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Hi everyone,
A relatively noob question here.
I am running the Official ROM 2.76.405.5 on an unbranded Hero, and want to give Linux-Swap a try. But I don't want Apps2SD; I might move certain apps cache to the SD after rooting, but like the Apps themselve on the internal memory though. How can I go about it? What do I need to do?
1) Can I format my SD card so that it has a fat32 and a linux-swap partition but NO "ext" partition?
2) If I do make an EXT partition, what patch/fix should I do to make only swapping work, without Apps2SD? Modaco's Hero patch as well as his custom ROMs come with Apps2SD. Is there a way to get rid of it?
3) Will I need "busybox" to make swapping work? Or is "Swapper" alone going to be enough?
4) If I make my custom update.zip file from Modaco's Hero patch.zip, from which I delete A2SD, and then falsh that update.zip via the recovery mode, will it work?
5) And what swap size do you recommend? Some people use as large as 256MB... while the default in most cases is 32MB. Is the larger the better?
Please help a non-developer here. Many thanks in advance!
OK, I have done it and it seems right. I made all three partitions (fat32, ext3, and linux-swap) and then pushed busybox by Modaco's method via "adb shell". That means I have the ext3 partition but no Apps2SD, so my apps would stay on the internal memory. Am I right?
Now I have also installed Swapper and so far it has not given me any error. Via Advanced settings, I have told it to use Swap "partition" instead on swap file. My swap partition is 256MB
My questions now are:
1) If I kill swapper by taskkiller, will swapping end?
2) How much swappiness should I choose?
3) How do I know that it is working and what improvements should I expect to see? How can I test that my phone is functioning faster??
Please reply
Would anyone like to share their comments on this, please?!?
One more thing, Hero comes with a 288MB RAM, but the total available system memory (RAM) shown by Swapper app is 197MB. Why such discrepancy??
Your views will be much appreciated!
Very well asked questions. Some masters respond to them please so we don't disturb you about these questions within every thread of yours
to format your sdcard (i'm assuming you know how to use parted and have only 1 partition) resize your fat32 partition, for example, with my 7948 MB sdcard:
Code:
(parted) resize 1 0 7850 (where 7850 is the maximum size of your sd-card minus the amount you wish to allocate for swap, in this case, 98 MB)
wait for it to finish re-sizing, doing it this way prevents data loss, after it's done;
Code:
(parted) mkpartfs primary linux-swap 7850 7900
(parted) mkpartfs primary linux-swap 7900 7948
(parted) rm 2
(parted) resize 3 7850 7948
(parted) quit
you basically create two linux-swap partitions (the second partition can be anything, but I use linux-swap because it can be any size in MB) so that the third one gets asigned a p# of 3, then remove the second one, and then resize the third one to take up the whole space left after your fat 32 partition, that way you don't waste any space. You can always
Code:
(parted) print
to make sure your fat 32 partition has a p# of 1 and your linux-swap has a p# of 3
About why there's only 197MB left on your device? Radio and GPU take the other 96 MB and the system has no access to that memory. Don't worry, it's still enough for you to run hero, pity us dream users with only 96 MB working RAM.
===edit====(answer more questions)
If by "official rom 2.73.405.5" you mean the one you can download from MoDaCo, then I don't even think it has root. There are four 2.73.405.5 roms there, the RUU, which you should avoid like the plague, the Official one which is only the RUU but packaged in OTA format, the Official one with Radio update, and the Official rooted one. You wan't to use the rooted one. Also, you do need busybox (you're already done it). I think that in the official rooted there are no scripts running at boot, so you won't get A2SD forced upon you (always a good thing, soon as I buy my Hero I'm using that build too as a base for my build), no compcache, no swap-file usage, nothing, just a stock rom with root. Anyway, you already have busybox, and that's all swapper requires, so you're good. For extra credit, you could learn how to unpack boot.img and edit the init.rc to call on your own script from bin and have it do swap automagically instead of using swapper (plus you can do nifty things like using mmcblk0p2 instead of p3, among other things).
I don't know how swapper works exactly, but I think all it does is echo settings to the VM to set up swap, so killing the app should do nothing (it's just a front-end to what other roms do automatically) and swap should stay working after you kill it. You can try, just kill the app and then open up the terminal and type
Code:
$su
# busybox free
that will tell you how much memory you have and how much swap you have, you should still have swap even after killing swapper.
About swap size?... depends who you ask. If you ask me, you have a hero with 198 MB working ram and you shouldn't even have to bother with swap at all. If you still want to, maybe try to set up a 32 MB compcache setup (you have enough ram where compcache makes sense) with a swappiness of 0 (this keeps the memory pages for Rosie in swap and even after heavy usage, you can always go back to rosie w/o reloads).
Having a swap-file on your sdcard makes no sense if you don't have a class 6 sdcard as it will hurt performance, so, if you do, anywhere between 64 MB and 198 MB (to match the whole working memory space of the device) with a swappiness of 60 should suffice.
I wish I had a hero...
Thanks jubeh, thanks soo much. It was really helpful After reading your answer, I completely understand how to make only fat32 and linux-swap partitions and save space by not having an ext3.
I am afraid I don't quite understand the compcache thing; I think I have to do more reading/homework on this before I ask further questions
I did install the Official ROM which I downloaded from HTC website as an RUU >> flashed Amon_RA's recovery image via flashrec >> rooted by pushing "su" and "Superuser.apk" via ADB shell, and then also pushed Busybox (from Modaco's 2.2 ROM, I think it is version 1.5.1).
I am using a Sandisk 8GB class 6 card... it is fine so far (except the photo thumbnails not being generated in the ".thumbnails" forlder, but that's a different story). I have noticed that after the ROM upgrade, a folder called "rosie_scroll" get automatically created on the SD card... may be it's a kind of built-in swap?!?! Am not too sure.
Moreover, at the moment, I have set swappiness to 60. When most of the apps are open, the hero functions quite well but I see that about 190-194MB of the internal memeory is being uesd at times and heavy use and the area of occupied swap partition gradually increases. I think it is because only thise apps will swap which are kind of sleeping or dozing in the background. Am I right?
Just another question, if you unzup MCR 2.2, you see in the xbin folder, a file called "dexopt-wrapper", an addition to busybox. What does it do? Its function?
Will having lots off apps open in the background and swapping them continuosly have a deleterious effect on the battery life??
Thanks again
Best regards.
having many apps open means using ram a lot. if you add swapping, it means not only ram sucking battery, but also reading/wirtting sd, which is pretty much battery sucker itself.
so yes, if you want to lengthen your battery life, keep your apps loaded atst to a minimum.
if what you want is a comparison for battery life between swapping and not swapping.. you should check if you have your phone always on or off and some other factors (keeping ram alive in hibernation mode wastes more battery than static sd memory, ie).
Thanks sik_gerar I understand where you are coming from.
I got a message saying I was getting low on space. I bought a program call SD Maid which tells me I've used 1.4 GB out of 1.97 GB. It has an option called "CORPSE FINDER" which comes up with some files like:
com.motorola.batterymonitor
com.motorola.blur.contacts.deferred
com.motorola.android.wmdrm.webpush
com.motorola.android.simmanager
com.mot.readout
com.motorola.dock.provider
these files are located in /data/data/
and /data/data/.com.mot.readout/lib
and /data/data/com.motorola.dock.DesktopDock/shared_prefs/com.motorola.dock
Is is OK to delete these files?
Are there other obvious files I can delete off the phone?
Another app called FREE SPACE tells me I have used 93% of system space or 298MB out of 319MB available. Is there a way to increase the available space?
Thanks for any suggestions
What? Move apps to internal memory if you need space.
How can you fill up 10GB?
Agreed, move apps to internal storage. And you can use DiskUsage to see exactly what is taking up how much space and delete it.
no effect
Moving apps to external SD or uninstalling apps has NO EFFECT on the SYSTEM space, according to FreeSpace (ROOT). After uninstalling apps the space used by the SYSTEM remains unchanged at 93%:
size: 319.5 MB
used: 298.5 MB
free: 20.9 MB
Uninstalling apps or widgets decreases the space used by DATA which currently is:
size: 2015.8 MB
used: 1371.8 MB
free: 643.9 MB
So the issue is how to decrease space used by the (android) SYSTEM.
thanks
nothing user created is being stored on the /system partition. that partition is only for the ROM itself, all your customizations go to /data partition (except if you modify your /system partition with root access and adb/terminal/root explorer) you shouldnt be bothered about the free space in the /system partition. the /system partition is supposed to stay as it is throughout your usage - except if you flash another rom or mod this one. thats it
free space
Thanks for your info. I am rooted, and installed root explorer, but thats it. I have recently gotten the laptop dock. The only reason this came up was because of a message about low space in my drop down menu. I have a lot of apps installed but have ample space in all partitions except the system partition. I didn't write the message down, but if it comes up again I will in order to get an idea of where its coming from.
WAIT. THAT's IT.....the laptop dock. That message must have come from using the dock !!
I will confirm next time it happens......
thanks guys.
The message is about the Ram consumption, which the webdock consumes rather fast with several programs open (firefox with many tabs, open office and so on)
Galaxy 10.1 16gb rooted galaxy task 14.
I was running GT 10 and started to get low on storage space. Then I noticed that my GF's 16gb tablet had lots of space left. I installed storage analyzer & saw that I had about 12.5 gb free. When I look in settings it says about 1gb free. So I reflashed to factory, rooted, installed GT 14. Still missing about 11gb of storage. I cleared caches & partitions when I did new root. Did I miss something or is it a hardware issue?
Repartition with PIT file, or possibly your GF stacked a whole lot of movies or your porn is in a folder you completely forgot.
What does your graph show on what consumes the most space?
I tried to attached a couple images to help explain but couldn't get them to upload so......
Under settings>storage it shows the bar almost full(1.3gb available) but under the individual headings(apps, downloads, images......) its says "calculating......" never completes. Also the bar is all black(no corrisponding colors). When I open storage analyzer it shows my list of files & folders. Largest being 350mb with a total of about 1 gb. At the bottom ist reads 12.4gb available. When I click the partition button it shows the SD card with 1.3 gb avail. No other partitions.
UPDATE:
I changed the settings in Storage Analyser to show all partions. This is what it shows:
/SD 13.27 total 1.35 free
/system 568mb total 110 MB free
/data 13.27 gb total 1.35 gb free
Don't know if this helps
chrisbob said:
UPDATE:
I changed the settings in Storage Analyser to show all partions. This is what it shows:
/SD 13.27 total 1.35 free
/system 568mb total 110 MB free
/data 13.27 gb total 1.35 gb free
Don't know if this helps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're not missing any storage. You have some big files in there. If you're using storage analyser, you should be able to figure out where they are...
Yeah but the files don't show up anywhere
Data being flooded, are you fond of downloading a lot of games? Most games now are like 700MB, you need something like root explorer to check the /data on what you have that's flooding it. Or just repartition with a pit file and format Problmemo de nada.
i have comb, 3.3 1.1.
i go to storage view in settings.
it shows, 13 gigs, 12 available.
in the internal view it shows total 1.8 and 122 mb for media.
i get a notification saying low on space..
i cannot instal any app.
whats up?
new-to-it said:
i have comb, 3.3 1.1.
i go to storage view in settings.
it shows, 13 gigs, 12 available.
in the internal view it shows total 1.8 and 122 mb for media.
i get a notification saying low on space..
i cannot instal any app.
whats up?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Out of 16 gigs built in storage, 13 is set aside as regular sdcard storage while 2 gigs is used for "internal data" and 1 gig is not used at all. If you use the NVflash from the teamdrh ICS rom you can re-format it to have 4 gigs internal and 12 for storage.
The easy thing you can do since your are still on honeycomb is to install app2sd and move some of your data files to the "storage part" (13gigs) which will free that space up in your "internal data" (2gigs) or you can go through and uninstall any apps you no longer use.
i have 4 apps right now, the rest are the google stuff apps crap, which i assume cant go anywhere in fear of them not knowing when i fart..
but
without using the app2sd-(i cant fit it right now)-i can go to settings and move apps, but- where it sez move to- it sez move to usb then after moved it sez move to tablet.
redeyedjedi said:
Out of 16 gigs built in storage, 13 is set aside as regular sdcard storage while 2 gigs is used for "internal data" and 1 gig is not used at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, no space is wasted like this--certainly not 1G. Use the busybox df instead of the system df. This has confused other users before.
If you use the NVflash from the teamdrh ICS rom you can re-format it to have 4 gigs internal and 12 for storage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is incorrect. Nvflash works on the NAND chip, not on SD cards. To repartition SD cards, use CWM, or this easy method if you want to keep existing data.
---------- Post added at 12:44 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:30 AM ----------
new-to-it said:
i have comb, 3.3 1.1.
i go to storage view in settings.
it shows, 13 gigs, 12 available.
in the internal view it shows total 1.8 and 122 mb for media.
i get a notification saying low on space..
i cannot instal any app.
whats up?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This has been reported on GtabComb-b3.3 by some other users, but, I was never able to get to the bottom of the problem. Most users will just repartition their SD cards and make the problem away before I can get to troubleshooting the problem.
Get me a logcat, dmesg and other outputs after you've tried to install an app from Market. See this post for the commands to run.
---------- Post added at 12:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:44 AM ----------
new-to-it said:
i can go to settings and move apps, but- where it sez move to- it sez move to usb then after moved it sez move to tablet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is the correct behaviour. Move to USB moves apps to /sdcard. Move to tablet moves the apps back into /data.
I meant to say you could use CWM to make 4 gigs. Where did that 1gig go?
redeyedjedi said:
I meant to say you could use CWM to make 4 gigs. Where did that 1gig go?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The missing 1 gig is the symlink I am working on that is set aside for data/cache and data/dalvic cache. Since the transition to make ROMs larger and our nand being only 512m that was put within either the ROM, CWM, or the boot.img so that everything will run without chopping away at the System to make it lighter, the way I do. If you Flash the nand with the older 1.2 NVflash and the older 1.2 ROMS that 1 gig will return and cache will return to its proper placement within the set stock partitions.
See, what you guys have latched on to is the total size of the /sdcard partition; but, that, is a red herring:
Partition sizes are fixed by CWM when you repartition the SD card--it is not changed in any other way. And, since the size of the internal SD card is fixed, and since all CWMs versions partition the SD card the same way each time, the total sizes of the both partitions cannot change drastically. Therefore, barring filesystem corruption--unlikely here because the only symptom is an inability to install new apps, the 13 GB value being reported has got to be an artifact of rounding, as I mentioned above. Plus, that 1GB is supposedly part of /sdcard, so no space is going to be deducted from /data (where apps usually live) anyway.
redeyedjedi said:
Where did that 1gig go?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nowhere. This is an artifact of the rounding out process. See above.
As usual, I just can't understand what Nobe's trying to say. Going for the most straight-forward reading, however:
nobe1976 said:
The missing 1 gig is the symlink
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope. The maximum size of a symbolic link on all the standard filesystems seen on the gtablet is only 255 bytes--not 1G.
I am working on that is set aside for data/cache and data/dalvic cache. Since the transition to make ROMs larger and our nand being only 512m that was put within either the ROM, CWM, or the boot.img so that everything will run without chopping away at the System to make it lighter, the way I do.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wrong ROM, wrong partition, and, wrong bootloader.
First of all, the user's clearly stated that he has GtabComb-3.3 and a 1.1 bootloader--not any of the ICS/JB ROMs which require a different nvflash package. Second, even if the entire contents of /cache were in /data, it still wouldn't cause any reduction in the size of the /sdcard partition, which is entirely separate. See description above.
If you Flash the nand with the older 1.2 NVflash and the older 1.2 ROMS that 1 gig will return and cache will return to its proper placement within the set stock partitions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Changing the bootloader won't fix the user's problems--except as a side-effect of re-installing the ROM from scratch.
We'll have to wait until the user comes back with the various outputs and do some more tests to really find out the cause of the user's real problem: Why can't he install any apps even with enough space on /data? He also can move apps to and from the SD card just fine, apparently.
I didn't mean for miss information on this OP's problem. The 1 gig issue that redeyedjedi is seeing is in fact within the updated jellybean and ICS ROMs only. I should have made that noted. To my understanding after the busy box command you and I went through later this year is that it does impact the data partition on the updated firmware only. I soon realized that after messing with a certain /etc file that it looks to be a virtual swap placement. Busybox reads now 4 gig of data with a 4096/0 partition set in recovery after replacing that file with he that sets proper cache within /dev partition. The fact that it still shows up on standard df means that the ROM somewhere is still showing something there if I am correct or could be a ghost or something. Correct me if I am wrong please.
Sent from My SmOoThA$$ Gtablet.
nobe1976 said:
The 1 gig issue that redeyedjedi is seeing is in fact within the updated jellybean and ICS ROMs only. I should have made that noted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No.There is no 1G issue. It is just an artifact of how the partition spaces are displayed in the ROMs, and in the system-supplied df command on all Android versions. It is to avoid this sort of confusion that I ask users to use the busybox df command which displays its values (total space, free space, used space) in 1-K blocks.
To my understanding after the busy box command you and I went through later this year is that it does impact the data partition on the updated firmware only. I soon realized that after messing with a certain /etc file that it looks to be a virtual swap placement. Busybox reads now 4 gig of data with a 4096/0 partition set in recovery after replacing that file with he that sets proper cache within /dev partition. The fact that it still shows up on standard df means that the ROM somewhere is still showing something there if I am correct or could be a ghost or something. Correct me if I am wrong please.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Gladly--if only I could understand what you were after. Can you make your questions precise, mate?
Hello i am using marshmallow in motog3 16 gb varient.
My phone is rooted from very beginning, with stock rom.
Currently I'm using magisk.
Please help in understand
I have 16 gb varient in which
4.08 gb is Android OS
11.92 gb is available space
8.11. Gb. is used space
3.82 gb. is free space
Buy when i used DiskUsage i found
2.94 gb used by apps
2.04 gb = media
3.13. gb = *system data*
I couldn't understand this system data
As per my knowledge
From 16 gb = 4.08 gb used by Android OS , apps and media are ok but how do i get rid of this system data.
I checked everything there's no backup files , or log files , cleared all cache , individually checked space of each folder in root resulting in more confusion.
One by one uninstalled big apps buy there was no change in system data size, only app size was decreasing. Please now i need some expert advice.
Help!!
Thanks
Regards.
Nitesh