Develop Bugs

Journaling, can someone explain?

So my question is 2 fold. 1, I have no internet whatsoever so Tether is very important to me and having the fastest speeds possible would be ideal.
Upon my quest to get a decent speed with tethering I've noticed this Journaling situation. What is it and can someone explain what it entails?

Journaling has no effect on internet speed (unless the phone is pulling somthing from the disk like a bookmark),will not affect "information on the fly",like the internet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journaling_file_system
Wikipedia said:
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.[1]
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I have the no journal mod on my phone and it makes it a little more snappier.

musclehead84 said:
I have the no journal mod on my phone and it makes it a little more snappier.
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Click to collapse
If you dont wish to use journaling why are you not using ext 2?
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

You silly goose. We don't have ext2 for are phones yet
Sent From Da Hood.

That's some subtle trolling.

Just in case wiki isn't being clear. Here is what the difference between journaling and no journaling.
scenario 1 w/ no journaling:
you surf the web, pull down image > data written to cache > save to disk
if your phone crash and reboot then you lost the image that's being pull down
scenario 1 w/ journaling:
you surf the web, pull down image > data written to disk as image loaded
if your phone crash and reboot then you have the image save as much as it was downloaded.
Final point: it's no big deal whether you have journaling or not.
scenario 2 w/ no journaling:
You work on a very important spreadsheet as you hit save > data written to cache > save to disk
if the software have recovery feature, and the phone crash before you hit save, then you lost all changes prior to the last saved because the temp file that the software use wasn't written to the disk.
scenario 2 w/ journaling:
You work on a very important spreadsheet as you hit save > data written to disk.
if the software have recovery feature, and the phone crash before you hit save, then you get to choose the recovery file which is the temp file that constantly being written to the disk.
The difference: hours of work.

Isn't the ext system just the file system for Linux based systems? Like FAT and NFTS is for Windows? And isn't ext2 the precursor to ext3, and ext the precursor to ext4? Like FAT, then FAT16, FAT32, etc? If that's correct, why would we want ext2 in the first place if we have ext4?

running_the_dream said:
Isn't the ext system just the file system for Linux based systems? Like FAT and NFTS is for Windows? And isn't ext2 the precursor to ext3, and ext the precursor to ext4? Like FAT, then FAT16, FAT32, etc? If that's correct, why would we want ext2 in the first place if we have ext4?
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The benefit of ext 4 over ext 2 is journaling or stability on a cellphone. If your not worried about error correction or saving files before a crash then ext2 should be used as it is way faster. You think your ext4 scores improved, ext 2 would blow that away. When I was on the moment ext2 was used but people were concerned about the reliability. doesn't make much since if you turn the journaling off to use a slower fs.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

dreamsforgotten said:
The benefit of ext 4 over ext 2 is journaling or stability on a cellphone. If your not worried about error correction or saving files before a crash then ext2 should be used as it is way faster. You think your ext4 scores improved, ext 2 would blow that away. When I was on the moment ext2 was used but people were concerned about the reliability. doesn't make much since if you turn the journaling off to use a slower fs.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
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Thanks for the info. So what's the limitation of ext2? Meaning, if it's so much faster than the newer file system, ext4, why would the devs even bother making ext4? Does it allocate blocks of info better or hold more info? I haven't been able to find much useful info online concerning ext4.

ext2 was created before there is journaling option. In a way, journaling is kinda like after thought for ext2. But if you look at ext file systems, they are written for linux and mostly for PC. so, power requirement isn't a big issue. So, it's inherently by design that ext2 which have less feature and build back in the older system would use less power. I think ext4 is basically ext2 on steroid. Better journaling and larger file/partition size limitation. So, the size limitation is a non issue for such small platform like smartphone.

running_the_dream said:
Thanks for the info. So what's the limitation of ext2? Meaning, if it's so much faster than the newer file system, ext4, why would the devs even bother making ext4? Does it allocate blocks of info better or hold more info? I haven't been able to find much useful info online concerning ext4.
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Im not that advanced with the two myself I just vaguely remember the back and fourth when this came out for the moment on sdx. there's nothing wrong with ext4 but for a speed junky with no concern for the safety net ext2 boast faster speeds. That being said, wer dont need yet another fs to have to support with themes/roms. now as fast as your pc, you will definetly benefit using the ext4 system. In that case ext2 is obsolete to a point.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

Thanks for the helpful info guys. I have yet another question. When flashing another Rom, do you always have to re-flash the no journaling even if you've done so with the previous Rom?

imwillzillla said:
Thanks for the helpful info guys. I have yet another question. When flashing another Rom, do you always have to re-flash the no journaling even if you've done so with the previous Rom?
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You better be very careful when you flash "another ROM". First not all ROM support ext4, and not all support no-journaling. I'm not well verse in the XDA myself either but from what I understand, at-least in the linux space, you can format w/ or w/o journaling, and then there is option disable on boot also, but the kernel has to support it. So, it's all depend the kernel you use support it or not. I don't think ATM, there are many/any tools in Android development space that support conversion between journaling/non-journaling, and especially when going back to RFS. There may not need to be a conversion between journaling and non-journaling since those are technically just how data being handle upon written to the disk, so data structure on the disc should be the same. But, I'm not entirely positive about it. So, I would avoid switching between ROM which doesn't support the same format as it was originally format.

I could be wrong this but the op's question regarded tehtering speed. Now I can see the advantages/disadvantages of journeling while using the phone directly to surf the web but if you are just using the data sevice through the phone on another computer/laptop would you really see any of the advs/disadvs?
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

helchez said:
I could be wrong this but the op's question regarded tehtering speed. Now I can see the advantages/disadvantages of journeling while using the phone directly to surf the web but if you are just using the data sevice through the phone on another computer/laptop would you really see any of the advs/disadvs?
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
The answer is yes
I mean, because the data only passing through, and your phone is acting not much difference than a router, so there should no any difference in speed. or maybe at best how the tether app load, unless of course the tether app is busy writing log file or something.

running_the_dream said:
Thanks for the info. So what's the limitation of ext2? Meaning, if it's so much faster than the newer file system, ext4, why would the devs even bother making ext4? Does it allocate blocks of info better or hold more info? I haven't been able to find much useful info online concerning ext4.
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Click to collapse
ext3 and ext4 were continuations of development of ext2.
Wikipedia said:
The ext3 file system adds, over its predecessor:
* A Journaling file system.
* Online file system growth.
* Htree indexing for larger directories.
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Click to collapse
Wikipedia said:
* Large file system //now up to 16TB instead of 16 GB
* Extents //replaces traditional block mapping with the ability to allocate multiple blocks in a group
* Persistent pre-allocation //for when it is necessary to allocate a contiguous block before you are ready to write to disk
* Delayed allocation //aka allocate memory and write when the cache is flushed
* Break 32,000 subdirectory limit
* Journal checksumming //to more quickly check the integrity of the journal over ext3
* Faster file system checking
* Multiblock allocator
* Improved timestamps //which require more writes to disk
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Partition emmc and map /data/data?

Is there a way to partition the internal memory that is now mounted a emmc then format one partition to ext2 or ext3? It would be nice the then modify the phone to mount /data/data to this new partition rather then its current location because it seems as of late I am always running out of space of /data/data.
Thanks,
CG

I'm interested in this too. I think the simpler thing would be to shrink /mnt/emmc and use the leftover space to expand /data.
I'm also wondering if it's possible to format /data to ext4, and if so if there are any advantages.
Maybe someone else has some ideas?

anyone have any thoughts?

cmgrant said:
anyone have any thoughts?
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Click to collapse
Check this work-in-progress project out::
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=853001
(It is NES, for exactly this sort of problem) :: PS: Be sure to participate in the beta and provide some feedback if you try this out. It is close, and being modified for GB at this point because GB changed their packager paradigm.

[Q] Is there a ROM or a way to easily increase the size of /data/data partition?

Are there any roms or other easy ways to increase the size of the partition /data/data on the Droid Incredible? To this day, all I really find are ways to save space in there. That's been covered - everything from Cachemate to not using certain apps. I want to know if there are any roms out there that use space from internal or other areas and reroute them so that /data/data shows more space. Any help would be appreciated.

+1
I've run into this a lot lately. Even my Eris never had this problem.

enigmatl said:
Are there any roms or other easy ways to increase the size of the partition /data/data on the Droid Incredible? To this day, all I really find are ways to save space in there. That's been covered - everything from Cachemate to not using certain apps. I want to know if there are any roms out there that use space from internal or other areas and reroute them so that /data/data shows more space. Any help would be appreciated.
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Click to collapse
No roms do it currently. But its probably doable.
Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk

There is an app on the market called Notenoughspace. I have never used it, but it is supposed to take stuff out of your data/data, and insert it somewhere else. I here it is tricky, so be careful if you use it. I really don't know much about it. The first couple of times I ran into this problem it drove me crazy. Have you read all of the threads for what causes this? Stay away from Facebook. If you sync contacts in Facebook it can cause this. I am a crackflasher, so I rarely run into the problem. I don't think that a Rom can fix this, but I am a newb myself. Really just wanted TP help since I saw your disgruntled post in the developers section....good luck

Thanks for the reply. But here's the thing. Please let's not go into the likes of notenoughspace and cachemate and whiping out facebook. This is what people say in EVERY thread on this from the beginning of the droid incredible.
I'm not looking for a solution that at best can let an extra app or 2 get installed on the droid incredible. I'm looking for a way to INCREASE the size of the /data/data partition by way of taking some unused space from other areas like system or cache or better yet, from that pointless internal storage (for all the SD card users).
There is a lot of extra space on these phones. Thus it is nonsensical to have a measly 150mb to use in that area.
AS this phone is for a friend (and I generally do the upgrading or fixing), I do not experience this on my photon nor do I experience it on my Iconia tab. There was a limit for /data/data on my evo but it was about twice the Droid Incredible I believe.
So this most likely has to be a partition issue. Is there really no fix for it? Since it's not a hardware limit, I'm surprised as I've seen some out of this world ROMs for the device (like Skyraider's which I hoped would make it to the Evo when I had that).

enigmatl said:
Thanks for the reply. But here's the thing. Please let's not go into the likes of notenoughspace and cachemate and whiping out facebook. This is what people say in EVERY thread on this from the beginning of the droid incredible.
I'm not looking for a solution that at best can let an extra app or 2 get installed on the droid incredible. I'm looking for a way to INCREASE the size of the /data/data partition by way of taking some unused space from other areas like system or cache or better yet, from that pointless internal storage (for all the SD card users).
There is a lot of extra space on these phones. Thus it is nonsensical to have a measly 150mb to use in that area.
AS this phone is for a friend (and I generally do the upgrading or fixing), I do not experience this on my photon nor do I experience it on my Iconia tab. There was a limit for /data/data on my evo but it was about twice the Droid Incredible I believe.
So this most likely has to be a partition issue. Is there really no fix for it? Since it's not a hardware limit, I'm surprised as I've seen some out of this world ROMs for the device (like Skyraider's which I hoped would make it to the Evo when I had that).
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Click to collapse
I have had the same problem, and I haven't seen any roms that come close to solving it. And there is no quick and easy solution.
The best work around I could find was to mod the stock rom and add Dark Tremor's APP2SD, and use notenoughspace.
With dtapps2sd you have to partiton the SD card so that you have a ext3 partition on it that can be mounted and apps can be ran from it. It does this for /data/app and a couple of other folders.
Notenoughspace will let you move folders in /data/data to the sd partition that dtapps2sd has mounted, and that survive through a reboot. The extra partition option is what you would use, not the NES partition.
Using this work around I have about 300 apps on my phone, and about 70mb free in /data/data.
My Android version is GB 2.3.4 (build 4.06.605.3).

enigmatl said:
Are there any roms or other easy ways to increase the size of the partition /data/data on the Droid Incredible? To this day, all I really find are ways to save space in there. That's been covered - everything from Cachemate to not using certain apps. I want to know if there are any roms out there that use space from internal or other areas and reroute them so that /data/data shows more space. Any help would be appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Bootmanager will install the whole rom on /sdcard or emmc storage and as an added bonus, /data and /data/data are all in one image so you have shared space. By default you have 950 MB to share for apps and app data. As an added bonus you have the ability to boot multiple roms and have them all loaded at once. It's available on the market and the devs who made it are awesome. However it costs a few dollars.
If you don't want to go that route then it's possible to create an image on the sdcard or emmc and symlink it to /data/data and you could set the size of the file. Then the ramdisk would need to be modified and maybe a couple of things done on the rom. You asked for an easy way and this is one but not easy though. Bootmanager is pretty easy though and no coding changes need to be done to the roms and it will leave your original rom intact.

I've been wondering about this as well.
I've tried a couple different approaches, and ended up sticking with one: it takes some setup overhead for every ROM I install, but it helps a lot.
I ended up deleting the datadata mount from init.inc.rc in boot.img (get ROM, unpack, edit init.inc.rc, repack, flash), and booting in recovery mode to move the data from ([email protected])/ over to (mmcblk0p1)/data (which is now just a subdir on the 768MB /data partition.)
Initial tests repartitioning mmcblk0 (houses /data, /cache, and /emmc) to make /data larger for this purpose didn't work out well: the bootloader rewrites the MBR/partition table when it finds that they don't match metrics it likes. /emmc can not really be reformatted because the bootloader updates some bits that it expects to be FAT32 on boot time as well, corrupting other filesystems.
Why on earth HTC would ship a phone in this day and age with such a crippled storage layout is beyond me.

DHowett said:
I've been wondering about this as well.
I've tried a couple different approaches, and ended up sticking with one: it takes some setup overhead for every ROM I install, but it helps a lot.
I ended up deleting the datadata mount from init.inc.rc in boot.img (get ROM, unpack, edit init.inc.rc, repack, flash), and booting in recovery mode to move the data from ([email protected])/ over to (mmcblk0p1)/data (which is now just a subdir on the 768MB /data partition.)
Initial tests repartitioning mmcblk0 (houses /data, /cache, and /emmc) to make /data larger for this purpose didn't work out well: the bootloader rewrites the MBR/partition table when it finds that they don't match metrics it likes. /emmc can not really be reformatted because the bootloader updates some bits that it expects to be FAT32 on boot time as well, corrupting other filesystems.
Why on earth HTC would ship a phone in this day and age with such a crippled storage layout is beyond me.
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That doesn't sound too difficult (i moved CM7 from emmc img to the actual phone partitions so that should be pretty simple). The only downside is you do lose space for apps (easily solved with apps2sd). I haven't seen you around since you posted your idea for multiboot. Been busy?
Well, the emmc method would be a loopback image which would not touch the fat32 filesystem.
Or if you're doing nightlies for instance once you mod the boot.img just add it to each new nightly.

Would Conap's dual boot work the same way? I am comfortable with this, and all the coding is intimidating for this newb. Would one of you smarter members put out a small guide as to exactly how to do this. I know it is time consuming, but it would really be worth it to us low lifes. Thanks

How can you do this?
DHowett said:
I've been wondering about this as well.
I've tried a couple different approaches, and ended up sticking with one: it takes some setup overhead for every ROM I install, but it helps a lot.
I ended up deleting the datadata mount from init.inc.rc in boot.img (get ROM, unpack, edit init.inc.rc, repack, flash), and booting in recovery mode to move the data from ([email protected])/ over to (mmcblk0p1)/data (which is now just a subdir on the 768MB /data partition.)
Initial tests repartitioning mmcblk0 (houses /data, /cache, and /emmc) to make /data larger for this purpose didn't work out well: the bootloader rewrites the MBR/partition table when it finds that they don't match metrics it likes. /emmc can not really be reformatted because the bootloader updates some bits that it expects to be FAT32 on boot time as well, corrupting other filesystems.
Why on earth HTC would ship a phone in this day and age with such a crippled storage layout is beyond me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow, that sounds like a great idea. Like the above poster, can I also ask if someone who knows how would write up some instructions on how to to this? It certainly would be appreciated by many! With Gingerbread, there's not much Incredible users can do about the tiny /data size. Thanks!

I'm encountering this issue with 384MB of phone storage free and nearly 4GB of SD free. When I checked, I only had 14.5MB free in /data/data. 150MB for this is ridiculous! I would appreciate any fix, preferably one I can set and forget (don't want to have to constantly move or create symlinks for ever new app I install).

possible fix
You should check out jermaine151's Stock+ version 2.1. http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1260994. I can't personally vouch for it as he just released it and it's a little late to start reinstalling everything, but it looks promising.

Brainstorming about repartitioning

Just thinking out loud....
I don't know if the ICS leak flashes change the partition table, but the way my phone is set up, there's 11 partitions:
p1: /efs
p2: /system
p3: /cache
p4: The "Internal SD"
p5: A mere 2MB. Mostly blank (long stretches of 00 or FF), except for <1KB of... something. Nothing jumps out at me in the hexdump. Could just be leftover garbage from Gingerbread.
p6: /data
p7: 16MB. Definitely something important here. Strings present suggest it's related to, if not part of, the bootloader, or perhaps download mode.
p8: 5MB: Looks like an Android bootimg. Recovery?
p9: 8MB: Pretty sure this is where the Linux kernel and rootfs for the actual system resides.
p10: 8MB: Completely blank.
p11: 500MB. An ext4 filesystem containing only the Asphalt 6 video and screenshots that you'd find on the "Internal SD" of a freshly Odin'd Glide.
I wonder if p5 actually serves a purpose; if not, we could theoretically merge it, p4, and p6 into one gigantic /data partition. That may be a bit more useful for those running with large microSD cards.
Things we need to look at:
One, bootloader. Does it look for things at static offsets? Does it read the partition table?
Two, recovery. I'm guessing CWMR will read the partition table, but is it expecting certain partitions to contain certain things?
In both cases, it shouldn't be anything we can't work around by filling out partition numbers or stretches of NAND with blank partitions. But we'll need to know what the offsets need to be.
Just putting the thought out there.

PIT & GPT, custom PIT
Actually the last PIT partition contains GPT data, and what we've seen inside the booted system comes out of GPT. But there is unallocated ~11Mb (according to GPT) before the first partition, and the PIT contains info about that!
cross-ref my thread: [Q] mmcblk0 Partiton table type (sgh-i927)
For now I'm looking a way of crafting my custom PIT-file, did you see any info about that?

[Q] Inc as a data media device

I know I'm late to the party and this was probably already discussed, but I couldn't find it with search. Has anyone considered converting the inc to a data media device (http://www.xda-developers.com/android/what-is-a-data-media-device/)? I've seen this done with other devices (e.g. hp touchpad). I'd be nice to be able to use the EMMC partition for storage and data. I know there is ext4all but I still seem to run out of space quickly since dalvik-cache is half of /data.

Not sure if hboot will let you combine partitions to do what you want; however, lvm can probably accomplish what you're hoping to achieve but it takes quite a bit of effort to setup.
Sent from my One using Tapatalk

I wasn't necessarily thinking we need to combine any partitions. Just don't mount the existing /data and /data/data partitions, and mount the EMMC partition as /data with an emulated sdcard at /data/media. I think this is how the Samsung phones work; you have both "internal" and "external" sdcards. Seems like it should just be some config changes and maybe a recovery that is datamedia aware so you don't erase the emulated sdcard when wiping data.

Smells like a project. I'll see if I will get around to this but this sounds doable.
No promises but my Inc could get bricked and I wouldn't cry over it so I can take a few risks.
Sent from my One using Tapatalk

I've only done a little research so far, but it seems like you'd only need to change a few configuration files. I don't think you could truly brick your Inc, could you? I'm tempted to try and get it working myself but I can't risk bricking my dd.
Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk

ive got 2 incs so I dont mind messing with it, I have a touchpad tho and from what I know (I am decent friends with invisiblek and he does work on the touchpad) the only real difference, is re-partitioning your internal and setting the device tree to mount data as data/media instead of for say /data or /data/data

I have a TouchPad too. Finally made the leap to kk and datamedia there which is what got me thinking about the Inc. The repartioning done for the TouchPad was too make the data partition larger since it now holds both apps and sdcard data. We shouldn't have to do that for the Inc since we already have a partition with 6.6 gig available. Nothing is mounted at /data/media, it's just another directory on the main /data partition. That's why you need a special recovery that "wipes" data instead of formatting...
I've been looking at the changes milaq made. I assume invisiblek did something similar if not the same.
Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk

natediggity said:
I have a TouchPad too. Finally made the leap to kk and datamedia there which is what got me thinking about the Inc. The repartioning done for the TouchPad was too make the data partition larger since it now holds both apps and sdcard data. We shouldn't have to do that for the Inc since we already have a partition with 6.6 gig available. Nothing is mounted at /data/media, it's just another directory on the main /data partition. That's why you need a special recovery that "wipes" data instead of formatting...
I've been looking at the changes milaq made. I assume invisiblek did something similar if not the same.
Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
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A fancy flashable script to convert your boot.img to use /data/media should be possible. So far I told it to switch to mmcblk03 from 01 for /data so it's 6.6GB. The other part is relocating fuse to use /data/media for the internal storage instead of /emmc. That should be somewhat easy to change but a bit harder to script.
/data/media was designed for devices that don't have an sdcard slot which the Inc does have so this is more of a proof of concept idea for me than actual utility.
Ok, the last part is recovery and the current recovery images appear to be large enough to make the recovery build part fail. I'm not sure the actual recovery partition size on the inc but the images come to be about 4.5 MB and fail.

zachf714 said:
ive got 2 incs so I dont mind messing with it, I have a touchpad tho and from what I know (I am decent friends with invisiblek and he does work on the touchpad) the only real difference, is re-partitioning your internal and setting the device tree to mount data as data/media instead of for say /data or /data/data
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
/data/media uses fuse on an existing ext4 partition so the recovery as nate said has to be told to wipe /data instead of format (in other words, using an rm command and excluding /data/media).
This makes filesystem corruption harder to fix since the partition can't be wiped from recovery normally unless it's a format which TWRP does have an option to format /data.

tiny4579 said:
A fancy flashable script to convert your boot.img to use /data/media should be possible. So far I told it to switch to mmcblk03 from 01 for /data so it's 6.6GB. The other part is relocating fuse to use /data/media for the internal storage instead of /emmc. That should be somewhat easy to change but a bit harder to script.
/data/media was designed for devices that don't have an sdcard slot which the Inc does have so this is more of a proof of concept idea for me than actual utility.
Ok, the last part is recovery and the current recovery images appear to be large enough to make the recovery build part fail. I'm not sure the actual recovery partition size on the inc but the images come to be about 4.5 MB and fail.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check my device tree, I have a commit on omni that compresses recovery a bit more and I use it to build
Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

tiny4579 said:
A fancy flashable script to convert your boot.img to use /data/media should be possible. So far I told it to switch to mmcblk03 from 01 for /data so it's 6.6GB. The other part is relocating fuse to use /data/media for the internal storage instead of /emmc. That should be somewhat easy to change but a bit harder to script.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't need a flashable script unless it's required. Personally, I'm fine just building a new system image and flashing that.
tiny4579 said:
/data/media was designed for devices that don't have an sdcard slot which the Inc does have so this is more of a proof of concept idea for me than actual utility.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
datamedia can be used in conjunction with sdcards. This is what the new samsung phones do. I thought the HTC One did as well, but I just remembered it doesn't have a sdcard slot. If you haven't already, check out this page: https://source.android.com/devices/tech/storage/config-example.html. Our config would be similar to the Xoom's.