Hy all!
I found a very interesting post over at samdroid.net
My question is its possible to port this mod for our hero?
Link:
http://forum.samdroid.net/f55/i-o-performance-boost-migrate-your-spica-ext2-2218/
Info:
What does it do?
Reformatting /data as ext4 (as it needs journaling for safety), and /system as ext2(as it is mounted ro all the time).
Thx for the answer.
Regards
Wenner
It gives performance boost on Samsung phones because Samsung has it's own filesystem which slows down whole system. Reformatting it to ext gives boost because ext is faster. HTC Android devices has ext partitions as default so it isn't needed.
Wrong, on all counts.
The storage partitions on the HTC Hero and other devices is nand memory, not a block device. ext filesystem is designed for block devices. The filesystems on /data /system /cache etc are all yaffs2, a filesystem designed specifically for Memory Technology Devices like the NAND in our phones.
Furthermore, even if you could format /data, /system etc as a filesystem other than yaffs2 you'd have to do it from outside the ROM, either via recovery or hboot somehow. A journalling filesystem is destructive to flash memory because flash memory has a finite number of writes before it fails. You'd also have to have a custom kernel if the default kernel doesn't support the filesystem you want to switch to.
If you use old style apps2sd and therefore have a partition for it on your sdcard, they're set up to emulate block devices and you should use ext2 for the reasons pointed out earlier. sdcards are still flash memory at heart and thus journalling is destructive.
Thanks for explanation, but i have question - why we don't use yaffs2 for app2sd (which is designed for flash memory)?
And which is faster - yaffs2 or ext2? On Samsung devices reformatting whole system to ext2 gives performance boost (in comparision to RFS).
Related
Hey guys,
I am planning to format my sdcard to fat32/ext_ partitions for use of apps2sd. I have a few questions I would like answered first though.
-Is a swap partition required? I have little space on my sd and would rather not use one. If it is required, what size/file system would you suggest? I take it there is no invisible swap partition by default?
-Ext 2, 3 or 4 for my apps2sd partition?
- I am planning to make my apps2sd partition only about 200mb, will that work well?
Thanks.
- swap: depending on rom, but in general: no
- i would recommend ext2, you can use 3 or 4 as well. keep in mind that ext4 doesn't work on any 2.1 rom until we have the kernel sources (after official release).
- it will work, the size only determines how many apps you can install there. average size of an app is ~1mb, though can go from a few kb to several mb (i.e. copilot.apk has 14mb).
Thanks a lot Any particular advantage of ext2 over ext3?
tbman1996 said:
Thanks a lot Any particular advantage of ext2 over ext3?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ext3 and ext4 wear out your sdcard quicker, because of journaling features.
Since, compared to a system or cache partition, the sdcard is not written to as much, and system crashes where the mobile is shut down during a write operation are rare for Android, journaling doesn't offer any significant advantage. The unnecessary journaling however, accounts for extra writes to the flash memory chips, which in turn equals extra wear.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext2 said:
ext2 is still the filesystem of choice for flash-based storage media (such as SD cards, SSDs, and USB flash drives) since its lack of a journal minimizes the number of writes and flash devices have only a limited number of write cycles.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello mate,
I am trying to boot Debian on WF.
My phone has been rooted by now, and i need help regarding mounting the partitioned fs.
Here's what i have on my SD:
1) 950MB ->Fat32.
2) 750MB -> Ext3
3) 150 -> Swap.
Now linux requires a partition to be ext formatted, which i have done by now. But i have no idea on how to mount the ext3 fs on htc wf.
I tried the procedure via recovery mode->partitioning-> mount /sd-ext/ but dint worked.
Would you please tell me how can i mount it by using Ubuntu. I am not a avid windows user and many tutorial relating to apps2sd are based upon windows, which isnt possible for me.
Also, how can i know the directory address of the filesystems i have generated. like, /dev/sd2 etc.
I've been hearing a lot about partitioning sd cards and I know it's done in recovery mode.
So my question is - What's the difference between ext2, ext3, ext4 and swap partition?
Please help out!!
ext2 - Linux file system (no journaling)
ext3 - basically ext2 with journaling
ext4 - next generation of ext3 with better journaling and performance
swap - if internal memory should run full, parts would be swapped to the swap space, so it is basically an enhancement of internal memory
Check each out in the wikipedia, its worth it!
EDIT: I'd personally always go for ext4 and 128 swap
tbschommer said:
ext2 - Linux file system (no journaling)
ext3 - basically ext2 with journaling
ext4 - next generation of ext3 with better journaling and performance
swap - if internal memory should run full, parts would be swapped to the swap space, so it is basically an enhancement of internal memory
Check each out in the wikipedia, its worth it!
EDIT: I'd personally always go for ext4 and 128 swap
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks man,
But still I have few more questions..
What do you mean by "journaling"? And why do we need ext, ext2, ext4 for our mobile?
And swap is for enhancing internal memory or RAM?
Aced443 said:
Thanks man,
But still I have few more questions..
What do you mean by "journaling"? And why do we need ext, ext2, ext4 for our mobile?
And swap is for enhancing internal memory or RAM?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Journaling filesystem - quote from Wikipedia:
A journaling file system is a file system that keeps track of the changes that will be made in a journal (usually a circular log in a dedicated area of the file system) before committing them to the main file system. In the event of a system crash or power failure, such file systems are quicker to bring back online and less likely to become corrupted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry I can't elaborate on why Android uses ext4 - I only read that one reason is that it's capable of multithreading. I hope one of the experts can tell us both more
Swap - you're right, of course - is used for RAM.
Hey guys,
On some ROMs update scripts, I've been noticing that the ROMs delete from the system partition using a delete_recursive("/system") command instead of just bombing the system partition with a format. I was just suggesting that wouldn't it be a better idea to run a ext4 format on the /system partition, therefore you have a "clean slate" instead of deleting stuff from /system and leaving stuff behind in the ext4 journal?
The reason I say this is that if any blocks are actually bad, a delete won't reveal them. If you format the system partition using mkfs.ext4, it allows the system to do a quick scan for bad blocks and mark them before formatting, and finally copying files to the system partition.
One would just have to do something like this in their update-script:
Code:
run_program("/sbin/busybox","mkfs.ext4 -L system -m 0 <mtdblock of system partition>");
Again, this is only a suggestion. Feel free to argue!
Which partitions should be formatted in f2fs ?
And what difference does f2fs make?
Please explain in simple words.
Thank you.
/data and /cache
Supposedly it's more efficient and faster, although the difference in real-life scenarios is negligible.
epraes said:
/data and /cache
Supposedly it's more efficient and faster, although the difference in real-life scenarios is negligible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why can't we use f2fs on system and internal memory partition?
I'm no expert at this, just a regular user. But my understanding is that f2fs is suited best for read/write filesystems. As /system is a read-only partition, it makes no sense to use f2fs instead of ext4. There may be some technical reasons behind it apart from this that I'm not aware of, though.
As for the internal storage, you can indeed format it with the f2fs filesystem. In fact, it's just a part of the /data partition. If you format /data, you format /data/media and your internal storage becomes f2fs.
That's all I know. Maybe some ROM developers or experts can give you some more insight about it.