Develop Bugs

[Kernel] Flykernel-13 "Back from the Grave"

FlyKernel is an overclockable kernel for the Hero GSM, aimed to improve stability, battery life and performance (generally in that order).
The Hero GSM now also has a newer .35 kernel "Las Venturas" you should also check that one out. At the time of writing these lines, the newest version of Las Venturax is found on the second post of the above thread (my post ) - you should check which post is more up-to-date on that thread.
Download and instructions are on this post.
FAQ and advanced subjects are on the second post.
Change log and previous versions are on the third post.
WARNING: Please make sure to have an up-to-date backup before you flash this kernel!
FlyKernel-13 (#253)
FlyKernel 13 - Desean
FlyKernel 13 - Mediafire
FlyKernel 13 - Multiupload
This is a post-LasVenturas update for FlyKernel, after quite some time without any updates.
Although I currently have a bit of a personal preference for Las Venturas, I believe that it is even better to have two excellent kernels for the hero (internally totally different ), so that the users can choose whichever works best for them. Possibly, on some of the older ROMs this kernel might work better. This should also help isolate kernel issues vs. ROM issues.
SmartassV2 (informal description and comparison with the first smartass)
SmartassV2 is a governor (controls the frequency of the CPU at each give moment) which like the first smartass is generally based on the implementation of interactive with some major changes and the addition of a built in sleep profile (behaves a bit differently when screen is off vs. on).
The smartassV2 improves the very naive scheme which the first smartass had: The first smartass (with the values I set for the hero), would cap the max frequency at 352Mhz for sleep and when screen is on, would do the opposite and keep the frequency at 518Mhz or above. For sleep this was very effective but a bit crude and unclean, and there could be some cases where you would need processing power even when screen is off (something is updating and music is playing and etc.). For screen on, smartass1 was too quick to jump to the max available frequency and again would never go below the 518Mhz, so in a nutshell its was using "too high" frequencies.
SmartassV2, introduce (internally) an "ideal" frequency which is the frequency we are "aiming" for, in some sense. The way I see it is that the "ideal" frequency is a hint to the governor what is a good balance between performance and battery life. Now when screen is on, I set (on the hero) the ideal frequency to 518Mhz which will ensure nice responsiveness but limit unnecessary use of higher frequencies when they are not needed. When screen is off, I set the ideal frequency to 352Mhz (0 will disable the screen state tracking all together). From my testing this will "convince" the governor to spend most of the its time during sleep at the lowest available frequencies. Note, that both during sleep and when awake the entire frequency range (as defined by the "user" - i.e. selected with SetCPU) is used by smartassV2. For example, when the CPU is loaded heavily, the highest available frequency will be used regardless if screen is on or off.
Boot OC and optional tweaks
Optionally, you can rename the update file before you flash to change bootup frequencies and other options.
If you don't rename the file and flash "FlyKernel-13.zip" you will get the default tweaks and the min/max frequencies will remain as they where before.
For example, to set the max/min frequencies on boot to 614/176, rename "FlyKernel-13.zip" to "FlyKernel-13-M614-m176.zip".
Supported "flags" are:
Notice, all flags are case sensitive.
-MXXX - set max frequency to XXX
-mYYY - set min frequency to YYY
Supported max frequencies:
518 576 614 633 652 672 691 710 729 748
Supported min frequencies:
19 176 264 352 518 576 614 633 652 672 691 710 729 748
Default behavior, if these flags aren't given, is not to change your current settings.
For frequency recommendations and more info see FAQ #5.
Technical details: max/min frequencies are set in the kernel's ramdisk init.hero.rc file. Previous settings will be replaced. Furthermore, if one of your init.d script sets the max/min frequencies, these lines will be removed.
If you have SetCPU or other program changing the speed at boot, their change will take effect and overwrite this setting as soon as the ROM completes to boot.
-nologo - Don't show boot animation.
-logo - Show boot animation.
Default behaviour, if no flag is given, is not to change your current settings.
-noatime - Mount all partitions with -noatime to improve IO.
-atime - Mount no partition with -noatime.
Assuming, your ROM did not mount any partition with noatime, then the -atime option should undo the -noatime option perfectly. Unfortunately, it seems some ROMs (i.e. VR12) mount only some of the partitions with -noatime. It seems that in some cases, changing the noatime configuration causes boot problems.
Therefore, I highly recommend you make a backup before trying the -noatime flag - this is the only full proof way to go back if it messes something up.
Notice, this does not effect the ext partition as it is not mounted in the ramdisk init.rc. As far as I know, all ROMs mount the ext partition with noatime.
-notweak
By default, the updater will remove scheduler tweaks which exists in the ramdisk init.rc script, in order for the scheduler default compiled into the kernel to apply. This flag will disable this behavior.
More techinical information for developers about the smart update package has been updated in my github wiki.
Limitations and known bugs:
- This kernel will not make you coffee (I hope)!
Integrating kernel in a custom ROM (for ROM developers)
You can use my from above:
http://floyo.desean.net/FlyKernel-13-Floyo.zip
This file has a regular boot.img with a ramdisk compatible with Floyo 1.4, boots at 576/352 (smartassV2) and has all the kernel modules unpacked.
If you need to edit the ramdisk, you can either unpack the above boot.img as explained here. Or you can get the kernel binary file from my smart update package, under tmp/flykernel/kernel. The kernel modules are package in the smart update package under tmp/flykernel/syslibs.tar.
Kernel Sources
My sources with all my updates and changes are found on github:
http://github.com/erasmux/hero-2.6.29-flykernel
Use hero_defconfig for the regular version and hero-bfs_defconfig for the BFS version.
See the wiki for more information about building the kernel and more.
Please feel free to contact me regarding my sources and kernel development.
Using my Kernel Sources
Feel free to use my kernel sources, fully or partially in any (legal) way you see fit.
If you modify the sources, I urge you to share your changes with the community (as GPL obliges you to do), preferably using github. You can fork my sources on github, and this will make it easier for you to grab new changes from me and also allow you to fill pull requests so I can pull your changes back to my kernel.
GPL
Yes I am GPL complaint, all is included inside the sources, including the GPL license itself.
Thanks
Huge thanks to Desean for giving me file hosting that makes my life easier
Many thanks to all the Kernel/ROM developers here, especially those with open source kernels on github - LoxK, Cyanogen, Ninpo, Radu and especially Decad3nce.
Big thanks to all those who helped test the pre versions and reported bugs, specifically also to my long time testers (moonshield and floomat)
Donations are always welcome and accepted but are in no way required.

FAQ and Advanced Subjects
FAQ
0. When reporting a problem, do I need to include the ROM and exact kernel version I am using?
YES!
1. How do I flash the kernel update file?
You flash it from recovery, like any other custom ROM. If you are not familiar with recovery and/or haven't rooted your phone, start here.
2. Do I need to wipe anything when installing the kernel?
No you don't need to do any wipes. Just install the kernel through recovery and reboot
3. The update from recovery failed with errors/warning?
Please, in the same recovery session which you tried to apply the update and failed, select the "Move recovery.log to SD" from the "Other" menu and post in this thread with the recovery.log attached (for example in a .zip file).
4. After flashing the kernel my ROM does not boot
A logcat of the boot process might help me understand the problem. Using adb you can generate one with the following command and attach it to your report:
Code:
adb logcat > logcat.txt
You need to run this command relatively close to the start of the boot. Close the window after the phone is stuck for few minutes (say 2 mins with no change should do). You can start by running "adb logcat" and seeing if you get any output at all. If so, reboot once more and run the above command from the start of the boot (approximately).
Please also clearly state which ROM you are using and which kernel did work for you (which one did you use before).
To recover from such a scenario, boot into recovery and restore a backup of your working state. If you do not have a backup, and its the kernel fault, flashing your old kernel should solve the problem.
5. What min/max frequencies should I choose?
The short answer: min 176, max 614, if you have wake up issues up the min speed to 264 and then to 352.
To play with the speeds I suggest you install SetCPU (or similar app), so you can view and change your settings interactively. To change it permanently from the bootup see instructions on first post. You also use options like "Set on boot" in SetCPU if you prefer that.
The long answer:
The max frequency will effect the speed and responsiveness of your phone when screen is on. Note, that any speed above 528Mhz is above the specification of the manufacturer, hence is overclocking and could, in theory, shorten the life of your device. At high enough frequencies all devices will stop functioning, the exact threshold depends on your luck with your specific device. From my experience and knowledge, running at stable frequencies (or say one or two steps down to be on the safe side), should not harm your device - of course all overclocking is done at your sole responsibility.
As far as I know, almost all device can handle 652Mhz, most can reach the 691/710 area and some can even reach higher than the 748Mhz cap of this kernel. To find out which speed your phone supports, use SetCPU (or similar app), start from 614 for example and up the speed one tick a time. Don't select "Set on boot". At each step play with the phone a minute or two. If the phone gets stuck, reboot it (take out battery if necessary) and go one tick down.
Additionally, note the higher your max frequency the higher the battery drain will be when the screen is on. It is true that the display, data, wifi, gps, etc. should drain much more than the cpu. Still, I recommend staying in the sane frequencies range, no more than say 691Mhz (even if you phone can handle it).
Finally the min speed will effect standby battery life (when screen is off). From my experience there is a difference in battery life between 19Mhz and 352Mhz min frequencies but it is relatively small (much less than I expected). 19Mhz is not stable for me, almost stable, but over a period of weeks you will probably experience weird and possibly very rare instabilities. For me this was the when playing music with screen off the phone got stuck at 19Mhz (very hard to find this out), and became totally unresponsive until I rebooted it. Therefore, I recommend starting from 176Mhz, and if you have wakeup issues to bring it up. With 352Mhz you should have no wake up issues at all.
6. I am having wakeup issues (such as unresponsiveness to wakeup, weird coloring after wakeup, screen inversion, caller id not working on wakeup)
Up the min speed to 264 and then to 352. With a min frequency of 352 you should not have any wake issues.
See the FAQ #5 above for more information.
7. I am experiencing bad battery life with FlyKernel
First, please make sure to reboot the ROM at least one time after you flash the kernel. There have been reports that ROM/kernels behave badly on the first boot.
Personally, I do not do battery calibration, but if it makes you happy go for it. I do recommend at least charging the battery overnight, or a couple of hours after it has reached 100% to be sure it is full. Then use it, your regular usage for a few days and only then judge the battery life.
The battery percent indicator, over short periods of time seems extremely inaccurate and its very hard to reach any correct conclusions based on it.
If you do want to report bad battery life, please state your settings (kernel version, min/max speeds, governor, etc.), over which period you have been testing the battery, under what usage, what is the battery life you are used to having with which kernel and what is the battery life you are experiencing now.
Note, that roughly speaking, I lose less than 1%/hour when screen is off (wifi, data, gps, etc. also off), and about 10%/hours when just screen is on but phone does nothing at all (again wifi, gps, etc. off). About 20%+/hour when stressing my phone (although I have no data plan so can't test that). I am using the latest FlyKernel @ smartass 614/176.
8. What size should I give the swap partition?
short answer: 0.
long answer: I do not recommend using swap on the hero, hence 0. If you have a very fast SD card, and want to try it, give it say 64Mb. Note that I know of no ROM for the hero which activates swap automatically - you'll need to add a init.d script or something to activate it (see a bit more info here). Let me know if you find a scenario where the swap gives substantial improvement over no swap.
Finally note that FlyKernel versions before 12 do not support swap.
9. Should I use ext2, ext3 or ext4 for my ext partition?
Short answer: ext4. Note that FlyKernel versions before 12 did not support ext4, ext3 is supported since version 10.
Long answer:
Previously, I was under the impression that a journaling file system is a very bad idea for flashable storage. I still think its not ideal but better than the other alternative:
I have been using dual booting, placing an entire development ROM on an ext2/4 partition and using it for development. And when using ext2 it would get errors almost every boot and every couple of days get corrupted to the point I needed to manually restore damaged files to get it working....
It seems that if you only use it for app2sd, there are very infrequent changes to this volume (only when you install a new app), hence it does not get corrupted. But this also means that ext4, in this scenario, will not pay much overhead because there are very few changes. And in the case there are many changes, if I have to choose between a slightly shorter SD life with ext4 (and then I can finally get a faster one ) or risking my data getting corrupted on a daily basis with ext2 - I prefer the first (ext4).
Questions 10-13 are now obsolete with smartassV2 - see the first post for details about it
10. Do I need a SetCPU (or similar) screen off profile with smartass?
No, smartass automatically limits the screen on frequency to >= 518Mhz to ensure responsiveness, and screen off frequency to <= 352Mhz to keep standby battery life under control. Much like HTC's perfllock, it does this at the kernel level so it is much better than app level screen off profiles.
11. Using smartass the CPU frequency does not drop below 518Mhz (with screen on)
Intentional to ensure responsiveness. From my testing, when screen is on battery drain difference of speeds < 518Mhz is not significant relative to the drain by the screen itself.
12. Using smartass the CPU frequency does go above 352Mhz (with screen off)
Intentional to keep standby battery life under control.
13. Using smartass the CPU frequency is always at its max (or always at 352Mhz when screen is off)
See "Monitoring the CPU frequency" in the "Advanced subjects".
14. I am experiencing spontaneous reboots
Please post, in this thread, with as much detail as possible about the problem.
Please also attach the last_kmsg, which you can get from example using:
Code:
adb pull /proc/last_kmsg
15. What happend to the BFS version?
With the FlyKernel-12 scheduler tweaks (CFS scheduler), it surpasses the BFS version in every way. I tried to compile a BFS from the FlyKernel-12 code but even in neocore, in which the BFS was always much better, the new tweaked CFS leaves the BFS in the dust. Hence, I see no reason to continue and build/support a BFS version. The hero-bfs_defconfig is still up to date in my sources if anyone wants to build it themselves.
*. I am experiencing an issue not covered in the FAQ which I believe is kernel related
Please post, in this thread, with as much detail as possible about the problem.
Please also detail why you believe this kernel related. The best "proof" that it is the kernel's fault, is to flash back your old kernel and verify the problem is solved, then reflash the new kernel and verify the problem reappears. In any case please detail the kernel and version(s) on which your are experiencing the problem and those on which you do not.
Advanced Subjects
* Monitoring the CPU frequency
Will rewrite this more clearly. In the meantime:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=9925116&postcount=903
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=9929325&postcount=919 <-- Mainly this one!!!
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=9989996&postcount=970
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=10010110&postcount=990

Change log and previous versions
FlyKernel-13
- Scheduler tweaks: use the scheduler settings that worked well on flykernel-11c and 12pre6 (tweaked them very very little), responsiveness should now be better than on the FlyKernel-12 release
- Backported the new smartassV2 - now the default
- Added interactiveX governor also
- A few config changes and compiler optimizations
FlyKernel 12a (mediafire)
- Fix wake up issues with new scheduler tweaks
- Smart update script: make noatime tweak option to (hopefully) solve boot problems
FlyKernel 12
- Smart update script
- Optimized scheduler parameters
- Fix Usb mass storage after usb tethering (at least on CM ROMs)
FlyKernel-12pre6
- Align ext2/3/4 config options
- Merge small fixes to lowmemorykiller module.
FlyKernel-12pre5
- Backport of smd rpcrouter to avs333 request.
FlyKernel-12pre4
- Partial fix for the lockscreen flickering when locked/unlocked rapidly (with smartass).
- Very small tweak to other smartass parameters.
FlyKernel-12pre3
- Fixed frequency table according to Radu's comments. Frequencies which are not on PLL2 have been removed!
- Tweaked smartass to spend more time at the lower frequencies to improve battery life. Also smartass's allergy to 19Mhz has been cured!
- Some configuration tweaks, mostly sleep related.
- 528Mhz frequency does not work well with OC, so it has been replaced with 518Mhz which does work fine.
FlyKernel-12pre2
FlyKernel-12pre2 optimized for CM based ROMs (default speed 576/352)
- Added compcache support
- Added 19Mhz and 264Mhz frequencies
FlyKernel-12pre1
- Lower voltages of high frequencies (>= 528Mhz)
- Added ext4 support (I currently use it for dual booting)
- Interactive updated (does anyone find it better than smartass? in what scenario?)
- Smartass fixes and optimizations - should be more responsive now and battery life should (hopefully) still be excellent.
- Camera backport from .32 (12pre1-cam32)
FlyKernel-11c
FlyKernel-11c #66 (Generic)
FlyKernel-11c-BFS #67 (Generic)
- Smartass: now wakeups up from sleep first at 528Mhz (no OC), to hopefully help with wake up issues.
- Bunch of fixes/optimization from CM espresso kernel and from Decad3nce (see github)
- BFS version
"Optimized Kernel Packages" (only for CM6 based ROMs: Floyo, Elelinux, Froyd):
Find the appropriate kernel for you by its name in the FlyKernel-11c directory
The naming conversion is:
flykernel-11c-CM-<min>-<max>.zip (with boot animation)
flykernel-11c-CM-<min>-<max>-nologo.zip (no boot animation)
flykernel-11c-BFS-... (BFS version)
FlyKernel-11
- New smartass governor (see technical detail below). Previous governors still supported.
- Added IPv6 (only for Google Googles?!)
- Fixes camera freezing CM6-based ROMs (thanks Ninpo for a "code cleanup" which fixed this )
- Fixes detection of USB connection during boot on CM6-based ROMs.
- Various squash-sets imported (see github)
- NORMALIZED_SLEEPER disabled.
FlyKernel-10a (rapidshare megaupload)
- Optimize some sleep/idle code (thanks to ninpo)
- Add module for IP header compression - hopefully this helps google apps (inspired by ninpo).
FlyKernel-10a-BFS (rapidshare megaupload)
- BFS version of 10a.
- Whats is BFS? see wikipedia and more details here.
FlyKernel-10
- Fixes for Froyo ROMs (FroydVillain and Elelinux)
- Added some more modules inside the kernel (notably using VPN should now work). I am now more aligned with the modules included in other kernels (well mainly ninpo's kernels), so hopefully you should not run into any missing modules.
I even added support for ext3.
- Generic update for all ROMs.
Flykernel-09:
FlyKernel-09 for VR12,RCMix,ChoclateEclair,Modaco and SuperHero
FlyKernel-09 for Kimera and Sensehero
FlyKernel-09 for MMod 1.2.3
FlyKernel-09 for FroydVillain and elelinux - Beware there are problems with 09 and Froyo ROMs.
FlyKernel-09 for CM6
- Added the excellent minmax governor.
- Removed interactive as it does not behave well at all - just use minmax
- added version which supports the 288M data partition - removed now since MAX appears to be fading out - just use dalvik2SD instead.
FlyKernel-08
FlyKernel-08 for Froyo and ASOP
Added Mike Chan's interactive governor, adaptation to Hero by Nadlabak and Ninpo. Added some tweaks of my own - now works well also with big frequency table.
Tweaked conservative governor for better performance.
Fixed/cleaned kernel co/nfig and modules - among other things iptables should work fine now.
Bigger frequency table.
FlyKernel-05 (BFS)
BFS version of the FlyKernel-04
FlyKernel-04
Based on HTC 2.6.29 official kernel source.
Includes patchset 2.6.29.6 and various fixes
Boot OC - Only for Sense based ROMs (The smart update script added in FlyKernel-12 provides a cleaner and better solution for all ROMs)
Boots very quickly by setting the OC speed right from the start. Also sets the original HTC boot animation which is quicker for most ROMs. Finally, replaces the 09zipalign with 09betterzipalign (again thanks ninpo).
Please have a backup before you try this, as there is no other easy way to undo this.
Select the update file according to the speed your phone can handle:
boot @ 653/160: http://www.multiupload.com/5RAXNJ7AWY (rapidshare megaupload)
boot @ 672/160: http://www.multiupload.com/RRQ0HYI8O8 (rapidshare megaupload)
boot @ 691/160: http://www.multiupload.com/20AJV7FLQI (rapidshare megaupload)
boot @ 710/160: http://www.multiupload.com/WHROUYNGQ6 (rapidshare megaupload)
Theoretically, this should now work on any ROM and any OC kernel. I have tested the 691 update on VR12 and Froyd 1.4 with my kernel and it works fine. Above files (now with "_" at end of name) updated to also work on ChocolateEclair and hopefully other ROMs on 31/8.
Note that in my recent kernel versions the lowest frequency is 176, so it will boot with a min frequency of 176.

cool.. will try. like the idea of overclocking before boot

can you post a diff file of what you modified?

diffs of which change?
there are a lot of changes and fixes, which range from fixes by me in the source code, to just copying/applying files from others.
I think it would be better to keep this thread open for issues and questions about the usage of these fixes. Still I will be more than happy to share anything I have done - please contact me with the exact change you are interested, either by PM or open a new thread if you think it is of general interest for developers.

There are literaly dozens of different kernels floating arround, all of which are always "brand new super fast ultra optimized". From a user perspective it's hard to tell which one is the best. I think this community needs more openness in the developpement. I think it would be a good habit if developpers posted their diff files (of everything) instead of just saying that they made "optimizations".
thanks for your work

zorxd said:
There are literaly dozens of different kernels floating arround, all of which are always "brand new super fast ultra optimized". From a user perspective it's hard to tell which one is the best. I think this community needs more openness in the developpement. I think it would be a good habit if developpers posted their diff files (of everything) instead of just saying that they made "optimizations".
thanks for your work
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Trying it out might help in deciding which is the best for you. There is no such thing as an absolute best, sorry. To each his needs and his preferences. I also included a convenient undo update script which restores the original kernel.
Personally, I am not aware of any other kernels for the VillainROM (except the original one by ninpo) and for me my kernel works better. Additionally, I have gotten very good feedbacks for my kernel and fixes on iandroid (using HebVillain which is very tightly based on VR12). So I thought others here might want to try it and maybe would also like it. Please also feel free to bash it, but please try it first and then reply with comments which I can relate too.
Finally, I am all for complete openness: If you are really interested in the kernel sources, you can find them along with all my changes here which could be of great to help to you especially if you want to compile the hero kernel yourself. In such a case I would recommend starting from here. The biggest other change is the RTL fix, for which you find the diffs here (it is verses the eclair branch of the android source code). As for the other files & changes I did, I have tried to detail as much as possible in my original post.
Feel free to contact me (also by PM) if you want more info or help.

I just installed your Kernel and the Boot Optimization and brother my phone is flying!!!! GREAT JOB!!!
100% recommended flash for your VR12
THANKS!!!

yep!
all great! you are the MAN =)

good work erasmux, does it work with Arabic language with Arabic fonts installed ? I mean connected letters
Thanks a lot

I hope it does. I don't use Arabic, but if there are problems, report them and I'll do my best to fix them.

Good job erasmux!

Problems for me.....
Installed Kernel & Optimization and Boot time optimization
Made all my icons go to pot,
"problem loading gadget" on powerbar,
"problem loading gadget" on Battery Meter Widget
Game Icons, CoPilot live, System Widget all showing default app icon.
Lost a WHOLE LOAD of installed apps, simply not there listed any longer. So many gone I can't recall what I have lost.
Tried the undo file Original VR12 Kernel:
Got my apps back but still probs with some widgets, boot screen remained the HTC one (didn't revert to the villian screen)

First, I have fixed the kernel restore file in the original post to also restore the original villain boot animation, note that the new file is called: V12-RestoreKernel_.zip (with additional _ at end)
Thanks, for the remark.
Regarding the apps, that is very weird. Did you get these "problem loading gadget" on the screen or where? A logcat from the start of the boot would be very helpful (although I can understand if you don't want to flash it again just to help me debug...).
Regarding the widgets (when the apps do appear) ,try clearing the HTC Sense data (unfortunately this will reset your desktop but it should restore your widgets and its better than having to reinstall everything).

I'll have to have a go later.. tied up at the mo..
Prob loading gadget appeared on the screen (still does).
Will try clearing sense and post back later.
EDIT: Clearing Sense worked. Thanks.

made battery callibration (http://www.villainrom.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=97&t=1789&start=20#p19769).. full charge (~17:15).. after 5 hours using phone.. 5-7 calls (1-5min each), 30 min wifi and playing =) and now ( 22:40) 99% battery!!! blja, im very happy!!!!!!!!!!
cpu always 245-576mhz
only like with original VR12 kernel after few hours of use at 576mhz linpack score down from 2.5 to 1.8 , but after installed autokiller ( preset 60mb) it's always 2.45-2.57
now i think VR12 the best!
Thank you one more time! will write back tomorrow eve =)

is this included stuff really usefull or it can be disabled?
ipv6 (lot of different options)
LZO and ARC4 crypto stuff
extra PPP stuff (MPPE, PPPOLAC, PPOPNS)
DSCP and TCPOPTSTRIP
INET_TUNNEL
XFRM_IPCOMP
CPU_FREQ_GOV_CONSERVATIVE
the /proc/config.gz (kernel .config support)
Also, I noticed that the device boot with mem=64M. Does it mean that the rest of the RAM isn't used?

AFAIK the only way to change this is to recompile the kernel.
Many of what you said I saw requests here on XDA that kernel developers add (there applications which use it). Please note that many of those modules do not automatically load and need to be manually loaded so they should not have any effect.
Others stuff, mainly the IPv6 stuff i doubt anyone uses - must have "inherited" it from the config i used as a base. I will look into it for future release if I can remove that stuff.
About the mem=64 I am not sure what that is, my phone is definitively using the full memory. I will also try to understand and possibly adjust that for future releases.
Thanks for the input.

An other question, is a kernel really tied to a specific ROM? I have VR12 right now so I could try it, but I was also thinking of upgrading to a 2.2 ROM.
About the modules, I think that most of the stuff that I noticed was compiled in (=y) and not as modules (=m). If they are only used by 1% of the users, I think it would be better to have them as modules and make sure that they don't load automatically at boot.
Also, do you know if it is better to have a small frequency table (with, let say, only 3 choices) to avoid excessive frequency switching?
Is the dalvik to SD trick included worth it for those of us with the original 2GB SD card?

[REF][SCRIPTS] Android Optimization Tips - i9000 (UPDATED 1/10/12)

Attention!
If you're looking for scripts, here it is:
[CWM][SCRIPTS][TWEAKS] Thunderbolt!
Script Reviews are here:
Script Reviews
Introduction
I've been meaning to share this with the whole Android community. It seems unfair that only the i9000 folks have access to the vast research that I've done so far. Hence I'm sharing this in the general Android thread in hopes that it'll benefit everyone in the long run
A lot of people often asked about how Android really works and the optimizations can be made to their Android to make it perform better in terms of:
- battery life
- raw performance
- GUI smoothness
With Android based on Linux, and with the experience I have with Linux/Unix (I deal with Unix/Linux on a daily basis for my work) I managed to find some tweaks that we can do to optimize our phones.
I also hope that people will experiment with the tweaks posted here and feedback to me if there are certain ways that I'm doing incorrectly or there are better ways than what I've posted here.
Script tweaks
There are a lot of scripts in XDA that specifically uses the optimizations (Linux or Android based) that I will explain below to actually increase performance/battery life. However, you need to know what those scripts do before using it.
I've done some reviews of the script here:
Script Reviews by Pikachu01
There are good scripts that are properly tested and made sure that it works. It's a script by Zacharias maladroit, the kernel dev who makes the platypus kernel for CM7 and snail kernel for i9000. I modded it to be compatible with i9000 and it'll probably do more than some of the scripts I reviewed
From there, I've also taken the liberty of modifying it some more based on my knowledge and research I've done. It's called ThunderBolt!:
LINK
Now onwards to what actually goes on beneath the hood.
Android Governors
Some custom kernels provide customized governors for you to choose. These are currently known:
- Ondemand (CPU scales to the highest frequency immediately after a certain CPU threshold)
- Conservative (CPU scales to the highest or 1 scale lower than that after a certain threshold gradually and scales down if CPU is below a certain threshold
- OndemandX (Has sleep codes that scales down the CPU when device is asleep. Threshold is set to scale slower)
OndemandX
OndemandX has a suspend frequency that it maintains when the phone is sleeping. It does have a known issue of waking up too slowly when a call comes in.
Conservative
Conservative is used when you would like the CPU to scale to the maximum through each frequency slowly before reaching the maximum. It saves more battery at the expense of smoothness. There are a few tunables that can be configured in Conservative governor, namely the freq_step and both the up and down thresholds.
freq_step is a tunable that determines how much frequency (a percentage of the maximum frequency of your device) to increase at each sampling rate. e.g. you have 5 as freq_step and your maximum frequency is 1GHz. At each sampling rate, it'll increase by 50MHz. If your current frequency is 100MHz, it'll increase to 150MHz at the next sampling. What if your device doesn't support 150MHz? This is done by splitting time between 100MHz and 200MHz (assuming your next frequency is 200MHz) so that in average, your phone is performing at 150MHz.
The up_threshold is how much threshold to wait for before increasing the base frequency to the next freq_step. I.e. if it is 80, the CPU will wait until it is 80% loaded before increasing the frequency. The down threshold is the opposite of up_threshold, which is the threshold to wait until the CPU downscales the frequency to the next frequency step.
Ondemand
Ondemand is a governor that basically a simpler version of conservative. One difference is that it scales to the maximum frequency after load has exceeded a threshold. This is usually 80. After that, it looks at the load again when it's at the max frequency. If it's below 80 (example), it'll scale down one frequency step. The frequency step mentioned here is the available frequency step. I.e. if your device has frequencies of 100,200,400,800 to 1GHz then it'll scale down from 1GHZ to 800, 400 then 200 and 100.
One optimization I have for Ondemand for i9000 TalonDev is that I tuned it to be 80 rather than 65. I have not felt any slowdowns from using this setting and it saves a tiny bit more battery. You can experiment on this value however you want, but bear in mind that I'm not responsible for any slowdowns or damage that is caused by it. Read up a bit more on thresholds to know more (Google it).
I/O scheduler tweaks
Another tweak that can be done is the I/O scheduler tweak. Some kernels come with a few standard I/O schedulers while others have extra schedulers that you can choose from. I'll explain the few that I know and if you have more information on the schedulers, you can post it here for everyone to discuss/share
CFQ - Completely fair. Most will come with this, but this is not optimized for android. Some kernels do optimize it and use it.
Noop - Simple and least overhead of all I/O schedulers. Produces the best outcome for some cases and some do swear by it. It's downside is that it is easily bogged down by high I/O transactions.
Deadline - Optimized for mobile-like devices like Android. Also, some do swear by this. If its writes_starve sysfs is tweaked to be fair, it's the same as SIO.
SIO - It's a fair deadline scheduler. It's the best scheduler. Nuff said.
VR - A newer I/O scheduler that places penalty on reverse seeks. Not for flash drives, though the R penalty can be tweaked to be a multiplier of 1. Even if this is done, it has a high overhead.. Read more here: http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au/IA64wiki/IOScheduling/VRscheduler
BFQ - Too high of an overhead, it is optimized for spindle disks.
You can pick and choose from Voltage Control or other UV/OC apps and apply it immediately to feel the difference.
Here's my assessment of all the schedulers that I know:
SIO> NOOP> Deadline > VR > BFQ > CFQ
NOOP is a simple I/O scheduler without overhead that tries to do each I/O transaction as it comes (FIFO). When a group of transactions is detected, it will try to merge it together to make batches of transactions (makes the whole transaction faster). NOOP doesn't have starvation detection, hence if an I/O transaction takes a painfully long amount of time, it will still continue to do it rather than switch the CPU into doing something else e.g. GUI interrupts (i.e. scrolling lists, flicking screens). All other schedulers also have the "merge" feature. NOOP is the only one that makes the "merge" feature its only feature.
CFQ is a complex I/O scheduler that tries to determine the address space of the transaction and applies a cost algorithm in that if the address is close together, it will group them up and perform them. It also tries to make the transaction incremental (i.e. reading/writing through address incrementally so that the disk spindle needs to wind down the least in conventional platter hard disks) The problem is, our flash devices have very little delta between reading a far reaching address space (than the one currently being written/read) or a closer one as it doesn't rely on spindle/rotations. Hence, having this costing algorithm adds overhead and slows down the overall transaction. CFQ has a lot of algorithms to make sure each process gets a fair slice of time on I/O transcations. Too much overhead.
Deadline has a starvation detector and is simple enough that it doesn't have all the overhead of doing rotational/costing disks algorithm. However, reads are done 2x more likely than writes as it has a algorithm based on weights in that reads must be done first if both a read and a write is detected. It has a 2:1 ratio of read to write weights coded into the scheduler (that can be tweaked - writes_starved, will include it in the next version of system_tweak). Hence it's not a fair scheduler.
SIO is Simple I/O that tries to implement a NOOP type scheduler that has starvation detection. Hence, long I/O transactions will be preempted and given CPU time only after other faster transactions are completed, guaranteeing smoothness. Also, it doesn't have overhead of calculating costs. Also, it has a fair number of writes to read, guaranteeing that all transactions are equal.
BFQ has a lot of algorithms to make sure each process gets a fair slice of bandwidth (Budget Fair Queueing). Too much overhead.
V(R) tries to make sure that each transaction has a weight associated with it, being R. And if the seek is reversed, the R will be multiplied by a penalty making it less likely to be processed. Not for flash drives as reverse seek in a flash drive is just as fast as a forward seek.
In benchmarking tests, the tests normally consists of testing the time it takes for a contiguous I/O transfer from 1 point to another. NOOP excels at that because it won't let itself get interrupted to perform another I/O task. This would mean that in real life testing, NOOP will let a long arduous task to finish while at the expense of UI functionality (you will get UI lags)
SIO on the other hand will perform badly at benchmarking as it gets pre-empted when the contiguous tasks takes more than 0.5secs (for synchronous tasks as benchmarking tools perform a synchronous I/O task from one point to another) to another more important task like UI interrupt (when you're scrolling) or Kernel interrupt (when your kernel needs to perform garbage collecting or swap memory etc)
The 0.5 secs can be tuned in the SIO tuneables though, but I would think 0.5 secs for synchronous tasks and 5 secs for async tasks is pretty good to maintain a balance between long/short tasks enabling a smoother experience in Android.
LowMemoryKiller
The LowMemoryKiller is a constant debate between more free RAM and more multitasking capabilities as free RAM (more than 60MB free) is actually wasted RAM. The fact is SGS only has a puny amount of RAM left after a few big chunks are allocated to the Graphics, Modem, Sound and Video (and some others that I do not know a lot about). With that knowledge, Samsung decided to give the SGS SL a bigger amount of RAM when they released it ( about ~650MB of RAM read that from somewhere, can't remember).
The LowMemoryKiller is actually a feature in the Android OS for better memory management.
You can read about it more here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=5442369&postcount=1
This is an important feature due to the perennial problem of having low free memory causing lagginess and slowness in launching apps. When you have free memory lingering around the number of 40MB or less, the Android OS just lags like hell.
What this would mean is, you would want to tweak the LMK to not have the situation of it having less than 40MB (or even close to that).
The modern Linux machine in the Android ecosystem relies on a mechanism called Low Memory Killer (LMK) to consistently free up RAM. This is due to Android's internal mechanism of caching apps (and never fully exiting them) when you press the back button. This is to enable faster app switching and provide a seamless experience for apps usage model. Android also, by itself will also constantly look for often used apps to cache them for faster app opening. This will happen even before your system fully boots.
Now, when you mention LMK, the most obvious thoughts that come up are minfrees and Out Of Memory (OOM) groupings. Yes, those two are integral parts when it comes to LMK. The issue here is that no one actually mentioned that there are two LMK systems in Android, that being:
- Linux LMK
- Android Dalvik VM LMK
Both are separate entities that kills/removes app/dalvik cache from RAM when RAM reaches a certain level.
What confuses most people (including me) is that the OOM groupings of both mechanisms have the same names being (Android 2.3 based):
LMK App Categories
FOREGROUND_APP: Your apps in the foreground, being used currently, interfacing with the user.
VISIBLE_APP: Visible app that is still viewable by the user, but not interacting with the user, example could be apps that reside in the status bar, and giving live information i.e. Os monitor graphs.
PERCEPTIBLE_APP: App that the user can still perceive i.e. Music app that is playing music.
HEAVY_WEIGHT_APP: RAM heavy apps that are not being interacted with, but will be a pain to load if its information is cleared in the memory.
SECONDARY_SERVER: App that acts as a secondary server. Not sure what this really means, but client-server thingy but secondary? Could be something that syncs with an app, but is not syncing currently?
BACKUP_APP: App that is currently making a backup (like Titanium backup?)
HOME_APP: Your launcher.
HIDDEN_APP: An exited app that still significant residual memory in the RAM. Exited only some time ago, or is constantly used by the user.
EMPTY_APP: An exited app that only has small remnants of residual memory in RAM. App that is exited quite some time ago.
Take note that this is my understanding of the OOM groupings. If there are mistakes, please correct me
Tuning LMK
Both the LMK and Dalvik VM has this groupings and they can be tunable by using prop and lowmemorykiller/parameters/adj respectively.
One errata about this is that the Dalvik LMK has one extra tunable which is CONTENT_PROVIDER, which affects widgets that are not currently refreshing or displaying information. The ADJ (which I will explain later) is not available to be tuned though. And it is clearly missing from the Linux LMK.
The ADJ is the so-called priority of the app categories, with 0 being the highest (should not be killed) and 15 being the lowest (should be the first to be killed). I haven't seen values other than 0-15 but I have a feeling that the numbers are arbitrary, and can be extended up to 65535, but who would want to do that since they're only 9 app categories
LMK are specified by pages, with memory = 4 * pages.
e.g.
4096 pages represents 16MB RAM (16 *1.024)
From the Linux LMK source code, the parameters can be adjusted as such:
Code:
* For example, write "0,8" to /sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/adj and
* "1024,4096" to /sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/minfree to kill processes
* with a oom_adj value of 8 or higher when the free memory drops below 4096 pages
* and kill processes with a oom_adj value of 0 or higher when the free memory
* drops below 1024 pages.
Take note that the oom_adj so far takes only 6 values (although I am confident that it can take more than that). Haven't experimented enough to validate that, but I shouldn't need to as assigning different oom_adj should be a given for all the app categories. This is to make the LMK intelligent enough to determine which app to kill first rather than grouping different app categories into one priority, in which a lot of popular LMK settings that devs provide do that.
And for the Dalvik LMK, my understanding is that it will remove all dalvik caches of <INSERT_APP_CATEGORY_ADJ> or higher if free RAM/pages reaches the level specified.
Hence, two things are learned here:
- Linux LMK will kill an app category of that particular RAM level or higher if free RAM drops below a certain level e.g.
Hidden_APP has a minfree of 16384 pages. If pages fall below this level, Empty_App will be killed first, free pages is recalculated, then if RAM is still below that, Hidden_Apps will be killed next.
- Dalvik LMK will clear all dalvik caches in RAM of all the App category if free RAM reaches the level e.g.
SECONDARY_SERVER_MEM is 8192 pages. When RAM reaches 8192 pages, all SECONDARY_SERVER caches are cleared.
Best Practices
Now, how do we tweak both so that it is efficient in doing its job, i.e. LMK.
From my experiments I can safely say that:
- Below 60MB free RAM you will feel lag 5-10% of the time.
- Below 52MB free RAM you will feel lag 5-15% of the time.
- Below 46MB free RAM you will feel lag 15-20% of the time.
- Below 42MB free RAM you will feel lag 20-50% of the time.
- Below 36MB free RAM you will feel lag 100% of the time.
The experience of lag increases exponentially from 60 down to 36MB. Hence, the LMK should be tweaked against that.
Also, it is considered best practices to group oom_adj settings of Linux LMK with the Dalvik LMK as when free RAM drops to that level, both the Linux LMK and Dalvik LMK will work together to free up at both sides.
The 6 oom_adj that can be tuned for Linux minfree also need to be tuned correctly, failing this would make the LMK too aggressive/under aggressive in mid levels (even if your EMPTY_APP is aggressive, if your oom_adj is selected incorrectly, you'll get to a point where memory leak occurs).
Talon LMK - This is obsolete, TalonDev is using ThunderBolt! LMK from 0.5.x
Take for example, the Talon default LMK setting where:
LMK_ADJ is 0,1,2,3,7,15.
It's EMPTY_APP is 15
It's HIDDEN_APP is 5
It's HEAVYWEIGHT, SECONDARY and BACKUP is 3
Last three values of MINFREE is 4096, 9216, 12288.
Where's the issue here? If you noticed it congrats.
If you didn't, here's the issue:
The minfree 12288 is tied to EMPTY_APP which has a OOM_ADJ of 15.
The minfree 9216 is tied to nothing but has a OOM_ADJ of 7
The minfree 4096 is tied to HEAVYWEIGHT,SECONDARY and BACKUP with the OOM_ADJ of 3.
The LMK_ADJ is important as it represents the checkpoints where the Linux kernel will check for minfrees and kill them. Here's a situation:
Memory is below 12288 pages, OOM is triggered and Linux looks for EMPTY_APP to kill and kills all of them. Job done. Memory is back to >12288 pages.
After a few days, memory is below 12288 pages again, OOM kills all EMPTY_APP, but free memory is still lower than that. It sees if the next checkpoint is fulfilled, which is 9216 pages, and yes memory is still below 9216 pages. It looks for an OOM_ADJ of 7 and above to kill, but fails to find any as 7 and above OOM_ADJ only consists of EMPTY_APP.
Here comes the quandary. The next checkpoint is 4096. We're not ever going to reach that as you'll need memory to fall below 16MB, and at that time it'll be super sluggish to even support GUI. Hence BAM, memory leak or lag or something.
Supercharger LMK 512HP - Multitasking
Let me just paste this to avoid a lot of retyping
Code:
FOREGROUND_APP_ADJ=0
VISIBLE_APP_ADJ=4
PERCEPTIBLE_APP_ADJ=2
HEAVY_WEIGHT_APP_ADJ=5
SECONDARY_SERVER_ADJ=6
BACKUP_APP_ADJ=7
HOME_APP_ADJ=1
HIDDEN_APP_MIN_ADJ=8
EMPTY_APP_ADJ=15
FOREGROUND_APP_MEM=1536
VISIBLE_APP_MEM=3072
PERCEPTIBLE_APP_MEM=1024
HEAVY_WEIGHT_APP_MEM=10240
SECONDARY_SERVER_MEM=10240
BACKUP_APP_MEM=15360
HOME_APP_MEM=1024
HIDDEN_APP_MEM=15360
EMPTY_APP_MEM=25600
LMK_ADJ="0,4,6,8,14,15"
LMK_MINFREE="1536,3072,10240,15360,20480,25600"
A few things here:
It's EMPTY_APP and HIDDEN_APP is too large, 80 and 100MB respectively, but the 80MB is a false flag hence it doesn't really matter if you tweak that and you can get a very minor degree of multitasking because of this false flag. I'll get to that in a moment.
It's PERCEPTIBLE_APP has higher OOM_ADJ than VISIBLE_APP (odd selection, but RAM rarely goes below 40MB before it starts lagging like hell) People would reboot their phones when it gets to that, but it rarely gets to that for this configuration as LMK is pretty aggressive here.
Now, it's LMK_ADJ is "0,4,6,8,14,15"
15 is EMPTY_APP,
14 is nothing
8 is HIDDEN_APP - it looks like it'll only kill HIDDEN_APPs when it reaches 60MB, with HIDDEN_APPs being the heavy hitter of apps as most apps will end up in this category. Hence why multitasking is still doable (to an extent) but an aggressive LMK means taking a call or switching to a browser will kill your game (losing saves). Inconvenient, but it works for some people who haven't played a long game without saving and never took a call in between. Imagine the horror LOL!
Juwe's RAM Script
Code:
if [ -e /sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/adj ]; then
echo "0,1,2,4,6,15" > /sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/adj
fi
if [ -e /sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/minfree ]; then
echo "2560,4096,5632,10240,11776,14848" > /sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/minfree
fi
No OOM_ADJ are given, hence the stock ones are in effect here.
From init.rc, this is the stock 2.3.5 OOM_ADJ.
FOREGROUND 0
VISIBLE, PERCEPTIBLE 1
HEAVY_WEIGHT, SECONDARY_SERVER, BACKUP 2
HOME 4
HIDDEN_APP 7
EMPTY_APP 15
This one also suffers from the false flag of the 2nd last minfree not being used. It will start killing HIDDEN_APP at 40MB, which is usable (you'll only get lags 15-20% of the time, and most probably after long usage). Other than that, it's pretty stable.
Misc
There are a few known scripts that tweaks the LMK as well as the app priority (yes, the priority of the process categories can be changed too by using setprop.)
Supercharger is one of them:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=991276
Take note that Talon doesn't permit Supercharger to be used (it will override it when booting through boot scripts) as Talon itself uses its own LMK settings that are optimized for ZRAM/Swap.
Kickasskernel script is also included in Supercharger. The script will clash with Zach's script in ThunderBolt! too as both of them tries to set different values for the same settings.
Note that Zach's script doesn't tweak LMK settings as i9000 Talon doesn't permit it. With that, if you're using Zach's scripts, you would need to find other ways of tweaking the LMK. Using Auto Memory Manager is good. You can download Supercharger, look at the presets and apply it using Auto Memory Manager. The preset is the only thing important here
LMK App Category Priorities
Using setprop, there is a way to set the priorities of the category. Since, app categories are different, I can only offer one recommendation: The HOME_APP_ADJ.
This prop setting sets how high of a priority your launcher is. A 1 or 2 is sufficient to make sure your launcher doesn't get killed. However, do you really want it to be on 1 or 2. Based on the previous article (LMK/OOM), you would know that OOM priorities are comparatively based on one another. Setting it 1 or 2 in stock 2.3.5 values would basically override PERCEPTIBLE/VISIBLE app priorities. Do you want your launcher to be killed only after your keyboard/music player to be killed? You decide
Journaling/Barriers
This has been a touchy subject here in XDA for most people who debate about it. Most recently, the SAS/Acid tweaks included a way to disable journaling on these partitions:
/system (System is read only, it's safe to remove journaling. However, you will not see speed increase by removing it as you're not writing onto /system 99.99% of the time unless you're using Titanium backup to remove system apps or copying init.d scripts to it)
/cache (Cache can be rebuilt on the fly. Data corruption on it is not game breaking)
/data (All of your data on your phone is here. Removing journaling can risk data corruption. Read more below)
On whether we need journaling or not, I will pose this situation:
Journaling is required to maintain data consistency in events that could lead to data corruption. Data could get corrupted in a number of situations:
- Misbehaving app that constantly writes without syncing/committing data to the disk
- Power loss due to forced reboots or bootloops when data is partially written/committed into disk
Android will normally buffer its writes before committing to the disk. This way, data stays in the RAM before data would only get written into the disk after a period of time. Take note that we as Android enthusiasts seek ways to better our phone to get the most out of it through experimental and sometimes wacky ways. Take OC/UV for example. When we OCed or UVed too much, sometimes our phone will get deadsleep or constant reboots. This leads to corruption if journaling is not turned on. However, we can get corruption too even with journaling but the risk is smaller.
Mount options too, play a role in whether journaling can be safe/unsafe. Most lagfixes will place a "barrier=1" in the /data to make sure that journals are actually committed before an out-of-order write is done. With that, the risk is greatly reduced at the cost of performance. You could experiment by removing barriers and see if it works for you. No guarantees on data if you remove barriers! More info on ext4/barriers:
http://lwn.net/Articles/283161/
http://kernelnewbies.org/Ext4#head-25c0a1275a571f7332fa196d4437c38e79f39f63
If you do disable journaling, make sure to manually run an fsck on your disk. Make sure the fsck binaries are in your binary paths (echo $PATH to show your binary paths). Don't ask how to do this if you're unable to do fsck. It is your own risk that you are disabling journaling/barriers.
One experiencing I would like to relate is this:
I've personally disabled ext4 journaling on my device. After experiencing a sudden power loss (forced reboot), my apps started FCing left and right and device became unstable that it sometimes rebooted when the device is sleeping. In other words, it's a lost case. Reflashing was the only way to restore my phone. This happened 1 day after disabling my journals.
Also note that ext2 is basically an ext4 without journaling. However, ext4 is updated all the time while ext2 source is not updated for quite some time (2 or 3 years?). Most optimizations are already in ext4 while ext2 even without journaling is slower than ext4 without journaling. A comparison of performance:
No journal:
ext4 > ext2
With Journal:
ext2 (can't do journaling in ext2) > ext4 > ext3
Update: Attached is a JournalingOn.zip for i9000 only that you can flash to rejournal your partitions (Only for i9000 devices!). Also attached is Acid Tweaksv6 - Removed Useless Stuff that will disable journaling only for /system and /cache, if anyone is interested. You will need to rejournal first before unjournaling. To be sure that /system and /cache has no journaling and your mounts are applied correctly, type "mount" without the quotes.
You'll be able to see that /data will have:
Code:
barrier=1, data=ordered
/system and /cache will have:
Code:
barrier=0, data=writeback
To be really sure, you can check by using tune2fs included in both the JournalingOn.zip and Acid Tweaksv6 - Removed Useless Stuff.zip.
Copy the tune2fs to /tmp and set rwxr-xr-x as its permissions using Root Explorer/File Expert
Code:
/tmp/tune2fs -l /dev/block/mmcblk0p2 | grep features
You can substitute the /dev/block/mmcblk0p2 (which is /data) to /dev/block/stl10 (/dbdata) /dev/block/stl9 (/system) /dev/block/stl11 (/cache) to check each partition.
Continued in Post #2 - Lack of space
Still posting ...

Question
I guess this is safe too on a deodexed ROM, too freeze those bloatwares u listed?

Page 2
Undervolting/Overclocking
This is also another touchy subject, but more towards people complaining about phones that get forced reboots or bootloops. OCing is done to get better performance on your android. WARNING: Ocing will cause more wear and tear on your CPU and will reduce your CPU lifetime. How much it will reduce it? No one knows. It depends on how sturdy your CPU is, and that cannot be measured by any means. It could be reducing months out of year e.g. 6months out of 3 years? No one actually knows.
UVing on the other hand reduces battery drain especially when you UV your 100MHz as 90% of the time in normal usage, your CPU will idle at 100MHz. How much can it save? No one actually did a benchmark on it. Save to say, UVing does not harm your CPU, it will actually extend the life of it by reducing wear and tear Oh, bootloops do corrupt data if you're without journaling
Always remember to clear your UV/OC settings before flashing another kernel!
Take note that the ability to OC/UV depend on your phone. Some SGS can UV better or OC better and some might not.
On how to UV:
1. You can UV more on the lower frequencies than the higher frequencies.
2. Do a UV for
100MHz with (950-150=800) - Take note that 950 is the base value for the voltage. Some kernels might have changed this value to 925 or 900. This is why clearing your OC/UV settings is important as the OC/UV settings will only load the voltage difference, which in this case -150. If the base voltage is 900 and you do a -150 for it, you'll end up with 750 which might cause bootloops.
3. Limit the max frequency to 100MHz. WARNING: Doing this will significantly slow down your system to a crawl, but it is still running. This is done only to test the stability of your system. You can skip this if you want, but you would need to find a way to stress test your CPU at the 100MHz value (and other values as well by limiting the max frequency). Failing in testing this will result in deadsleeping (as your phone is in 100MHz when you sleep and if you undervolt too much, you deadsleep)
3. Test with RockPlayer (or MX Video Player) and play an RMVB file using software decoding for 10mins. If your settings is unstable, Android will freeze up and reboot. (this is just an example, but I find that this way stresses the CPU to the max. I fail to find another way of stressing it as even playing NFS is stable on some voltages but fails when I play rockplayer. Hence rockplayer is the best way so far)
4. After doing this, remove the limit and move on with the next few frequencies.
The rest of the voltages, just rinse and repeat.
200MHz with (950-100 = 850)
400MHz with (1050-75 = 975)
800MHz with (1200-25= 1175)
1000MHz with (no change)
You can experiment with lesser values than these if you get freezes/bootloops as this is by no means a one size fits all value. Some might think this UV is overly aggressive or some might think that this UV value is too underwhelming.
Mine if you're interested:
Code:
100MHz = -200 (950 base)
200MHz = -150 (950 base)
400MHz = -125 (1050 base)
800MHz = -75 (1200 base)
1000MHz = -50 (1275 base)
As for OCing, you would do the same to test the stability. Just that you will be enabling a higher clock for your L0 frequency (L0 is the highest frequency). Some kernels might add more frequency states i.e. from the 5 states above to 6. You can try using Tegrak OC app too. It all depends on your own experimentation.
Memory Leaks
If you found out that your Android is laggy after sometime and a reboot will make it faster, then you're experiencing memory leaks. "free" is a command to show your currently free memory. It will not necessarily be the same value as your phone's free memory (as it takes into account swaps and buffers)
1. Go to terminal emulator (or download the script at Post #3)
Code:
su <ENTER>
free <ENTER>
This will show your buffers and free memory.
My example:
Code:
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 348548 340280 8268 0 1320
Swap: 163836 47292 116544
Total: 512384 387572 124812
Then do this:
Code:
sync <ENTER>
echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches <ENTER>
Type:
Code:
free<ENTER>
And you'll realize that the buffers will reduce and free memory will increase, like this example:
Code:
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 348548 305212 43336 0 88
Swap: 163836 46804 117032
Total: 512384 352016 160368
That means it's done.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If this solves the laggginess problem, it's due to vfs_cache_pressure being too low and dirty_ratio being too high. However, in most cases, you don't have to do this as Linux will manage to clear the RAM in a timely manner as long as there are no apps that constantly hold on to the memory (not releasing it). Hence, only do this when necessary (lagginess and such).
With that, I've updated the system_tweak yet again, with this knowledge by making the VM settings more aggressive, which will trigger the memory leak faster. I made this so, as there's a workaround to clear the caches when it gets full.
Having a low vfs_cache_pressure and a high dirty_ratio will save battery and make your device perform faster at the cost of higher RAM usage.
You can actually automate it by using Script Manager by making a script, pasting the instructions and making a widget out of it. To learn more, read the android market description or the in-help guide in the app.
Some commonly asked questions about drop_caches that were answered by me from flolep:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=17727859&postcount=3428
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=17731938&postcount=3446
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=17736421&postcount=3450
Checking for Battery Drain/ Saving battery
Starting from Gingerbread, you can't really look for Partial wakelocks anymore to determine what is draining your battery at night. BetterBatteryStats is a way to check for that. It also can provide the process that drains your battery most of the time.
A high partial wakelock usually says that something is waking up your phone at night. With that, checking partial wakelock, you can see if these are the culprit:
-Network Location
-Location Manager Service
If so, disable Lattitude or any location check-in app that you're using. It's checking you in every few minutes that drains the battery.
Disabling Wifi/3G/HSDPA saves battery too. I find that Wifi/Edge drains the least amount of battery when idling. To switch to EDGE as opposed to HSDPA/3G.
Go to:
Code:
Settings > Wireless > Mobile Networks > Network Mode > GSM Only
Disabling "Use Wireless Networks" in location and security would save a little bit of battery too I guess. It's in:
Code:
Settings > Locations and Security > Use wireless networks
CSC
CSC is a folder that defines your APN settings and country/region specific configurations aside from Language/Time that is configured in build.prop(also for Samsung Apps).
Having to manually set your APN is annoying right?
Your product code being KOR by default is another annoying thing to deal with. How do I resolve this?
1. Get your CSC from your own country here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=948790
2. Extract from the zip file /system/csc/<folder> (where <folder> is your Country's CSC)
3. Use Root Explorer/File Expert to copy it to the phone's /system/csc/.
4. Use nitrality to change your product code. WARNING: This will wipe all your data.
Odexed vs Deodexed
I've been using Deodexed ROMs since I first flash my custom ROMs. One gripe I have is that I seem to have lost the stock smoothness/speed that I experience when I'm using a stock ROM. I found out that deodexing actually extracts the customization files back to the APK (using APK manager) and Odexed files are actually done to optimize the speed of those files itself.
The only reason ROM chefs are using deodexed files is that it is easier to theme. There is no need to decompile the odex files and make the changes as all the theme files are in the APK themselves.
Only other reason that I know of is the overscroll glow. Odexed files can't support it. However, that is a small price to pay for speed/smoothness that I am willing to sacrifice.
Busybox
Busybox is required to perform all of your superuser activities in your android phone. There are some problems associated with this when ROM developers decide to use a certain version of Busybox that are incompatible with the binaries that we use in our phones. When you found out that after changing your kernel/ROM:
- You still have superuser and Titanium Backup still works but,
- Root Explorer/File Expert can't copy files correctly to the /system after mounting rw
- Voltage Control/ Pimp My CPU/ Control Freak/ SetCPU cannot create the Svolt_scheduler file in /etc/init.d
You have a clashing busybox version issue. This can be remedied by:
- Installing the busybox installer from the market
- Installing busybox 1.17.x into /xbin
- Removing all other busybox binaries from your binary path. (This is optional if you found out that after installing busybox, everything works. Try it first before removing) To know your binary path, do an
Code:
echo $PATH
Nandroid Backup
Nandroid Backup is done in recovery (VolumeUp + Home + Power). In recovery, choose Backup And Restore. What it does is it backs up your:
- Boot
- System
- Data
- Cache
When you restore, you should preferably use Advanced restore and restore the /system and /data. All others can be built from scratch (except /boot). If you're converting from CM7 to Samsung Roms, it's best to start from scratch either ways. Restoring nandroid from any is considered dangerous and not supported by most cases. Best is to use Titanium Backup to backup as it can be restored both ways (only restore app though, restore data sometimes can lead to FCs)
Voodoo Color
Voodoo Color is also a point of contention among users. Some like it and some hate it with a passion. If your kernel does support it, here's a way to tweak it:
1. Tweak the color profiles. Can't see a difference, hence I would just pick Voodoo most of the time.
2. Tweak the gamma first to a comfortable value. I.e. drag the 3 sliders together to a comfortable gamma level. After that, try looking in the gradient (the gray slab below the slider) and try to find for neutral gray values. Adjust each slider until you find a neutral gray (i.e. left and right until you see that slab is truly gray)
3. Tweak the RGB multiplier until you have a comfortable level (3 sliders together). Then tweak it the same by referring to the gradient until you're comfortable.
4. Switch off your display for a while and look at your surroundings to reset your eyes. Then turn on your screen again and see if its too green/yellow/blue etc. Adjust the gamma/RGB multiplier until you're satisfied.
This might take a few rounds of testing, but in the end you'll be truly satisfied with it
i9000 Specific
i9000 Kernels - In Depth
You will need to have a stock odexed (why odexed? read a few passages below)ROM with root. You can easily do this by flashing stock XXJVS 2.3.5 and then flashing a custom kernel through Odin like:
- Dark Core - Uses Voodoo initramfs
- CF-root - Uses CF-root initramfs
- Semaphore - Uses CF-root initramfs
- Midnight - Uses Speedmod initramfs
- Galaxian - Uses CF-root initramfs
- Voodoo - Uses Voodoo initramfs
You can flash the custom kernel through Odin by placing the tar file into the PDA section and pressing Start. At this point, do not convert your partitions to ext4 (lagfix) unless you're using a Voodoo based initramfs as Voodoo based initramfs will convert your partitions to ext4 automatically at first boot.
After flashing a custom kernel through Odin, you will gain root. From there, you can choose to use any other custom kernels that use CWM to install or stick with the custom kernel that you've flashed through Odin like:
- TalonDev - Uses Voodoo initramfs
- TalonSH - Uses Voodoo initramfs
There are other kernels as well, but since I did not stress test them, I will not include them here. This thread lists the full repertoire of custom kernels that you can choose from:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1196704
On which custom kernel to pick, you're advised to look at the individual threads original post as well as the last 5 pages of the thread to know about its stability and features. I pick TalonDev myself as it has compache as well as the latest upstream (kernel updates from the Linux OS as well as the official Android Open Source Project/AOSP and optimizations) patches.
At this point, you should decide if you would want to convert to ext4 (lagfix) or not. Your phone by default will reside in an RFS system. The RFS at this point in time is pretty stable and its performance can easily match ext4. Too bad Quadrant scores are bad for RFS, but who cares about Quadrant anyways. I myself choose to use ext4 as the TalonDev kernel has a lot of ext4 upstream patches that optimizes the usage of ext4 on Android.
If you're using Voodoo initramfs, you'll be converted to ext4 automatically.
If you're using CF-root initramfs, you will require the CF-root ext4 app to convert that can be found here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=12651371&postcount=7
Note that on some kernels that use CF-root initramfs, the ext4 app will warn you that you're not on CF-root type kernels. Ignore this warning. You'll be able to convert to ext4 anyways unless you're on Galaxian. Certain Galaxian versions (since the kernels are not versioned, I can't tell which versions are not working) will bar you from converting to ext4 using the ext4 app. If that is the case, just flash CF-root, convert to ext4 and then flash back to Galaxian.
Also not that CF-root based initramfs kernels will remove your bootsounds on first boot. Don't be alarmed by this.
In terms of which lagfix is better (Voodoo vs CF-root lagfix), I can't tell at this point in time. Both are equally good. Since TalonDev uses the Voodoo initramfs, I am inclined to use the same when I am using the same kernel. That should be a good yardstick to follow.
BIGMEM/ Non-BIGMEM:
Some kernel developers released BIGMEM versions of their kernel:
-TalonDev BIGMEM
-TalonSH BIGMEM
-Semaphore bm version
The only difference a bigmem kernel can bring is more memory at the expense of 720p video recording. Playing a 720p video is still possible. Recording it is not on a bigmem kernel. Bigmem kernels normally have 13MB more than their non-bigmem counterparts. How this 13MB could affect you? It depends on the apps you use and how aggressive your LowMemoryKiller is.
XXJVT System apps
System apps can be frozen/removed to make your system faster/less battery draining.
In order to remove/freeze system apps, you would need Titanium Backup (Pro) or System Tuner.
The choice whether we want to remove or freeze the system apps should now be decided. Titanium Backup Pro and System Tuner uses a built in Android mechanism to freeze your system apps - PM disable. PM disable will actually disable the app from the system itself. It will not drain the battery or even launch itself. It is a safer way so to speak. Removing will physically delete the APK app from the system freeing up disk space. If you decide to remove, make sure to have a backup before proceeding. Even if you have a backup, restoring from Titanium Backup may sometime fail. Hence, do this only if you're sure you want to remove that certain app. Freezing an app will make it easier to defrost without any consequences.
Here are the apps that I disabled:
Code:
AngryGPS > Used to manually configure GPS. Not needed if GPS works OK.
BluetoothTest
Buddies Now
lcdtest
screencapture > Screen capture app
Daily Briefing
Days
EncryptApp
Factory Test
Gallery -> I use QuickPic as a replacement. It's faster than Gallery.
Google Partner Setup
Google Search > Google search widget
Home screen tips
HTML Viewer
Market Feedback Agent
Market Updater > I froze this to avoid being updated to Market 3.0. It currently sucks now
Mobile tracker > Mobile tracker, only if you use it, then keep it
Mobile tracker settings > Mobile tracker, only if you use it, then keep it
Perso
PhoneSetupWizard > Required if you're first booting/installing the ROM, not needed afterwards
PopupuiReceiver
Press Reader
Print via Bluetooth
RoseEuKor
Samsung Account
Samsung Keypad -> I use Swype beta instead
Self Test Mode
Service mode
SimDetachNotifier > Will notify you if you detached your sim card. Seems pointless
SNS > Only necessary to sync your contacts if you're using Social hub to do so or syncing calendar from Facebook
SNSAccount > Same as above
Social Hub
Software Update
Synchronise
TwLauncher -> Using Go Launcher Ex instead
wipeoutreceiver > Wipe if phone is stolen. Not needed if you don't use the Samsung service
WlanTest
wssyncmlnps
There are others that you can remove as well. I'm hoping to gather feedback on the other APKs that can be removed and what will be affected by its removal. Please post if you have more information
Disabling Lagfix
Most ROMs would advice you to disable lagfix before flashing a new ROM. Although this is not necessary in most cases (as all Gingerbread kernels support ext4 from the get-go) moving from one kernel to another might need it (to optimize the initramfs it is used on). Hence if you're swapping from one kernel (that has a different initramfs) to another. It is adviseable to undo the lagfix.
CF's lagfix can be undone by using the ext4 app.
Voodoo lagfix can be undone by using the Voodoo Control App.
Speedmod lagfix can be undone by using it's recovery.
Odexed ROM
You might say, hey if I'm using stock, I'll be missing extended power menu, battery percentage and all other theme mods that are not in the stock ROM. Fear not, you can get all these back including Gtalk2, CRT screen off etc here:
$omator's stock+
Gtalk2
There are odexed themes too, in which the developers would decompile the odex files into APKs, make the changes then compile the APKs into odex files again. It is more tedious than deodexed themes but odexing generally makes the phone smoother
You can find the themes here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=666
WIFI Issue on JVR/JVS/JVT
You might be facing some wifi connectivity issues on JVR/JVS/JVT ROMs i.e. it disconnects every few seconds.
This is due to some changes in the ROM that doesn't permit a "Forever" lease time from your modem. Change your lease time to an hour (or two) or if you don't have that option, remove your address reservation option from your modem (Yes, it's a modem only tweak, nothing you can do on your phone)
Memory Freak
Memory Freak is an app in TalonDev that tweaks the ZRAM/Swap and LMK settings. There's a golden rule to the ZRAM/Swap that is:
Swapping to and from the ZRAM will be slower if the amount of ZRAM is more than 50% of the total usable memory, . Hence, I set mine to 160MB (from the 340 total usable RAM). Swappiness in most Linux machines is 60. This means, the system will be inclined to swap in/out more than just using the RAM. I set mine to 50 as a personal preference so that there would be 50% chance that the system will use swap or RAM.
HiddenApp is the amount of free memory to be when LMK starts looking for hiddenapps to kill. I set mine to 52 for my multitasking preference. Experiment with it to see how much multitasking vs smoothness you're looking for. My preference will change in time. Check my signature for the most updated ones.
WIP:
This is obviously a work in progress article that will undergo changes as the Android scene improves. I will spend time to make edits and additions to the post whenever I see fit. Sometimes I will post changelogs at the end of the thread, sometimes I won't if I only make minor edits. Just be sure to check back often to see any new tips offered
Credits:
I claim no credit on these findings except for the ones that I've researched on my own. However, all of it is not of original work since I form my own opinions after reading a lot. I also don't claim that the settings I posted are the most optimal there is. It might not even work well for most of you guys. The key here is tweaking it to your own perfection as there is no setting that will cater to everyone's needs. Hence the real people who deserve credits are:
* All the devs' kernel/apps that I posted here
* XDA forum
* Google
Attention!
If you're looking for scripts, here it is:
[CWM][SCRIPTS][TWEAKS] Thunderbolt!
Script Reviews are here:
Script Reviews
GUIDE UPDATES
UPDATE 1/10/12
* Edited some sections with some new knowledge that I have. A few places, can't name them all Check them out and see if you can spot them.
UPDATE 10/19/11
* Moved around some guides and grouped them together
* Updated some guides to make them more Android centric (as opposed to i9000 centric)
UPDATE 10/18/2011 - Added an indepth article about LMK/OOM. CTRL-F for LMK.
UPDATE 10/12/2011
* Added some comments on the apps removed/frozen so that you can make an informed choice of why the apps can be removed/frozen.
* Added my analysis of most schedulers that I know of and why they are good/bad.
* Moved the scripts to ThunderBolt!: LINK
* Added a guide on the wifi issue for JVR/JVS/JVT
UPDATE 10/1/2011 - Moved the script reviews to this post LINK
UPDATE 9/23/2011:
* Removed the JournalingOn.zip and Acid Tweaksv6 - Removed Useless Stuff.zip because people might use it for devices other than the i9000. This is because in other devices such as SGS4G, the /dev/block/stl10 is /data while in i9000 it's /dbdata. The JournalingOn.zip will not enable journaling on /dbdata without some editing. Hence, I removed it as I don't have a time to put up a warning or notice, and didn't have time to edit the script inside the zip file.
* Readded an edited JournalingOn.zip and readded the Acid Tweaksv6 - Removed Useless Stuff.zip (did not change) to the first post. Only for i9000 devices!!
* Added another way to check if you're journaled or unjournaled. Check the guide below.
* Added some more explanation on common scripts I found.
* Moved the guides around due to lack of space. I added some minor changes to most of the guides. See if you can detect them

Helpful!
pikachu01 said:
Yes it is safe to remove for a deodexed ROM too
My point of stating odexed is that my tweaks can be used from the stock odexed ROM itself
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
oh ok, now I understand, thanks for this thread, very helpful indeed .

Awesome post thanks!
Not only for the tips but for teaching me a lot too!
Sent From My Android Shizzle!

thx dude!! awesomely useful!!

Great information thanks
Can you please include GPS tweaks as well?

awesomeandroid said:
oh ok, now I understand, thanks for this thread, very helpful indeed .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for reading it.
SkinBobUk said:
Awesome post thanks!
Not only for the tips but for teaching me a lot too!
Sent From My Android Shizzle!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It was my hope that it will give knowledge so that people could pass it on to more people
midikarma said:
thx dude!! awesomely useful!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you
ajazz said:
Great information thanks
Can you please include GPS tweaks as well?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for reading it What kind of GPS tweaks? There are a few notable ones. The most useful ones are disabling AGPS as well as updating the gps.conf. Do you mean that?

Oh man... Thx for your work... This thread is very useful.
I take my hat off.
Sent from nobody knows where

Wonderful job, pikachu01! A new user will need weeks, maybe months to gather all the bits of info you put here, served on a silver platter! Thank you veeeery much.
Mods, this should be stickied!

demonstone said:
Oh man... Thx for your work... This thread is very useful.
I take my hat off.
Sent from nobody knows where
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you
ZioGTS said:
Wonderful job, pikachu01! A new user will need weeks, maybe months to gather all the bits of info you put here, served on a silver platter! Thank you veeeery much.
Mods, this should be stickied!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you Zio I forgot to add a few more posts to reserve. I guess I will add links if I do have any other things to add

Indeed lots of good info here for people just starting out, and some for people like me who've been around the block once or twice too!
I figured out how to do the CSC change myself, I just put the BMC folder from stock ROM into /system/csc and used one off the CSC selector apps from the market. Is this much different from the instructions here?
Since this has brought up the topic of freezing apps I will ask a question here if I may: Is there a way to keep apps from starting services, without getting rid of them? For example I use Skype and Facebook but I don't want their services running all of the time sucking up memory. Also I notice now that I game I installed recently (E Warriors) is running a service! WTF this is out of control. Any ideas?

haloimplant said:
Indeed lots of good info here for people just starting out, and some for people like me who've been around the block once or twice too!
I figured out how to do the CSC change myself, I just put the BMC folder from stock ROM into /system/csc and used one off the CSC selector apps from the market. Is this much different from the instructions here?
Since this has brought up the topic of freezing apps I will ask a question here if I may: Is there a way to keep apps from starting services, without getting rid of them? For example I use Skype and Facebook but I don't want their services running all of the time sucking up memory. Also I notice now that I game I installed recently (E Warriors) is running a service! WTF this is out of control. Any ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, the CSC instruction does the same thing. I'm just a bit thorough sometimes
You could use System Tuner or Titanium Backup Pro to freeze the app and then unfreeze it when you want to use it. Freezing is actually just doing a PM disable. PM disable basically makes Android think that the app is gone when it's actually still there. Unfreezing an app is basically just 1 click, hence its hassle free.

ZioGTS said:
Wonderful job, pikachu01!
Mods, this should be stickied!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed +1
Excellent & informative

Awsome post pika.. Great work.. thx

Very nice tutorial. Should be pinned

Sticky please (with sgs chlorine).
Great work, much appreciated.
Sent from my Galaxy S using XDA Premium App

pikachu01 said:
Thank you for reading it.
It was my hope that it will give knowledge so that people could pass it on to more people
Thank you
Thank you for reading it What kind of GPS tweaks? There are a few notable ones. The most useful ones are disabling AGPS as well as updating the gps.conf. Do you mean that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have tried lot of Roms and none gave me satisfactory GPS performance except InnOvaTioN v2 by bezke,this Rom gave me almost instantaneous gps lock , when under partial cover it took a minute or so !
Then i moved on to v3 and was back to square one!
unfortunately v2 is no longer available for download.
I have tried Faster Fix, Gps Aids, tried changing setting through sgs tools but no go.
even tried different modems.

ajazz said:
I have tried lot of Roms and none gave me satisfactory GPS performance except InnOvaTioN v2 by bezke,this Rom gave me almost instantaneous gps lock , when under partial cover it took a minute or so !
Then i moved on to v3 and was back to square one!
unfortunately v2 is no longer available for download.
I have tried Faster Fix, Gps Aids, tried changing setting through sgs tools but no go.
even tried different modems.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well, then open a thread on general, Q&A, etc.
and let someone upload it
hopefully there are still copys of it out there
so there's a way to analyze and understand what was done to get those great results
@pikachu01:
great work on collecting all of this information & putting it in a central place !
*subscribes*
+1 for sticky

Very nice guide. It'll be very helpful for begginers. +1 for the idea to stick it

[DEV][KERNEL] Tegra3 power management notes and tricks

This thread contains findings on how to view and set kernel parameters related to power management. Although there is no kernel source for One X, some information can be obtained from Transformer Prime kernel sources (also a Tegra 3 device), and from the device itself via sysfs interface.
sysfs files related to CPU power management:
/sys/kernel/debug/tegra_hotplug/max_cpus - maximum CPUs to use. User-configurable, default 4. This is not touched by the Android OS, and will remain in whatever state we set until reboot.
Set this to "1" to make the phone a lot less power-hungry and overheating.
At the cost of performance, of course.
*NOTE: second core will activate sometimes if this is set to "1", but 3rd and 4th cores are disabled for sure.
/sys/kernel/debug/tegra_hotplug/min_cpus - minimum number of CPUs to use.
This _is_ touched by the OS, and can not be set reliably.
/sys/kernel/debug/tegra_hotplug/stats - time each core spent active. Including 5-th "low-power" core.
e.g.:
Code:
cpu: G0 G1 G2 G3 LP
transitions: 26 12 0 0 25
time plugged: 3110 1222 0 0 95122
time-stamp: 4296183486
/sys/kernel/debug/cpuidle/lp2 - another stats interface.
/sys/module/cpu_tegra/parameters/cpu_user_cap - Max frequency cap for all cores. Default 1500000 (1.5GHz), can be set to any lower value to underclock.
But it is often set by the OS different values (most frequently, back to it's maximum). Maybe, changing this string in libhtc-opt2.so via hex editor can prevent system from changing it?
/sys/kernel/cluster/active - currently active CPU cluster. "LP" for low-power core, "G" for generic (normal) cores.
Can be changed manually, but is also modified by the system at will.
All above values can be changed from root shell via "echo 'value' > /sys/path/to/file"
Maybe, this will come handy to some ROM or CPU-monitoring app developers.
References:
Asus Transformer kernel source
[DEV] Enable 2D GPU rendering in HTC One X & about build.prop tweaks
some findings by phirenz

is there any way to request more use of the companion core?

In case anyone's wondering, I just found out that /sys/kernel/cluster/active must be opened as root even for reading; opening the file as any other user will not succeed.
The other files seem to allow reading as a standard user, however.

It woulod be great is someone created an app for setting number of CPUs. It is useful sometimes to set it to 1 when you are traveling and want to get max possible battery.
It would be even better if it was possible to disable all 4 cores and force system to use LP core only. It would be brilliant max power saving mode.

I've modified OS Monitor to support Tegra 3's stuff (temperature, number of cores and determining whether it is low power/general CPU in use) and my experience is that there's no or very little battery gains to be had because the other 3 cores are off most of the time anyway (when idle)
I'm using stock 1.28. The low power core doesn't seem to like being activated for more than a few seconds at a time, too.

I've modified OS Monitor to support Tegra 3's stuff
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can u share the apk here...xD???

thanks to the OP.....I don't have a One X but this info helped me to force all 4 cores of my Asus TF300T go online and offline as i wish.

schriss said:
It woulod be great is someone created an app for setting number of CPUs. It is useful sometimes to set it to 1 when you are traveling and want to get max possible battery.
It would be even better if it was possible to disable all 4 cores and force system to use LP core only. It would be brilliant max power saving mode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
use core control or francos kernel updater works for every custom kernel also stock kernel and you can choose how many cores...but battery life is not better with deactivated cores and soemetimes even worser -.-

I used to be able to do this, but now I'm using n3o kernel and I can't find the tegra_hotplug folder inside sys/kernel/debug. Help?

joeystar said:
I used to be able to do this, but now I'm using n3o kernel and I can't find the tegra_hotplug folder inside sys/kernel/debug. Help?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Man ask this in kernel thread not here....-.-
Sent from my HTC One X using xda app-developers app

Leankernel: ( JB4.2 - 7.1, JB4.3 - 8.3 - , KK 9.0 beta 11/25)

Ok guys i have got permission to bring over lean kernel and offer support for it on xda. I will keep this post up todate with all the most recent kernel updates and news. All credit goes to imoseyon as the original op and rootzwiki for original posting. I am posting this with full permission and support from imoseyon
Mod Type:: Kernel
Difficulty:: Very Easy
Mod Status:: Stable
Apply In:: CWM Recovery
Requires Root:: Yes
Exp builds are also up and includes a bunch of Android/OMAP updates not in stable.
SOURCE:
ICS
JB
This is a minimalistic Galaxy Nexus kernel. My philosophy is to keep the kernel as lean and stable as possible, at the same time to keep the kernel as modern and close to latest mainstream linux as possible. You will see that my kernels will lack some of the bells and whistles from other kernels.
sorry host4droid is still down. Mirrors:
kk4.4 LK 9.0 beta (use at ur own risk)
JB4.3 [ stable builds | exp builds ] [ change log | exp changes ]
JB4.2:Stable
Stock JRN84D kernel
Terminal Emulator not finding scripts? Read this post.
CHANGE LOG JB 4.2
FEATURES
Patched to latest in Linux 3.0.x branch.
All unnecessary kernel components removed to make kernel lean and fast!
OC to 1.65ghz. Boot speed is maxed at 1.2ghz within kernel (in addition to ramdisk) for stability.
User voltage control
InteractiveX V2 (screen-off hotplug of cpu1) added. Select it using setcpu if you want to use it.
Ramdisk tweaks (sysctl, vm, filesystem speed, etc.)
SWAP & zram (next generation compcache) support. Run "zram enable" in terminal.
init.d support in ramdisk.
lk.conf for basic kernel configuration.
HotplugX governor (Hotplug optimized and modified for screen-off suspend).
wakelock tweaks for wlan and lte modem
lkflash - script to flash latest versions of leanKernel from Terminal (type "su" without quotes, hit enter, then type "lkflash" without quotes and then hit enter)
checkv - voltage checking script (for custom undervolting) - detailed at bottom of this post.
checkt - script that displays 1) your current temp, 2) # of times you were throttled due to temp "recently", 3) CPU trim type, and 4) CPU silicon type, etc.
Fast USB charge (by chad0982) and "ffc" toggle script by me. (Open terminal, and type "ffc" without quotes then enter)
ColorControl from both CM9 and Ezekeel (compatible with all ROMs). Helpful posts: 1and 2.
TempControl - sysfs interface to control the CPU temp threshold. Read these two posts: 1 and 2.
Variable GPU OC - sysfs interface to select GPU max speed between 307MHz (stock), 384MHz and 512Mhz. The changes take effect immediately. Check FAQ for more info and how to use it.
Custom SR Tuning - override kernel default minimum voltage for SR calibration.
SoundControl
Gamma Control
ROW scheduler v4
DIRECTIONS
Uh.... flash the zip in clockworkmod.
Thanks to forum member maddler for providing file hosting
FAQ
How do i change voltage? - Use the latest version of setcpu, leantweaks, cputuner, or your ROM's built-in tools.
Do i need to wipe dalvik/cache? - in general there's no need, but it doesn't hurt so if you have time go ahead. Posted Image I don't wipe.
​Can we OC higher or add more frequency slots? - You can find the extra slots in my experimental versions.
​Will this work on GSM gnexus as well? - It should. I don't have a GSM phone to test so let me know if it stops working.
What is interactiveX V2? Read this post and thttp://rootzwiki.com/topic/13092-kernel-leankernel-minimalistic-kernel-120-123111/page__view__findpost__p__342571
Are you getting Screen-Off/Sleep-Of Death (SOD), general instability, or unusual battery drain?
Before you post here (especially if you're running the experimental version), try the following steps in order:
0) dude, disable screen-off profiles if you're running interactiveX.
1) If you're running the experimental version, do you have 180mhz/230mhz and/or 1.42ghz slots enabled? If so disable them both!
2) If the above doesn't help, do you have custom undervolting enabled? If so disable it! (keep in mind that the kernel is already undervolted by default).
3) If the above doesn't help, are you using interactiveX or hotplug governors? If so change to interactive.
4) If the above doesn't help then you should not be running the experimental version. Install the stable version and try both interactiveX and interactive without custom undervolting.
If you're still getting SOD with stable/interactive, report it here.
What about call-recording? - First the app needs to support Galaxy Nexus. Find out if it does and then find out from the author of the app what kernel changes are required and let me know.
Should i set up screen-off profile? - ICS kernels have built-in screen-off profile for all governors at 700mhz. So you don't need it unless you want to set it lower than 700mhz. In general there isn't a whole lot to gain by setting it lower.
Hotplug vs interactiveX? - Read this post. HotplugX vs interactiveX
What is zram and why do i need it?
zram basically takes a portion of your RAM (10% using my script) and turns it into a compressed swap device. So in layman's terms you're extending the size of your memory (potentially from ~700mb to close to 1000mb depending on the compression ratio).
To answer the 2nd question, no you don't really need it but if used properly (using custom LK zram script) it could help you in two different ways:
1) Android OS is based on Linux OS and the OS will try to use a growing portion of your RAM for file and inode caches and if you keep your phone up without rebooting after a while you may notice things getting a little sluggish. That's because the OS is not doing a good job in dropping the caches and freeing up memory for the apps.
2) more RAM and tweaked minfree (also handled by custom LK script) could potentially allow your apps to stay in memory longer (this may or may not be desirable based on your preference of course).
In conclusion, I'd say if you're curious it doesn't hurt to try. To revert, just type "zram disable".
What's the low-down on the GPU OC?
My kernel's GPU is now set to stock 307Mhz by default. You can adjust that by using Variable GPU OC (see a separate FAQ entry below).
When you go from say 307 to 512Mhz, you will not experience near double performance increase. Due to the factors outside the GPU module (ie. memory bandwidth limitation), you can't truly OC the GPU. In fact, most people can't tell the difference between 307, 384 and 512. Nenamark2 will roughly give you the following scores: 307/25fps, 384/28fps, and 512/31fps.
Some of you have seen the note from Colin, the Google kernel engineer, not to OC the GPU because using the OV_UV voltage slot will drain the battery. My kernel uses the same voltage for both OV and OV_UV slots. So there's no danger of battery drain there.
Why are the IO benchmark test scores lower than another kernel?
Some of the kernels out there have fsync disabled to increase benchmark scores. I believe that is unsafe and could cause data corruption. I do have hooks in my kernel to disable it but I don't use it.
In real world there will not be any user perceivable difference whether you have fsync enabled or disabled.
Is there a way to tune hotplug via sysfs?
yes. Advanced users only!
My phone doesn't seem to be deep-sleeping, what gives?
(assuming you checked in the right place like cpuspy) In terms of deep-sleep, there's not a whole lot going on in the kernel. It works or it doesn't - and I can assure you that I test every release (well almost every release) for deep-sleep before I release.
19 out of 20 times it's either 1) some sort of background process that's preventing your phone from going into deepsleep, or 2) something's misconfigured in your ROM, or both. Also connecting to USB will prevent phone from going into deepsleep.
I'm having unusual battery drain - help!
First of all, our gnex has very poor battery life while in active use. It's downright horrible while screen is on - screen is definitely the main culprit and there's not a whole lot I can do about that.
Custom undervolting can help or can hurt. This is mainly due to SmartReflex (class1.5) which auto-calibrates the ideal voltages for you. In fact, with SR you don't really need to use the custom undervolting feature for frequencies other than the 2 lowest. It does a great job calibrating higher frequencies. I personally don't touch it.
The "notrim" versions are an exception because I had to disable SR1.5 for the trim override to work. There's no auto-calibration going on there. Feel free to mess with custom undervolting on the notrim versions.
Now, if you've already accepted the horrible battery life while screen is on, but have questions about battery drain while idle - read the next question.
I'm having unusual battery drain while screen is off, or phone is sleeping - help!
First, let's find out if you're phone is going into deep-sleep. Install CPUSpy, unplug phone, turn off screen, and leave the phone alone for 5-10min. Turn the screen back on, launch CPUSpy, and see if you see an active entry for Deep Sleep. If so congratulations - read on.
If you've determined that your phone is not entering deepsleep by using the above method, read my entry above that says "My phone doesn't seem to be deep-sleeping". I've heard that removing SDM.apk helps as well as rebooting the phone. Also try turning your bluetooth on and off, and launching camera app and closing it.
If you've determined that your phone is entering deepsleep fine but still feel like battery drains, read the next question.
I'm having unusual battery drain while phone is in deep-sleep - help!
First make sure you are absolutely positive that deep sleep is working (read the previous question).
While on my kernel *and* connected to Wifi, you shouldn't drain more than 1% battery per hour *average* while in deep sleep (based on 5-8 hour continuous deep sleep). With wifi turned-off, my guess is probably no more than 1-3% per hour, depending on signal strength.
tip 1: If above is not happening for you, first charge the phone all the way and reboot. Let things settle a bit - give it a day or so. If you're using Battery Monitor Widget (which is not accurate for gnex), things should eventually settle between -2mA and -60mA per sample.
tip 2: Install BetterBatteryStats and look at which wakelocks dominate. Google search for names of the wakelocks to see how you can fix them.
tip 3: http://checkthis.com/d87t
If nothing seems to help, you can try the "notrim" version, but stick to speeds between 350 and 1350 (don't use OC slots). The notrim version has SR1.5 disabled which could help for those of you with drain issues on my other kernels.
What is tempcontrol and how do I use it?
First, read these two posts: 1 and 2.
Although tempcontrol was designed to be used with the experimental notrim builds because the cpu gets hotter in notrim frequencies, you can actually use tempcontrol to throttle lower frequencies. I haven't tried myself, but theoretically you can set your top speed at say 1.2Ghz and use tempcontrol to throttle at say 60C (instead of the stock value of 63C) resulting in slightly cooler phone. Theoretically.
What is SmartReflex?
SmartReflex performs continuous dynamic voltage scaling around the nominal operating point voltage according to silicon characteristics and operating conditions.
My stable and experimental builds will have SR Class 1.5 enabled by default.
You can disable SR via sysfs
How do I use Variable GPU OC?
You can use Lean Tweaks by Jake, or use the built-in "oc" script. Both leantweaks and my oc script will create an init.d script so the setting sticks at boot. My "checkt" script will also show the current GPU max speed. Note that 512MHz will probably not work for everyone.
307Mhz (stock) is set default by the kernel.
Open Terminal, and type for stock speed of 307Mhz: oc gpu 0
for 384MHz: oc gpu 1
for 512Mhz: oc gpu 2
What are the available sysfs options?
Check this post (thx byrong)
Which governor should I use on JB?
As usual I'd recommend trying all the governors and see which one works best for you. Stock JB, however, is optimized for interactive. The OS will automatically modify various interactive governor parameters on the fly while you're using the phone as part of "project butter". Namely, the following parameters are constantly adjusted by the OS: boostpulse, timer_rate, min_sample_time, hispeed_freq, go_hispeed_load, and above_hispeed_delay.
I hope this helps people if there is any other information you might want added just ask and i will do my best to come up with a comprehensive guide.
Donate to your favorite charity, or donate to imoseyon.

Did you ask Imoseyon before you posted this?

Thanks for bringing the thread over to XDA. Hopefully you got the necessary permissions, for the sake a peaceful thread. Its good to have most developments of the GNEX here and I finger tip away.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

I've heard a lot about this kernel!

yes this is with his permisson

ajf64 said:
No i didn't ask him but i did put all due credits in it and it is in every other gnex forum but the sprint one all brought over by other people so if he has a problem with this he can feel free to pm me and i will get it removed i just figured it give us some easier access to his great kernel. In no way am i claiming this to be my work all support should be directed at the original thread op. I was just trying to make access to his kernel a bit easier for all xda users
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's all hunky dory but just doing things without asking the developer is just not right. Regardless if he has an issue or not. Its like you make something you work diligently on and then somebody just posts it somewhere else.
I dunno maybe its just me but its just common courtesy.
Sent From My Toro+ via SkyBlue Tapatalk

Thanks op.
#inb4close
#ReOpened
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

all fixed

ajf64 said:
well then sorry for posting it will a mod please delete this thread before it becomes a flame pit
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Doesnt need to be deleted.. if just ask him if its alright.. thats fine enough

ÜBER™ said:
Doesnt need to be deleted.. if just ask him if its alright.. thats fine enough
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why do you always ruin the flaming? With your...good nature...and your rap music.

Thanks for linking. You can still ask dev for permission but I get what you're trying to do. I prefer xda since this is where I have gotten help with every phone since my nexus 1.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA Premium HD app

Well i have gotten permission to post this from imoseyon and to keep this thread updated on xda sprint forums for him so it looks like we are all set he got back to me alot faster then i thought he would so every thing should be all good guys
and yes jayare313 i am so used to finding every thing i need on xda some times it s a pain having to check 3 or 4 sites to see if any of your mods for your rom are updated

Sorry. 3 issues here:
1) I need to verify permission from the developer and he needs to verify that he is going to support it here. If someone downloads it, flashes it, and somethings wrong.......who is going to give answers and support it? We have an active community who can help, sure, but the developer has to actively support it here. If he were ready to give support here, he would have posted it here already. And even then it would have to go in general unless he started the thread.
2) There is no source provided in the OP. Kernels must be GPL compliant and listed in the OP.
3) If you did not create it, do not post it in the development section.

Alrighty. Everything should be good now. I'll be keeping an eye out.
OP will be updated soon, with source and I've spoken to the developer.
Thank you guys.
---Jay--- From the GNex

Well, I will say I like having this thread here. So thanks to the op.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

I will be updating the thread when i get home today and be offering any support you guys may need for this kernel

MichaelMcEntire said:
Well, I will say I like having this thread here. So thanks to the op.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I totally agree. Thanks to OP for the thread and imoseyon for the kernel
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

Np guys any time and if there is any thing i can help with just ask i plan to provide full support for this kernel. Also if there are things you wish to have added feel free to post them as well i have permission to compile my own versions of lean kernel with cherry picked features from his repository and to add features to it. I look forward to your feedback.

is 4.2 jb cm10 compatible

twoeleven99 said:
is 4.2 jb cm10 compatible
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda app-developers app

[KERNEL][AOSP4.4/5.1/6.0/7.1] dkp - d2att - 2/4/18

Welcome to decimalman's kernel playground!​
As the name suggests, dkp is a hodgepodge of features and tweaks that I wanted to play with. It should get excellent battery life without feeling sluggish. It doesn't come with its own tuner app, so pick your favorite. Personally, I like Trickster MOD and Kernel Adiutor, so I go out of my way to make things work in them. Most other apps should work, too.
Features:
Overclocking up to 2.1 GHz, but you'll need to increase your voltages to get there (if you can get there at all)
Underclocking down to 54 MHz, with stability improvements
Undervolting compatible with most apps
Fast charge without unplugging first
Glorious animations for the notification and softkey LEDs
Well-integrated erandom means you don't need CrossBreeder or Seeder (recent AOSP builds use ISAAC instead)
freelunch and tierservative governors for optimal battery life without sacrificing responsiveness
Automatic mpdecision and auto-hotplug are only enabled when needed
Adjustable minimum voltage for stability on finicky processors
Optimized UKSM to free up some extra memory
Code optimizations for size and speed
Compiler optimizations (-O3, LTO, and more) because faster is better
Donors: Thanks, everyone! Your generosity is much appreciated. :good:
drpenguino, 0xScott, vmancini3 (twice! :good, Ch4m3l30n, rompnit, Mystique, ryandubbz, techdog, ElwOOd_CbGp, ScOULaris, ZipAddict
Remember:
Nandroid!
last_kmsg and/or logcat or it didn't happen.
Other kernels have their own threads or forums. Discuss them there.
Image dumps (settings, battery life, whatever) belong inside [HIDE][/HIDE] (that's HIDE, if you're on the mobile app) tags.
Be silly. We're here to have fun.
Installation:
Reboot to recovery. I recommend that one recovery...you know, the one that flashes zips? I forget what it's called.
Flash dkp. Optionally, rename and flash dkp-vmin-XXX.zip (see below).
Reboot.
Undervolting:
Undervolting on dkp is more complex than other kernels. Some processors get unstable at lower voltages, so (like the stock kernel) dkp keeps the processor voltage above 1150 mV by default. I refer to this limit as the minimum voltage. In order to undervolt, you'll need to lower the minimum voltage: if you use Trickster MOD or Kernel Adiutor, just disable "Override Minimum Voltage", otherwise rename dkp-vmin-XXX.zip to e.g. dkp-vmin-600.zip (which would apply a 600 mV minimum voltage) and flash it. If this causes instability (crashes, audio/video glitches, etc.), try using dkp-vmin-XXX.zip to apply a higher minimum voltage (somewhere between 950 and 1050 mV seems to work well for most people).
Downloads:
MediaFire:
All Downloads
dkp-vmin-XXX.zip
Solidfiles (Make sure you have an adblocker!):
All Downloads
dkp-vmin-XXX.zip
Source: I'm always happy to see my code used, so cherry-pick away. I'll even put together feature patches if you ask nicely.

Bugs:
Let me know.
Stable changelog:
3/3/13: Initial release for d2spr. Didn't get around to making threads for other carriers.
4/8/13 (3.0):
FauxSound support
Strip more useless stuff
A few bonus optimizations
4/8/13 (3.4):
Port everything except erandom from 3.0
Enhance cpufreq for easier configuration
4/24/13 (3.4):
Bugfixes: better support for tuner apps, fixed potential SOD bugs, automatic mpdecision fixups, etc.
Lots of CM/CAF/Linux updates
Working AssWax governor
Trinity colors support
sio, zen I/O schedulers
erandom is back!
Built with a super-fancy Linaro GCC 4.8.1-dev compiler toolchain for maximum -O3 goodness
Probably lots more, but there's hundreds of commits to sort through...
5/29/13 (3.4):
Bugfixes: better overclocking support, better hwrng support, etc.
Updates: new CM updates, Linux 3.4.47, updated FauxSound driver, added invisiblek's new panel colors interface
Automatic auto-hotplug
New optimizations, including link-time optimization and an updated GNU+Linaro GCC 4.8.1-dev toolchain
6/14/13 (3.4):
Bugfixes: fix several critical bugs in the 5/29 release.
9/7/13 (3.4):
Fixes for OC, UV, auto-hotplug.
A few new optimizations.
Synced up with CM.
9/20/13 (TW):
Ported everything from AOSP to TW.
9/20/13 (4.3):
Merged 4.3 from CM into the existing 4.2 code.
Current experimental branches:
Nothing interesting at the moment.

Goodies:
dkp doesn't come with its own splash screen. However, the dkp installer (i.e. the install zip) is smarter than you think, and can apply a custom splash screen for you. Here's how:
Create a folder on your internal storage named "dkp"
Copy a PNG image into the directory, and rename it "splash.png". Alternatively, copy an RLE image (i.e. from a flashable custom splash screen zip) and rename it "splash.rle". Ideally, the image should be roughly 1280x720 to begin with, since it won't be resized.
The image will be used as your splash screen whenever you flash dkp. Reflash to apply initially.
mikedavis120 has put together a how-to video that covers tweaking dkp for optimal battery life. If you're new to dkp, take a look! He also put together a zipped collection of apps that will come in handy while tuning dkp. It also includes a flashable zip, "dkp-debug_v1.zip". After flashing it, running
Code:
su
dkp
from a terminal emulator will collect lots of useful debug information that will make it much easier for me to track down the issue you're having. :good: mikedavis120 recommends installing SuperSU (included in the zip) instead of what's included in you ROM.
sysfs:
It's possible to adjust all the settings available in dkp without using apps. Because they show up as files, settings can be adjusted with file managers, terminal emulators, adb and initscripts. Here's the most interesting files inside sysfs:
/sys/devices/platform/mipi_samsung_oled.513/lcd/panel/panel_colors (not available on newer AOSP builds): display tint (0 = very red, 2 = default, 4 = trinity colors)
/sys/class/misc/gammacontrol (only available on newer AOSP builds): various color controls. See this post for details on enabling Trinity colors on builds that use these controls.
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu<N>/cpufreq/UV_mV_table: voltage table
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu<N>/cpufreq/scaling_...: scaling_governor is the governor, scaling_min_freq and scaling_max_freq are the minimum and maximum frequencies, scaling_available_governors and scaling_available_frequencies show the available governors and frequencies
/sys/kernel/dkp/force_fast_charge: fast charge
/sys/kernel/dkp/link_core_settings: when linked (the default), frequency settings and some governors are automatically copied to the other core
/sys/kernel/dkp/vmin: minimum processor voltage in mV
/sys/kernel/mm/uksm/run: activate UKSM
auto-hotplug tuners:
These show up in the governor settings for any governor that doesn't do its own hotplugging. They only take effect when using auto-hotplug, so you'll probably need to disable mpdecision in Trickster.
hotplug_intpulse: when set to 1, automatically turns core 2 on whenever the screen/buttons/whatever is pressed. Default is 0.
hotplug_sampling_periods: number of samples to use for average number of running tasks. Default is 15.
hotplug_sampling_rate: number of 'jiffies' (currently 1 jiffy = 10 ms) between each sample of running tasks. Default is 20 (0.2 sec).
hotplug_enable_one_threshold: the average number of running tasks required to turn core 2 on, multiplied by 100. Default is 125 (1.25 tasks on average).
hotplug_disable_one_threshold: the average number of running tasks required to keep core 2 on, multiplied by 100. Default is 250 (2.5 tasks on average).
freelunch/nanolunch tuners:
freelunch and nanolunch aren't materially based on other governors, so their configuration is quite different than other governors. There's lots of tuners, since I haven't really decided on an ideal tuning. I encourage experimentation! I'll explain a bit of how these governors work before actually listing the tuners.
Generally speaking, there are two modes: in "normal" mode, sampling is done occasionally and frequency is generally increased slowly; in "interactive" mode, sampling is done much more quickly, and frequency increases much more quickly. "Interactive" mode ends after several samples of very low usage. The idea of a "hispeed" frequency is used in lots of governors, and it refers to the frequency that the CPU will jump to when more CPU usage is needed; generally, it's a generous estimate of how much CPU will be needed. Here, the hispeed frequency is adjusted on-the-fly, increasing when more CPU is needed and gradually decreasing when the CPU is idle. In "interactive" mode, the hispeed frequency is kept fairly high so that everything will feel snappy.
Hotplugging is taken care of in the least complicated (and in my opinion, most reasonable) way possible: if core 1 is using lots of CPU, and there are several tasks running (in other words, if it's likely that core 2 will have something to do), core 2 is turned on; if either core isn't doing much except using power, core 2 is turned off.
sampling_rate: the usual
hotplug_up_cycles: number of consecutive heavily-loaded samples before core 2 is turned on
hotplug_down_cycles: number of consecutive lightly-loaded samples before core 2 is turned off
hotplug_up_load: number of running tasks required to bring core 2 online
hotplug_up_usage: number of used CPU cycles (in thousands per second) required to bring core 2 online
hotplug_down_usage: number of used CPU cycles (in thousands per second) required on both cores to keep core 2 online
overestimate_khz: number of CPU cycles to overshoot usage by in "normal" mode
hispeed_thresh: if CPU usage is within this many cycles (in thousands per second) of the maximum frequency, frequency will be increased to the hispeed frequency. Generally, hispeed is pretty low in "normal" mode, and fairly high in "interactive" mode.
hispeed_decrease: when the CPU is sitting idle, the hispeed frequency is decreased by this amount each sample (this isn't ideal, but it works)
interaction_hispeed: the initial hispeed frequency when switching to "interactive" mode
interaction_return_cycles: number of consecutive lightly-loaded samples before returning to "normal" mode
interaction_return_usage: number of used CPU cycles (in thousands per second) required to stay in "interactive" mode
interaction_panic (nanolunch only): when set to 1, allows aggressively jumping past the current hispeed frequency under some circumstances
interaction_sampling_rate/overestimate_khz: equivalent to the "normal" versions of the tuners, these take effect in "interactive" mode

Just loaded it on pa 3.15
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium

It doesn't say that it has morfic colors, but looks like it does. Gonna give it a whirl
Sent from my SGH-I747 using xda app-developers app

rmead01 said:
It doesn't say that it has morfic colors, but looks like it does. Gonna give it a whirl
Sent from my SGH-I747 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It doesn't, but I'll merge it and put out a test build.

decimalman said:
It doesn't, but I'll merge it and put out a test build.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is it possible they are left over from a previous kernel? Because I can def tell the difference usually and seems like it does.
Either way, advise when its updated. This governor seems solid so far.
Sent from my SGH-I747 using xda app-developers app

rmead01 said:
Is it possible they are left over from a previous kernel? Because I can def tell the difference usually and seems like it does.
Either way, advise when its updated. This governor seems solid so far.
Sent from my SGH-I747 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
dkp is based off clean CM source, so it shouldn't have been merged already.
I've got test builds compiling now, and the 3.4 builds will be up shortly. Flashing the trinity-colors test build and this zip will enable trinity colors. You can toggle it with
Code:
su
echo X >/sys/class/mdnie/mdnie/trinity_colors
where X is 0 to disable or 1 to enable.
Edit: and sorry for taking so long to respond.
Edit 2: 3.4 builds are up. http://d-h.st/7Ae

Thnx for this kernel

decimalman said:
dkp is based off clean CM source, so it shouldn't have been merged already.
I've got test builds compiling now, and the 3.4 builds will be up shortly. Flashing the trinity-colors test build and this zip will enable trinity colors. You can toggle it with
Code:
su
echo X >/sys/class/mdnie/mdnie/trinity_colors
where X is 0 to disable or 1 to enable.
Edit: and sorry for taking so long to respond.
Edit 2: 3.4 builds are up. http://d-h.st/7Ae
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe I was just seeing things, had just watched jurassic park in 3d.
New "test" build flashed as well as the file to enable it. Thanks for the addition. It's very hard to go back to normal once you've been smurfed depending on your display.
Only issue i'm having ATM is the ability to change the voltage table. My phone doesn't handle undervolting as well and i run a minimum of 950 baseline, if not 975. One of my normal apps wasn't able to set the voltage at all. I'm trying to use performance control which I don't like. It crashes trying to set the voltage on boot but at least I can go in and manually set the values on boot and they stick.
One last question, since this is your kernel, what scheduler do you recommend pairs well to freelunch? What would you use for performance and what would you use for batt?

rmead01 said:
One last question, since this is your kernel, what scheduler do you recommend pairs well to freelunch? What would you use for performance and what would you use for batt?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 on these questions
Sent from my AT&T Samsung Galaxy S III

rmead01 said:
Only issue i'm having ATM is the ability to change the voltage table. My phone doesn't handle undervolting as well and i run a minimum of 950 baseline, if not 975. One of my normal apps wasn't able to set the voltage at all. I'm trying to use performance control which I don't like. It crashes trying to set the voltage on boot but at least I can go in and manually set the values on boot and they stick.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Answered my own problem. I installed trickster as mentioned in OP and all voltage settings stick no problem with no issues.

rmead01 said:
New "test" build flashed as well as the file to enable it. Thanks for the addition. It's very hard to go back to normal once you've been smurfed depending on your display.
Only issue i'm having ATM is the ability to change the voltage table. My phone doesn't handle undervolting as well and i run a minimum of 950 baseline, if not 975. One of my normal apps wasn't able to set the voltage at all. I'm trying to use performance control which I don't like. It crashes trying to set the voltage on boot but at least I can go in and manually set the values on boot and they stick.
One last question, since this is your kernel, what scheduler do you recommend pairs well to freelunch? What would you use for performance and what would you use for batt?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Personally, I don't like trinity colors, but I definitely understand the appeal. I merged this into 3.0 and 3.4, so it'll be standard from here on. I'll add a link to the enabler zip in the OP as well.
What app would you normally use? I'll try to support it, since I already provide several voltage interfaces. I didn't realize performance control was crashing (I'm not a fan either, so I only lightly tested). I recently installed Trickster and liked it, so I've been going out of my way to support it. It's also really easy to write support for, so that's a bonus for me.
As for schedulers, I'm not fussy. I've never exhaustively tested performance and battery life, so I don't have a preference and usually run noop or deadline. However, I've had nothing but bad results with ROW (phone never deep sleeps, and I haven't looked into why).

decimalman said:
Personally, I don't like trinity colors, but I definitely understand the appeal. I merged this in, so it'll be standard from here on. I'll add a link to the enabler zip in the OP as well.
What app would you normally use? I'll try to support it, since I already provide several voltage interfaces. I didn't realize performance control was crashing (I'm not a fan either, so I only lightly tested). I recently installed Trickster and liked it, so I've been going out of my way to support it. It's also really easy to write support for, so that's a bonus for me.
As for schedulers, I'm not fussy. I've never exhaustively tested performance and battery life, so I don't have a preference and usually run noop or deadline. However, I've had nothing but bad results with ROW (phone never deep sleeps, and I haven't looked into why).
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good to know. Trickster mod works fine and you mention it in the OP and it's at no cost in the play store. I wouldn't worry.
I was using an app called kernel tuner because some others would only set 1 core to the governor and not both. I checked that trickster does indeed set both cores to freelunch so once that figured out I removed kernel tuner. Kernel Tuner also has the options for profiles which can be toggled in tasker for varies states. freelunch so far hasn't needed any changing so not worried about it at this point. just as an example, some governors would be better for screen on/off and tasker could switch these to edge out battery life.
The voltage app i was using is simply called voltage control. Kernel tuner doesn't do a nice job of voltage changes. But since trickster does both governor and voltage adjustments well. i'm using that with no problems now.
Thanks for the morfic, having a way to toggle it works well for people. it's as simple as a script so there's that.

rmead01 said:
good to know. Trickster mod works fine and you mention it in the OP and it's at no cost in the play store. I wouldn't worry.
I was using an app called kernel tuner because some others would only set 1 core to the governor and not both. I checked that trickster does indeed set both cores to freelunch so once that was made it was no problem. Kernel Tuner also has the options for profiles which can be toggled in tasker for varies states. freelunch so far hasn't needed any changing so not worried about it at this point.
The voltage app i was using is simply called voltage control. Kernel tuner doesn't do a nice job of voltage changes. But since trickster does both well, i'm using that with no problems now.
Thanks for the morfic, having a way to toggle it works well for people. it's as simple as a script so there's that.
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Click to collapse
I meant to test Voltage Control but Google wasn't letting me download anything. It's a common app, so I'll try to get it working regardless. Kernel Tuner doesn't currently work well with freelunch, and tends to hang when it's trying to read settings in the CPU screen. Otherwise, it's a nice app. I didn't realize it had Tasker support (I use Llama).
I've added a few extra bits to the cpufreq core, so governors that need to be set on both cores (like freelunch) will automatically apply to both cores regardless of what app is used. cpufreq will even enable and disable mpdecision depending on whether a hotplugging governor is running (though Trickster won't show that it's disabled).
I owe ktoonsez for the toggleable trinity colors. I slightly rewrote his patch, but it's still largely his code. It's my policy that anything that not all users will want should be optional and easily configurable.
Edit: I think I've got Voltage Control fixed. I should be able to get Kernel Tuner working without too much work. I haven't even looked into Performance Control yet.

decimalman said:
I meant to test Voltage Control but Google wasn't letting me download anything. It's a common app, so I'll try to get it working regardless. Kernel Tuner doesn't currently work well with freelunch, and tends to hang when it's trying to read settings in the CPU screen. Otherwise, it's a nice app. I didn't realize it had Tasker support (I use Llama).
I've added a few extra bits to the cpufreq core, so governors that need to be set on both cores (like freelunch) will automatically apply to both cores regardless of what app is used. cpufreq will even enable and disable mpdecision depending on whether a hotplugging governor is running (though Trickster won't show that it's disabled).
I owe ktoonsez for the toggleable trinity colors. I slightly rewrote his patch, but it's still largely his code. It's my policy that anything that not all users will want should be optional and easily configurable.
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Click to collapse
well good job so far. batt life has been top notch. minimal drain in use and my over night idle drain was only a few %. I have things setup to disable wifi when sleep and also turn off mobile data when wifi is connected. A bit over the top but every bit helps.
:good::highfive:

I know I've been grilling you today but...
Kind of curious what the new tunables do. I haven't touched anything since it's working so well but there is always that part of me that wonders what adjust parameters will do. Is there any kind of reference for this governor that could indicate that type of info?

Does your kernel support faux sound app?

stevehkim said:
Does your kernel support faux sound app?
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Yes. 3.0 and 3.4 both have support.
As for tuneables, I've been meaning to post a writeup but haven't gotten around to it. You're not the first to ask about it.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using xda app-developers app

This is a fantastic Kernel! The battery life has been outstanding so far. Thank you for your amazing work!