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Hi guys,
sorry because this has probably been answered somewhere but I couldn't find it ....
So here it goes: I just installed Modaco's ROM and it works perfectly. Now I would like my apps to install directly on the SD card.
What I understand is that I need to create a EXT3 partition but I don't know what the hell that means, nor how to do it.
I just put my SD card in the hero, didn't format anything ....
Dould you give a step by step guide ? On how to create that EXT3 partition, how to use A2SD afterwards ? Also, what to do with the currently installed applications ?
Thanks
Geeum
Dould you give a step by step guide ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://androidandme.com/2009/08/news/how-to-manually-partition-your-sd-card-for-android-apps2sd/
how to use A2SD afterwards?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just use MoDaCo's custom ROMs. (It will do it automatically)
can app2sd work with official ROMs not rooted?
Hi guys I finally partitioned my sdcard to have an ext3 partition.
I thought A2SD was automatic but apparently applications don't go to the sdcard: my phone memory has changed after I installed an app ...
Here is what I get if I type the 'print' command on parted
Code:
(parted) print
print
print
Model: SD 00000 (sd/mmc)
Disk /dev/block/mmcblk0: 8166MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 512B 7110MB 7110MB primary fat32 lba
2 7110MB 8134MB 1024MB primary ext3
3 8134MB 8166MB 32.3MB primary linux-swap(v1)
So I DO have ext3. Then I found this post that explains how to check if A2SD is working:
Thanks! Here is my way to check if a2sd is working:
Check if the ext3 partition exists (please see androidandme.com for details):
Code:
# mount | grep mmcblk0p2
mount | grep mmcblk0p2
/dev/block/mmcblk0p2 on /system/sd type ext3 (rw,noatime,nodiratime,errors=continue,data=ordered)
Compare available/used space on mmcblk0p2:
Code:
adb shell
# df
df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
tmpfs 98520 0 98520 0% /dev
tmpfs 4096 0 4096 0% /sqlite_stmt_journals
/dev/block/mtdblock3 174080 153460 20620 88% /system
/dev/block/mtdblock5 169728 27240 142488 16% /data
/dev/block/mtdblock4 133120 1160 131960 1% /cache
/dev/block/mmcblk0p2 468331 11767 431579 3% /system/sd
Now install an app from the market (as suggested by fleming222) and again run "df". Compare the available (or used) space on /dev/block/mmcblk0p2 with the first "df".
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is what I get (I can see on the first line that my ext3 is not listed ... weird)
Code:
/ # mount | grep mmcblk0p2
mount | grep mmcblk0p2
/ # df
df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
tmpfs 98508 0 98508 0% /dev
/dev/block/mtdblock4 133120 1496 131624 1% /cache
HELP !
By the way I'm running MODACO's 2.6 custom ROM ...
Geeum said:
By the way I'm running MODACO's 2.6 custom ROM ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The best way to do it if your not too good with the adb commands is to install the AMON recovery image for Hero.
It has all the options to create the correct sd card partitions from the recovery mode, then just install your custom rom and everything should work.
You will need to format your sd card so you may want to create a backup of it. And I would suggest that you wipe the phone clean as well. Once you install the modaco rom it automatically moves all of your apps to the sd card.
The link for the recovery image is here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=561124
You will also need Instant Root (http://neilandtheresa.co.uk/Android/), which you should install first, it is an .apk file so you will need a file manager for your phone. It should pop up with a notification "instant root was successfully" or along those lines. (If you have a problem installing Instant Root make sure Settings>Applications>Unknown Sources is checked)
You should then place the AMON recovery image onto the sdcard making sure it is not put into any folders (root).
Instant root then allows for root access with adb shell using the following 2 commands:
1) adb shell
then
2) su
the icon should change from a $ to #.
Now flash the recovery image with the following command:
flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery-RA-HERO-v1.2.3.img
That should do it, remove the usb and battery and once you have replaced the battery boot into recovery mode.
I ran the following commands in this order from recvoery mode:
- Wipe data + cache (factory reset)
- Wipe ext partition on SD-card
- Wipe Dalvik-cache on SD-card (NOT on /data !) [email protected] ALWAYS WORK
- Partition SD-card : 500MB Ext2, 32MB Swap, remaining Fat32
- Convert ext2 to ext3
- Installed ROM
Hope this helps
Hi and thanks for your reply. I finally sorted my problem, I was typing the commands from the recovery console, and now my ext3 shows:
Code:
# mount | grep mmcblk0p2
mount | grep mmcblk0p2
/dev/block/mmcblk0p2 on /system/sd type ext3 (rw,noatime,nodiratime,errors=conti
nue,data=ordered)
I checked the space with df, and I can see it changing when installing apps.
However, so does the 'internal memory of the phone' in the settings panel; it keeps getting smaller as I install apps
Why is that ?
really want to do this but i find it all to hard and confusing
Geeum said:
I checked the space with df, and I can see it changing when installing apps.
However, so does the 'internal memory of the phone' in the settings panel; it keeps getting smaller as I install apps
Why is that ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think this is inevitable as the app uses some part of the phone memory for cache files etc (I am not 100% certain on this, just saw it written in an older post on the same topic).
I do not know if this is a coincidence but for some reason I have tried partitioning manually (the way your doing it) in the past and have recently used the AMON recovery image for partitioning instead. I notice that the recovery image tends to use less of the internal storage for each installed app, I don't know why but you could try it out yourself.
guys, i am using modaco's 2.6 rom. so if i just create partitions this custom rom will automatically install newly installed apps to the sd card. right?
but what if i already got many apps installed? will those be deleted while creating partitions?
is there any way so that i can backup the whole application folder and restore after creating partitions?
cheers
apparently if you do ext2 + swap + fat32, you can't do a Nandroid backup (it keeps giving errors). anyone got similar issues?
kazuni said:
apparently if you do ext2 + swap + fat32, you can't do a Nandroid backup (it keeps giving errors). anyone got similar issues?
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Click to collapse
is it so? if so then that wud be a disaster.
Apologies ahead of time if this has been answered before. I spent about 30 minutes Googling and trying solutions without any luck.
My situation is that I'm on MikG 3.11 and am using the built in A2SD to store all the apps on a 2GB SD-Ext partition. I have enough apps that the ~160MB internal /cache partition is pretty much filled with Dalvik Cache files in the /cache/dc subdirectory (only 3MB left on the partition).
Unfortunately, Google Play (formerly Market) seems to download app installs and updates into /cache with file names like "Download.apk" and "Download-1.apk" and then installs the apps from there. Since there is so little space, any app above 1.5MB or so fails to download and install (it seems to need the space for the download and then space to extract the download, so you can only get apps that are about 1/2 the size of the remaining partition space).
Is there any way to change where Google Play/Market downloads apps to install? I've got plenty of space on /data or the SD-Ext partition.
I found old directions to fix this issue by entering the following at terminal to create a sym link for Market to download on the SD card:
Code:
mkdir /mnt/sdcard/market-download-cache
su
cd /cache
mv download download.bak
ln -s /mnt/sdcard/market-download-cache download
ls -ahl
Unfortunately, Play/Market no longer uses a "download" sub-directory on /cache, so this won't work.
To fix the problem, I tried using "a2sd cachesd" to free up space on /cache by moving the Dalvik Cache to the SD-Ext partition, but that made for a really laggy experience (presumably because my SD card has bad random r/w access). I could also presumably just unmount the partition from /cache and make /cache a sym linke to a folder on the SD Ext card, but it doesn't seem that would perform much better.
My only thought at this point for a long term solution is to copy the current /cache contents to /system/sd/cache, mount the current partition on /cache at /mnt/cache (unmounting it from /cache first), create a sym link from /cache to /system/sd/cache, then set up a sym link from /mnt/cache/dc to /system/sd/cache/dc. All of this would have the effect of keeping the Dalvik Cache on the same internal partition where it currently resides while letting Play/Market have plenty of space in the new /cache which would actually be a directory on the SD-Ext partition. But, this seems kind of hacky and could negatively impact other things that might need /cache.
My short term solution is that every time I need to install or update apps, I just go into /cache/dc with Root Explorer and delete a bunch of the cached data to free up enough space for the app(s) and then do the update/install through Play/Market. The OS then seems to recreate the cached information the next time I run the app whose cached data I deleted (for example, I deleted the IMDB cached data and the next time I ran IMDB it took a long time to come up but then worked fine-- presumably the delay was recreating the cached data/app). The OS also seems to recreate the dalvik cached files on boot (not sure if that is a general feature or just in the MikG ROM I'm using).
In any case, I think all of the above is accurate so even if nobody has better solutions, maybe this will help others understand why they can't install/update apps even though it seems they have plenty of space.
If anybody is out there that has a good long term solution to this (like a place you can change the directory where Play/Market downloads), please let me know.
It's probably not cool to respond to your own post, but I had another idea for fixing this problem:
It looks like /data has 140MB of space left on it-- could I move the Dalvik Cache to that partition so there would be plenty of space on /cache to let Market/Play work?
As far as I can tell, /data/dalvik-cache is already a link (maybe a hard link?) to /cache/dc, so presumably I could just switch that to the Dalvik Cache was actually on /data?
Any thoughts on whether this would work and if it is a good idea or bad idea?
I have a problem with my phone.
I believe that the internal partitions are messed up.
I have tried a couple of guides to fix this but no luck. I get "error formatting /data!" on recovery. I also tried using the formatting tools from adb shell (e2fsck, gparted).
The main problem is that when i restart my phone the /data partition gets wiped, and the phone reboots in blank, no apps no setting (some of them remain).
I wonder if i can solve this by setting my sd-card to be the new /data. I doesn't matter if i have to leave the sd-card on all the time. i mainly use this phone for developing apps.
Thanks.:good:
Felivel said:
I have a problem with my phone.
I believe that the internal partitions are messed up.
I have tried a couple of guides to fix this but no luck. I get "error formatting /data!" on recovery. I also tried using the formatting tools from adb shell (e2fsck, gparted).
The main problem is that when i restart my phone the /data partition gets wiped, and the phone reboots in blank, no apps no setting (some of them remain).
I wonder if i can solve this by setting my sd-card to be the new /data. I doesn't matter if i have to leave the sd-card on all the time. i mainly use this phone for developing apps.
Thanks.:good:
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Click to collapse
It could probably be done if you could get the sdcard to mount at boot, not sure if thats possible. You would need to create a flashable much like the ext4 mod, that edits the init.inc.rc file to mount the sdcard and /data to it. You would want to partition your sdcard with an ext3 or ext4 partition and use that for data.
Yes it can be done. That's how boot manager works, by modifying the ramdisk to load images from sdcard or emmc instead of the partition. I think I have an idea on how to make your request work.
Edit: If you feel like trying a project, what needs to be done is create a file data.img and mount it as loopback using busybox (ROM needs a working busybox).
Then the boot.img needs to be updated replacing the mount /data entry in init.inc.rc with the location of the loopback device and a loopback setup prior to this. The data.img created needs to be formatted ext3 or ext4. I know it's not too detailed but rather just a summary.
Hello,
I am unable to modify the partition table. I tried parted and gdisk. Both seems working, that means I didnt get any error message. For example I deleted a userdata partition via gdisk a tried to write changes to disk, it finished with success but when I reopened the table, there was the old one.
In addition, system, cache, userdata partitions seems to have 0mb and cant be mounted. In gdisk,fdisk when I view the partition table, these partitions have normal size according to the start and end sector.
I use TWRP 3.0.2-0 , I can go ADB - recovery, sideload. To fastboot. But I cant chcange the recovery, or remove TWRP, when I fastboot flash other recovery on boot, nothing change at all and TWRP boot again.
It seems to me that the phone is read only, but on the other hand I can upload files by adb push cmd.
Do u have any idea what to do?
jirikolar said:
Hello,
I am unable to modify the partition table. I tried parted and gdisk. Both seems working, that means I didnt get any error message. For example I deleted a userdata partition via gdisk a tried to write changes to disk, it finished with success but when I reopened the table, there was the old one.
In addition, system, cache, userdata partitions seems to have 0mb and cant be mounted. In gdisk,fdisk when I view the partition table, these partitions have normal size according to the start and end sector.
I use TWRP 3.0.2-0 , I can go ADB - recovery, sideload. To fastboot. But I cant chcange the recovery, or remove TWRP, when I fastboot flash other recovery on boot, nothing change at all and TWRP boot again.
It seems to me that the phone is read only, but on the other hand I can upload files by adb push cmd.
Do u have any idea what to do?
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Click to collapse
hi.. use aparted app "link https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sylkat.AParted" ... for me works perfectly and you can choose a lot of type partitions " but you have to reading message in app when saying that you have to unmount sd card "
olibub said:
hi.. use aparted app "link https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sylkat.AParted" ... for me works perfectly and you can choose a lot of type partitions " but you have to reading message in app when saying that you have to unmount sd card "
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Currently I have no ROM installed because I cant mount userdata and system partition. So I cant use your app.
Hi sorry for the spamming I couldn't find the relevant forum for my phone.
I have a Huawei Y360 with emui custom rom installed, but when I checked my sdcard it only had 5MB free out of 5MB when it should read more than 1GB so I went to adb shell and typed in:
restorecon -FR /data/media
And rebooted my phone and it said 0.00B free and cause I download a lot of files I need my internal storage back to normal does anyone have a fix for this?