Since when I have updated to official ICS I get now & then warning messages telling me there's not enough space left (i.e. 'ROM is full', '/system has not enough space left', etc., etc.) and this with the same apps installed as before and with plenty of room left in both the internal and external SD.
Running dp /system I get:
Code:
[email protected]:/ $ export PATH=/data/local/bin:$PATH
[email protected]:/ $ df /system
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/block/mmcblk0p9 858724 857736 988 100% /system
ics is probably heavier on apps and system settings than gingerbread, if you have root access you can always remove some app that arent used to gain more space
I had an issue on GB where the media scanner was eating up ~1GB of the system partition. Force close and clear cache sorted it.
No idea if it could be the same issue for you but worth checking...
Maskell said:
I had an issue on GB where the media scanner was eating up ~1GB of the system partition. Force close and clear cache sorted it.
No idea if it could be the same issue for you but worth checking...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
impossible, the system partition is only 1gb in size for the rom, unless you mean the 2gb data partition for apps
Yep, you're right. My bad
Related
I've been digging around trying to find out the benefits and drawbacks of using swap on android devices, and the general consensus is 'not worth it since SD card is slow', and 'android is good at killing programs when necessary and starting them up where they left off'
Well, that got me thinking, since I have the MoDaCo ROM installed, and I'm utilizing Apps2SD - i've got all this free space on the (relatively) fast internal flash memory that's going unused.
It seems to me that a swap file (not partition) in /data would potentially be a boon to system stability for people using *lots* of applications simultaneously. My reasoning:
1) Internal memory is much faster than the SD card interface, even at class 6.
2) Using Apps2SD in combo with android's default mem management, if an app is auto-killed and needs to be restored into memory, it's reloading the apk from the SD card. Due to this behavior, there's little difference between using a swap partition on the card vs android reloading apps from the card and restoring state.
A swap partition or file on internal memory would avoid touching the SD card interface alltogether except when inititally starting up a new app. Storage space benefits of apps2sd is retained, while potentially speeding access to a sleeping app.
So, to test out the theory, I tried to create a 64mb swap file in /data/swap/swapfile, using the following steps (again, this is on the MoDaCo ROM):
Code:
./adb shell
# mkdir /data/swap
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/data/swap/swapfile bs=1024 count=65536
65536+0 records in
65536+0 records out
# mkswap /data/swap/swapfile
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 67104768 bytes
UUID=ca4e84af-2533-4072-8c66-7bf6f494dc34
Awesome so far. Now I hit a snag:
Code:
# swapon /data/swap/swapfile
swapon: /data/swap/swapfile: Invalid argument
It appears that the swapon function in BusyBox doesn't support swap files, unless I'm overlooking a step in here.
Has anyone tried this sort of thing before (on previous android phones, or other roms that is)? A quick google search showed lots of people doing this exact thing to enable swap files on their G1's, rooted with BusyBox installed, nad having it work just fine.
For reference, the MoDaCo ROM has this version of BusyBox:
BusyBox v1.15.2 (2009-10-08 09:47:18 BST) multi-call binary
Any hints or help would be greatly appreciated.
could you possibly use a symlink to trick it into thinking it's not a file, but a partition instead maybe?
EDIT: Just saw this thread too, don't know if you've seen it or not, but it seems like an app that could do this for you. Again, you'd have to trick it by using a symlink or something I bet, since you're wanting to do it on the internal memory.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=3329186#post3329186
symlink trickery didn't work for me unfortunately, but I think I have another approach.
swapon appears to be looking for a device node, so I'm going to try to trick the system into giving it one by mounting a fake disk image with loopback, and assigning it's 'partition' as swap space.
not really sure if android will let me do that sort of crazyness, or if loopback is even compiled into the fs drivers, but will find out shortly.
[edit]
So, it turned out to be far simpler than all that nonsense above. This kind of thing is why I love linux:
Code:
# * made 8mb swapfile using steps in previous post, to /data/swap/swapfile *
# losetup /dev/block/loop0 /data/swap/swapfile
# swapon /dev/block/loop0
magic!
Code:
# free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 196824 191320 5504 0 24
Swap: 8184 0 8184
Total: 205008 191320 13688
Now, just need to figure out how to mount it up at boot and set a reasonable swappiness.
Well, it was a good experiment. One that I *do not recommend* for others to try.
After getting the swap file setup and running for a few days, most things work really well - the SenseUI interface is always snappy, applications running in the foreground are generally very responsive and smooth.
Unfortunately, *anything* that gets swapped out of main memory will hang your phone for a good 30-40 seconds at least trying to read it back in to main mem (therefore swapping something else out simultaneously). Things like the web browser, the notification pulldown, the apps menu, just become completely unusable. And this was with 'swappiness' set down to 10 - so theoretically there should not have been excessive swapping.
Good to know we have these tools available in times of need, however I again do not recommend swap of any kind, SD card or otherwise.
Too bad we can't upgrade the RAM on these devices
Hi,
I go through the forum but unfortunately cannot find anything related to my inquiry. I use a custom ROM and go to /system/app to delete some unnecessary applications (e.g. Mail.apk), however, the saved space cannot be used for my 3rd party app installation. My dream was 9MB free before I remove system apps, it is 9MB again after their removal.
Is it possible to give more space to the 3rd party app application, given the sacrifice of system apps???
Are you sure that you are clearing cache?
Maybe you dont have apps2sd working for you.
Just do either one from terminal..
type:
mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
Then type:
cd /system/app
then you can type "ls" to list the contents of the directory.
Or
su
cd /system/sd/app
ls
or if you dont have EXT2/3/4
su
cd /system/app
ls
Yes I don't have app2sd enabled.
My dream is always having 9MB left so it is very inconvenient .... But I don't want to run app2sd so that speed could be improved ....
That's why I want to remove some unnecessary apps in the /system/app (e.g. Mail.apk which consumes 2MB!) so that I can have more space for my applications.
cd /system/app
ls
Shows all the pre-installed applications (those coming with the custom ROM)
Thanks for answering!
xdaofficeuser111 said:
Yes I don't have app2sd enabled.
My dream is always having 9MB left so it is very inconvenient .... But I don't want to run app2sd so that speed could be improved ....
That's why I want to remove some unnecessary apps in the /system/app (e.g. Mail.apk which consumes 2MB!) so that I can have more space for my applications.
cd /system/app
ls
Shows all the pre-installed applications (those coming with the custom ROM)
Thanks for answering!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Now do
-rm appname.apk
You have to reboot when your done though.
Theoretically it should work?
Because I removed Mail.apk, and rebooted. The free space left on the phone is still the same ....
Are those applications in different partitions or something wrong with my setup?
I am using AOSP r1.6 .....
xdaofficeuser111 said:
My dream is always having 9MB left so it is very inconvenient ....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Never heard that before.
Try removing applications that have higher file sizes, like the browser. You should see a change then.
And, as mentioned earlier, clear your cache.
akapoor said:
Never heard that before.
Try removing applications that have higher file sizes, like the browser. You should see a change then.
And, as mentioned earlier, clear your cache.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did - I even removed the largest one - Mail.apk. But I found that my space was not released ....
I cleaned my cache nearly every hour ....
I had a horrible experience with App2SD so I would rather keep all the apps on my G1 ram .....
What ROM is this?
akapoor said:
What ROM is this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
AOSP 2.4.2
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=538456
But even when I was using CM and Dwang before the same happen - I deleted apps in system/app, but available space for my app installation hadn't increased .....
When I moved from Dwang to AOSP, I had to remove a lot of my apps as a result because AOSP consumed more space than Dwang .... but when I deleted the system apps in /system/app one by one .... the space wasn't recovered ....
No matter how many times I cleared the cache and reboot ....
That's why I start to think if /system/app and my 3rd party applications are on different partitions??? So that releasing space on one will not benefit the other ......
Does it make sense?
xdaofficeuser111 said:
That's why I start to think if /system/app and my 3rd party applications are on different partitions??? So that releasing space on one will not benefit the other ......
Does it make sense?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes you are right
system apps are on the /system partition
other apps are on the /data partition under /data/app
you need to clean the /data partition to get space back. you can clear the dalvik-cache and maybe get some space. Make sure you clear the browser cache because that takes about 8mb of space on average
Ace42 said:
Are you sure that you are clearing cache?
Maybe you dont have apps2sd working for you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
god youre dumb
B-man007 said:
yes you are right
system apps are on the /system partition
other apps are on the /data partition under /data/app
you need to clean the /data partition to get space back. you can clear the dalvik-cache and maybe get some space. Make sure you clear the browser cache because that takes about 8mb of space on average
Thanks for your help!!!
Is it possible for me to rewrite any scripts/files so that I could transfer the free space from /system partition to /data partition (e.g. unmount, and remount them)?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
xdaofficeuser111 said:
B-man007 said:
yes you are right
system apps are on the /system partition
other apps are on the /data partition under /data/app
you need to clean the /data partition to get space back. you can clear the dalvik-cache and maybe get some space. Make sure you clear the browser cache because that takes about 8mb of space on average
Thanks for your help!!!
Is it possible for me to rewrite any scripts/files so that I could transfer the free space from /system partition to /data partition (e.g. unmount, and remount them)?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, those partitions stay the same size unless you flash an spl that enlarges them (Haykuro spl)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the only way is by flashing the haykuro spl as if it was possible through scripts then the G1 would have been able to upgrade to better ROM's officially such as 2.0 without having to compress things
B-man007 said:
the only way is by flashing the haykuro spl as if it was possible through scripts then the G1 would have been able to upgrade to better ROM's officially such as 2.0 without having to compress things
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow, that's what I said only longer. Good job stretching out information
Thanks! I am already on Danger SPL ....
Look like my dream is to the limit .....
xdaofficeuser111 said:
Thanks! I am already on Danger SPL ....
Look like my dream is to the limit .....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, it is
xdaofficeuser111 said:
Thanks! I am already on Danger SPL ....
Look like my dream is to the limit .....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You might as well use apps2sd again, but make sure you wipe when switching b/t roms.
Everyone here seems pretty certain about this, so please correct me if I am wrong, but we can make the system or data partition via creating symlinks to the cache. The cache is used to download and install OTA updates, and thus is a useless 45MB partition on the dream. The haykuro spl takes this space and adds it to the system, thus allowing users to flash large updates. The same amount of space can be created through proper symlinks (be very careful if you attempt to create any to the system). I have set up symlinks to allocate cache memory to the system in order to flash large metamorph updates. It seems equally likely that one could symlink a folder in /data/ with a folder in the cache. Can anyone prove me wrong?
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!
Right, so I recently just heard of this thing that mounts(?) an ext partition of your sdcard to the /data partition, meaning, instead of a lousy 400 MB, I could have 8 or16 GB for apps and data, wouldn't that be amazing?
Sent from my R800i using Tapatalk
KeiranFTW said:
Right, so I recently just heard of this thing that mounts(?) an ext partition of your sdcard to the /data partition, meaning, instead of a lousy 400 MB, I could have 8 or16 GB for apps and data, wouldn't that be amazing?
Sent from my R800i using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
random lol. but wouldn't it be slower?
Fma965 - Forgottencoders.co.uk
Want to make me a banner? PM me
fma965 said:
random lol. but wouldn't it be slower?
Fma965 - Forgottencoders.co.uk
Want to make me a banner? PM me
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Link2sd from the market is what i use. Only tried 1gb as second partion on my play, made it 16gb on my sony tablet. I think you gaim more ram and speed things up this way and i have not noticed any slow down becase of the card. It is really great
Sent from my Sony Tablet S using Tapatalk
I think what the OP is mentioning is Mounting the sd-ext AS the data partition. That way there's no 3rd party app to mess up (I've had Link2SD silently crash and accidentally get the low space warning twice). With sd-ext mounted as the data partition then you're not relying on an app running in the background monitoring app installs and then linking them to the sd card.
I believe it could be done, but I don't know the equivalent of fstab editing in android.
jonshipman said:
I think what the OP is mentioning is Mounting the sd-ext AS the data partition. That way there's no 3rd party app to mess up (I've had Link2SD silently crash and accidentally get the low space warning twice). With sd-ext mounted as the data partition then you're not relying on an app running in the background monitoring app installs and then linking them to the sd card.
I believe it could be done, but I don't know the equivalent of fstab editing in android.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
bet its simple lol. HTC Desire has it.
Fma965 - Forgottencoders.co.uk
Want to make me a banner? PM me
Yes, it's amazing and even better possible! I've achieved it on your DarkForest RC2 with DoomKernel.
- Partition your sdcard so that ext4 is the second primary partition
- Flash the zip in CWM.
- In a terminal emulator type: data2ext --enable
- With Root explorer go to system/etc/init.d and open 40data2ext
- Edit PATH=/system/xbin:/system/bin to PATH=/system/xbin:/system/bin:/sbin
- Reboot, you will have no signal
- Reboot in CWM and fix permissions.
- Now with signal enjoy your large internal memory.
The script was made for HTC Legend. Here the original thread. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=902395
Possible on a stock rom running DoomKernel?
Sent from my R800i using XDA App
On the root of the device there's a fstab and a recovery.fstab.
fstab
/data yaffs2 userdata
/cache yaffs2 cache
recovery.fstab
# mount point fstype device [device2] fstype2
/cache yaffs2 cache
/data yaffs2 userdata
/system yaffs2 system
/sdcard vfat /dev/block/mmcblk0p1
/sd-ext auto /dev/block/mmcblk0p2
Seems like if you can format the mmcblk0p2 to yaffs2 you can set data to it. I'd be hesitant to move the data partition unless I can format sd-ext to match. I'll try it sometime but my folks are in this weekend.
Sent from my R800i using XDA App
I'm using the Link2SD as well. I just shrunk my FAT32 partition on my SD card, created an ext2 partition about 1gig. Link2SD mounted it up, and I'm able to "Link" the apps Data, Lib and Dex files to the new 1gig partition, or leave them local. I even moved Map and the 9mb from QuickOffice Pro that I couldn't move with the normal App2SD. I'm using the signed Sony Ericsson rom that is posted on these forums somewhere. I can't find the forum post to it lately. My boot loader is also locked but I am rooted. No updated kernel unless the Sony rom did it.
Hello everyone and thank you for having me on your wonderful forum. I have learned so much in such a short time by reading everything I could whether I was intending to use it or not.
I got my 16gb Nexus on Monday and immediately prepped it for ROMs, settling on CM10.1 RC2, Prior to that I had an Optimus V running CM7. On my Optimus, after flashing CM7 for the long haul I was able to move all excess /system space back into /data using terminal emulator and the fdisk command, but I followed a guide of some sort that is long lost now.
Everything is fantastic so far except one thing, there seems to be quite a lot of space reserved in the /system and /cache partitions, and I am not sure if I am able to re-partition this space back to /data or how exactly to do this.
right now /system is reading at 395.8 / 827.8 MB used, and /cache is at 68.4 / 551.7 MB. I would like to repartition 200 MB away from /system and 300-400 MB away from /cache, and put it back into /data. This will leave me some space to integrate or convert a few apps to system apps, and enough cache space to be safe (why does it need 550 MB to begin with?) and give back another half gig of storage that I paid so much to have.
I have three issues with this, one being that I can find almost no information on this topic directly mentioning the NExus 4, and any relatable information from other devices talking about device specific toolkits to do the job.
The only thread I found on XDA about this is below, and it only gave me a vague "this is not possible"
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2248400
The second issue is I do not recall the command switches/flags that go with the fdisk command, only that I had to use some things to set file permissions or remount the partition or some such (I know, i'm a noob, forgive me).
Lastly, I am rather confused by the multiple partitions of /data and /storage/emulated all showing a partition size of 13231.8 MB. Obviously they are all the same physical space, but I am afraid to mess with the partitions and break what I assume are a ton of symlinks that trick apps into believing there is an external SD card in play. Can any of you shed some light on this for me?
I3ig Al said:
Hello everyone and thank you for having me on your wonderful forum. I have learned so much in such a short time by reading everything I could whether I was intending to use it or not.
I got my 16gb Nexus on Monday and immediately prepped it for ROMs, settling on CM10.1 RC2, Prior to that I had an Optimus V running CM7. On my Optimus, after flashing CM7 for the long haul I was able to move all excess /system space back into /data using terminal emulator and the fdisk command, but I followed a guide of some sort that is long lost now.
Everything is fantastic so far except one thing, there seems to be quite a lot of space reserved in the /system and /cache partitions, and I am not sure if I am able to re-partition this space back to /data or how exactly to do this.
right now /system is reading at 395.8 / 827.8 MB used, and /cache is at 68.4 / 551.7 MB. I would like to repartition 200 MB away from /system and 300-400 MB away from /cache, and put it back into /data. This will leave me some space to integrate or convert a few apps to system apps, and enough cache space to be safe (why does it need 550 MB to begin with?) and give back another half gig of storage that I paid so much to have.
I have three issues with this, one being that I can find almost no information on this topic directly mentioning the NExus 4, and any relatable information from other devices talking about device specific toolkits to do the job.
The only thread I found on XDA about this is below, and it only gave me a vague "this is not possible"
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2248400
The second issue is I do not recall the command switches/flags that go with the fdisk command, only that I had to use some things to set file permissions or remount the partition or some such (I know, i'm a noob, forgive me).
Lastly, I am rather confused by the multiple partitions of /data and /storage/emulated all showing a partition size of 13231.8 MB. Obviously they are all the same physical space, but I am afraid to mess with the partitions and break what I assume are a ton of symlinks that trick apps into believing there is an external SD card in play. Can any of you shed some light on this for me?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nexus4 doesn´t have a fix size for partitions, you can use the whole memory for everything... no need to re-partition anything
75markus said:
nexus4 doesn´t have a fix size for partitions, you can use the whole memory for everything... no need to re-partition anything
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure if you are misunderstanding or not reading my whole post, or if I am not understanding you or the situation I am posting about, so please don't take offense to this reply.
It appears to me that the /system partition is reserving 827 MB space for the ROM, and CM10.1 is only using 400 MB of it
It also appears that 552 MB is reserved for the /cache partition, and only 70 MB is being currently used.
This is ~900 MB of storage space that is reserved and unused. I would like to know if it is possible to reallocate ~500-600 MB of this back into the /data partition for user space.
Please explain to me how this space is part of the whole memory that can be used for anything.
After posting I have thought some more about it and decided to NOT mess with the partition sizes, mainly because I do not know what effect it would have if I were to flash another ROM in the future, which is almost a given when Key Lime Pie is released. However I would still like to understand what I have asked about in case I do want to do this in the future, and also just for the sake of expanding my knowledge.
I like this. The only "issue" is that if more space were ever to be reallocated to /system or /cache, it'd require wiping /data obviously. Small price to pay. 500MB isn't too small a chunk for 8GB users.
75markus said:
nexus4 doesn´t have a fix size for partitions, you can use the whole memory for everything... no need to re-partition anything
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually it does. System data cache and boot, plus like 30 other ones, same as any other phone with no micro SD card
Sent from my Nexus 7 @1.60 GHz on Stock 4.2.2
I3ig Al said:
I'm not sure if you are misunderstanding or not reading my whole post, or if I am not understanding you or the situation I am posting about, so please don't take offense to this reply.
It appears to me that the /system partition is reserving 827 MB space for the ROM, and CM10.1 is only using 400 MB of it
It also appears that 552 MB is reserved for the /cache partition, and only 70 MB is being currently used.
This is ~900 MB of storage space that is reserved and unused. I would like to know if it is possible to reallocate ~500-600 MB of this back into the /data partition for user space.
Please explain to me how this space is part of the whole memory that can be used for anything.
After posting I have thought some more about it and decided to NOT mess with the partition sizes, mainly because I do not know what effect it would have if I were to flash another ROM in the future, which is almost a given when Key Lime Pie is released. However I would still like to understand what I have asked about in case I do want to do this in the future, and also just for the sake of expanding my knowledge.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i think N4 uses FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) file system
noobdeagle said:
isnt this what they were saying was the reason for no SD card and use of MTP ?; basically if i recall correctly the nexus devices do not truly assign partitions instead there is a storage 'pool' that anything can use dynamically.
so i guess there is no partitions its just all 1 volume.
source: http://www.androidcentral.com/why-nexus-devices-have-no-sd-card
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is for the sdcard.
The other partitions such as /system still have fixed amounts of space allocated
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app