoDaCo 1.1 over top of all my apps/settings etc. I do have my SD card partitioned via my recovery image option.
What do I need to do to get all those apps over to my sd card and off my phone?
Related
Did not get any help in cyanogenmod thread, so creating a separate thread here.
I am in trouble. After I updated my ROM to cyanogenmod 3.6.7.2 (with his recovery image 1.3.1 and latest radio) I get a message saying: "Removed SD Card" in the notification and I am getting force closes in apps which access sd card.
Why did it remove my sd card? I have the following partition structure"
c (formatted fat32) 2GB - this is what used for upgrading the radio and rom.
83 (formatted ext4) 6GB
c (formatted fat32) 7GB
82 (mkswapped) whatever left off from 16GB card.
Is this structure causing the issues? I used Linux 2.6.30 and e2fsprogs 1.41.7 to format ext4 and dosfstools 3.0.2 to format fat32 FSs.
I ran fix_permissions from recovery console because I was getting FCs in powermanager (which logs files on SD card).
Also, if I boot into the recovery console, I can mount /sdcard and it automatically mounts the first fat32 partition on /sdcard. I can 'fdisk -l' and see all my partitions are there. So, its not a hardware issue. Some sort of chicken&egg because of apps2sd.
I just mounted the partition2 (which is ext4) in recovery console and I can see there are "app app-private dalvik-cache lost+found" folders on it. So, it looks like normally initialized.
Does anybody know what's going on here? Appreciate your help!
It's the same response you've been getting in the other section.
Try backing up your data on your computer, and completely formatting your card to fat32.
From there, instead of making the partitions on the computer, use the Recovery Console (accessed from Cyano's Recovery) and re-create the partitions as you like.
Ok, I delete the 3rd and 4th partitions, and it seems to be working fine now. So, it seems like there is an assumption about the partition structure in the code somewhere.
devsk said:
Ok, I delete the 3rd and 4th partitions, and it seems to be working fine now. So, it seems like there is an assumption about the partition structure in the code somewhere.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So you are all good now?
What exactly did you do? Just remove the 3rd & 4th partition, without formatting?
akapoor said:
So you are all good now?
What exactly did you do? Just remove the 3rd & 4th partition, without formatting?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I just removed the 3rd and 4th partitions from recovery console and the card is recognized and working fine. Now, I need to find out why is it hard coded like that.
It seems like something doesn't like more than 3 partitions on the SD card. I now have 3 partitions with 'c' (fat32), '83' (ext4) and 'c' (fat32) codes and it seems to work fine.
An ext partition of more than 1.5gb can cause problems
Most roms will not work with the way you had it set up (at least not well)
They follow a 3 partition scheme as such
FAT32 > EXT > SWAP
B-man007 said:
An ext partition of more than 1.5gb can cause problems
Most roms will not work with the way you had it set up (at least not well)
They follow a 3 partition scheme as such
FAT32 > EXT > SWAP
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've heard this repeated elsewhere but nobody ever actually says what the problem is with partitions greater than 1.5gb. I'm very curious to know, because I haven't noticed anything wrong.
Except that /sdcard won't automount if my sd card has 4 partitions defined on it. As soon as I mark the 4th one empty and reboot, it's fine again. But that has nothing to do with the size of the ext fs on partition 2. Something with vold is funky, because I can mount /sdcard manually from adb.
From the recovery image to get APPS2SD by simply running the format the SD using Ext2+Swap+fat32 right?
I have a class 6 card. How do I know if this actually works? I formatted and my internals space did not change?
Are there major benefits of doing APPS2SD?
Yes, first format the SD card.
To see if its working,
Check your Settings -> SD card & phone storage -> Internal phone storage. Make note of what it is at. Install some apps, maybe even try reinstalling some of the apps on your phone. Then, check the internal storage again and see if you have some more space.
As for the benefits, it just frees up your internal memory on your phone. I don't think it makes your phone faster or anything.
The question I have about APPS2SD is this. How come when I use it my internal memory drops after I install apps. I have not used it since I had to go back to the original Sprint ROM to do the update and installing the same apps I had before, my internal memory was about the same as it was when I used APPS2SD. I used the recovery screen to format to Fat32-Ext2-Swap and files were on the sd card when I checked, but my internal memory still drops everytime I install something. What is the real benifit of this if the internal memory drops anyway. I am real confused about this and have not decided if it is worth using since I have read it can damage your memory card. Can someone with knowledge of how this works please explain it.
Thx for all the great Info found here.
AppsToSD only puts the apps themselves on the SD. The internal memory is still used by the boot-cache, dalvik-cache, and actual app data like settings, saved games, cache, etc.
Must it be ext3?
What if i have ext2?
rvenes said:
Must it be ext3?
What if i have ext2?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If youre using one of the newer recovery images there should be an option to upgrade ext2 to ext3
as for the difference...im not to sure exactly
Tipharet said:
How do I know if this actually works? I formatted and my internals space did not change
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Answer: . . . . .
nelson8403 said:
Just because the apps are installed to the SD card doesn't mean they don't store things on the phone.. cache is stored on the phones, theres a /data/data folder on the phone that the apps populate as well, it just doesn't take AS MUCH space on your phone as a non appstosd
also to make sure your apps are working go into your adb shell, type in
Code:
cd /data/app
pwd
cd /data/app-private
pwd
What this will do is go to your /data/app folder and because with appstosd that is a symbolic link to /system/sd/app the PWD (present working directory) will display /system/sd/app, if PWD shows /data/app you are not running appstosd
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
rvenes said:
Must it be ext3?
What if i have ext2?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As far as I know it works just fine on ext2.
As far as the difference, the nutshell version is that ext3 is pretty much just ext2 with journaling hacked in. If you don't know that that means, do a google search on "journaling file system".
There should be no downside whatsoever to switching to ext3. It can still be read from and written to by anything that can use ext2, and it adds more robust error recovery.
Caveats: I'm not sure how well, or if, that error recovery works on flash memory devices. My expertise is working with large servers that use hard disks. I also don't know if there are tools in our android builds that take advantage of the benefits that ext3 provides.
Having said that, I'm still confident that choosing to upgrade to ext3 offers NO downside, and while there might also be no upside, there is also the potential for a huge upside.
My advice: Do it.
not sure if this has been answered yet as I don't think I can search in this app, but is there a way to enable app2sd on cyanogen 5.0.5.3?
Yes, under applications.
it's greyed out for me.
Is your sd card partitioned?
jerrycycle said:
Is your sd card partitioned?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
...probably not. I'm assuming if it isn't there isn't an easy way to do so and keep my data?. .. or is there? .
Use recovery 1.7 cyanogen version to make a ext2 partition then upgrade it from ext2 to ext3 to ext4. Mount your sd card and back it up before wiping it.
1 Install recovery 1.7 cyanogen
2 Boot into recovery
3 select patition sd card option
4 select partition sd
5 choose 0 for swap 1 to 2 gigs for ext2 and the rest will be fat32.
5 once that is done go back into patition sd card options and select ext2 to ext3 then after thats done select ext3 to ext4.
Hope this helps
shep
shep211 said:
Use recovery 1.7 cyanogen version
...
1 Install recovery 1.7 cyanogen
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cyanogen did not write this recovery tool; Amon_RA created a CM-based theme for it as it was heavily requested. He also added in support for Soyars' Apps2SD implementation (what you are giving a how-to for).
You actually do not need to change ext types for this to work. For testing purposes, I left it as the stock ext partition type created by 1.7 and apps2sd works beautifully.
shep211 said:
Use recovery 1.7 cyanogen version to make a ext2 partition then upgrade it from ext2 to ext3 to ext4. Mount your sd card and back it up before wiping it.
1 Install recovery 1.7 cyanogen
2 Boot into recovery
3 select patition sd card option
4 select partition sd
5 choose 0 for swap 1 to 2 gigs for ext2 and the rest will be fat32.
5 once that is done go back into patition sd card options and select ext2 to ext3 then after thats done select ext3 to ext4.
Hope this helps
shep
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks heaps
deprecate said:
Cyanogen did not write this recovery tool; Amon_RA created a CM-based theme for it as it was heavily requested. He also added in support for Soyars' Apps2SD implementation (what you are giving a how-to for).
You actually do not need to change ext types for this to work. For testing purposes, I left it as the stock ext partition type created by 1.7 and apps2sd works beautifully.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I never said it was made by Cyanogen. I know Amon_RA made it.
edit: deleted content, not important.
how can you revert the partition on the sd card?
i want to have the full space on my sd card just as it came from stock.
edit: deleted content, not important.
edit: deleted content, not important.
edit: deleted content, not important.
edit: deleted content, not important.
So that didn't seem to work.
I tried without the updating of ext3 and ext4 and no dice.
I finally SEEMED to have gotten it to work. I did the partition of:
SWAP 0
EXT2 2048
REMAINDER
Anyways, I did this WITHOUT the ext3 and ext4 updates. When I went into the OS, the App2SD is enabled and the SD card mounts fine.
Hopefully this will continue to work. Any1 know what the problems are without updating to ext4?
edit: deleted content, not important.
tonnic said:
well that didn't work well. my phone became unresponsive and then the screen wouldn't come on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
jesus i hope its fixed..
A REALLY EASY WAY TO PARTITION YOUR MEMORY CARD IS AS FOLLOWS...
back-up your card
download Clockwork Recovery MOD from the market
buy the pro version because this guy is a genius*
+you might have to in order to partition idk
click partition memory card (something like that)
i clicked 512MB then 256MB for the second option.
works amazingly
tonnic said:
well that didn't work well. my phone became unresponsive and then the screen wouldn't come on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have a linux distro handy?
if so, you can use Gparted to create the partitions. You might need a microSD adapter though, as it seems to have trouble finding the mount point if it is in the phone.
edit: deleted content, not important.
I knew this time would come....
I've got too many apps on my phone and Im running low on space, and I've noticed my phone has been dragging lately.
I have an 8GB class 6 SD card, so hopefully speed shouldnt be an issue.
I have yet to use A2SD...
If I partition my drive, do I lose everything that's on there? Obviously that's not a problem as I can just move everything over to my computer then copy it back, but if I can leave the data on there and partition that'd be great.
Im having a hard time finding a step by step "from day one" guide.
Mind pointing me in the right direction? The only thing Ive found in the wiki is moving to a new SD card with A2SD.
Im currently running DC 2.07.2
BACK UP SDCARD
Boot into recovery. Partition SD card (default values)
Download http://www.darktremor.com/files/misc/a2sd-2.5-signed.zip
Flash above .zip as any normal ROM
Boot phone
Open command prompt and type:
adb shell
a2sd install
Tada.
Ok great, got that part down.
Now moving the already installed apps over to the SD card? What else do I do from here?
Thank you for the help!
Actually, looks like everything went ok...
ls -l /data reveals all the locations as /system/sd/app
I didn't bother to look at free internal space before installing, but my interanal free storage is now at 130MB. Sound right?
Last question i have for now....
Now that all my apps are on the SD card, if I were to flash a new ROM (say a new ROM Flipz comes out with) that has A2SD support... I dont' have to re-install them as both the apks, odex, and dalvik are all stored on the SD card right?
poor_red_neck said:
Actually, looks like everything went ok...
ls -l /data reveals all the locations as /system/sd/app
I didn't bother to look at free internal space before installing, but my interanal free storage is now at 130MB. Sound right?
Last question i have for now....
Now that all my apps are on the SD card, if I were to flash a new ROM (say a new ROM Flipz comes out with) that has A2SD support... I dont' have to re-install them as both the apks, odex, and dalvik are all stored on the SD card right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The only version that I'm aware of that moves Dalvik-cache to the sd card is Apps2SD version 2.5. I don't know if anyone has that in the ROMs yet. Many of them are either using an Apps2SD that was built for Fresh 2.0d, Apps2SD version 2.0, or the Apps2SD which is common in the 1.5 builds.
Your apps in /data/app and /data/app-private are on the sd card. You can flash Apps2SD version 2.5 (A2SD) from http://www.darktremor.com/files/misc/a2sd-2.5-signed.zip if you want to move the dalvik-cache.
EDIT: I really should read the instructions that was posted before I stick my foot in my mouth. The file is the one located at Darktremor, which is the version 2.5...so, yes...your dalvik-cache is on the sd card.
So I tried the above method, but all my apps stopped working and when I go to reinstall them, it says "Insufficient Space for App"...
What did I do wrong?
EDIT: Okay, nevermind, it seems to be working now. I tried installing the app again and it installed fine the second time. Trying another one now.
I did this recently and just found out that I cannot install/download apps from the market, it just gets stuck there. Does it know where its downloading too after a2sd is installed?
I'm trying to understand the most convenient way to make a copy of an SD card that has an EXT partition on it. This would need to be done anytime you upgrade from a smaller to a larger SD card, so I have to believe a number of people on these forums have dealt with it.
This is what I'm expecting to be done... please confirm if it's correct:
Make a nandroid backup, stored on the old SD card
Copy the nandroid backup to PC
Install new SD card and partition it accordingly
Copy nandroid backup to new SD card
Perform a nandroid restore
At this point, everything should be as it was, with the larger SD card. Correct? I've also noticed an alternative that would probably work, that being a partition management program like EaseUS.
My 32Gb SD card arrived so I downloaded Mini-Partition to set it up. Then when I went to copy the EXT3 partition from my 8Gb SD card, the option wasn't possible. Apparently I can't copy it into a larger EXT3 space, only unallocated space. So, I removed the target EXT3 partition, making it unallocated, and then tried to copy and resize. Apparently the tool won't let you resize an existing EXT3 partition. I installed EaseUS to try this operation and encountered the same thing.
From what I've just experienced, I'm now thinking that if I try to restore a nandroid backup onto my new card, it will override the newly minted EXT3 partition with the smaller EXT3 partition.
Searching around turned up a lot of Ubuntu/Linux information, requiring one to boot up in those operating systems and execute a long series of commands to enlarge the EXT3 partition. I'd rather not go down that path right now. Is there some easier way of doing this? If not... then I'm thinking what I need to do is move as many apps having data I need to my phone, then just opt not to restore the EXT3 partition and go back to manually move apps to the EXT3 partition again.
* bump * .... anyone?
cytherian said:
* bump * .... anyone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What rom are you running?
Shelnutt2 said:
What rom are you running?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Presently running CM7.2, which supports EXT3. I'm just not getting how I can manage the EXT3 partition. When I switch to a new ROM and wipe the system, then all apps installed on the EXT3 partition would be deleted, correct?
So, what this ultimately means is that each and every time I switch ROMs, the EXT3 partition must be wiped and applications manually moved back there. It's annoying, but I haven't found any other way around this.