Hello, I have been trying to search/understand what the pros and cons are of froyo a2sd vs the one people used before it. Anybody care to explain it to me? I have found something else called a2sd+, what is that about? If there is a thread explaining this, I apologize and would like the link to it.
Froyo way:
Data is moved in encrypted form to FAT32 partition on SD card.
Pros:
Nothing needed to set it up.
Cons:
Applications don't work when SD card is mounted. Widgets can't be moved. Monitoring apps can't be moved.
Applications don't get mounted early enough, icons disappear in non-stock launchers.
Needs to be supported by app creator (can be forced to SD through hacks).
Apps2SD(+ or not):
Creating another EXT2/3/4 partition on SD card, mounting it, making all or selected apps go there. 2 ways - either by symlink or by hacking the framework (doesn't exist on Froyo yet, existed in Cyanogen 5.X).
Pros:
Everything works as if the apps are on the phone.
Cons:
SD card needs to be repartitioned. Windows won't read this card when out of the phone, only Linux (until partitioned back to standard).
No framework support in Froyo yet (CM6.1 is expected to deliver it), so only the symlink method works (moving ALL apps).
Related
i just installed jesus freak 1.5. i also purchased a 16gb micro sdhc card. I would like to know how to get apps to sd running correctly. I have followed another method and messed up the sd card. so i purchased a brand new one and before i even take it out of the package, i would like to talk to someone that has had sucesssful experience.
Thanx in Advance
A2SD in a Nutshell
the essence of apps2sd is:
1) creating a vfat/fat32 partition for storing user data
2) creating a second partition, ext2 to hold your apps and caches
3) creating directories within the ext2 partition on the SD to house your caches and apps
4) copying your apps and caches to the SD within the appropriate directories on the ext2 partition
5) rebooting within recovery console and deleting the original app and cache directories, AND
6) symbolically linking the ext2 apps/cache folders on the SD to the appropriate system partition folder names
7) rebooting to android and testing apps to determine which need to be reinstalled or reconfigured
your ext2 partition need not be very large relative to the volume of the SD; half a gig is normally adequate
pre-requisites:
you will need regular access to an OS that supports the ext2 filesystem, like linux. this is important because if your ext2 partition ever becomes damaged, the linux system has the tools to fix the ext2 filesystem errors.
you will need to know the commands for creating partitions on your SD
you should know how to use ADB to connect to your G1's shell, though this is optional
you need to know how to (re)boot to the recovery console and use its shell
you need to be familiar with the commands required to copy directories, create and delete directories, and create symbolic links
There are other Threads that have other programs and tutorials, but I used this one the other day on a JF 1.5 and it worked well.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=512743
Only issue I had was I had to move JF Updater back to Phone from SD , but that could have been a glitch when the phone checked for an update. The two apps used AppstoSD2 and a2sd pretty much do everything for you , very minimal command line required on your part.
Only thing to make it better would be an interface to either move the apps back to phone or integrate it so it would ask you when you install an app where to put it. But I am very happy with it. 16GB might be over kill , I have a 8 GB but they say not to go over 1.5 GB with the Ext2 partition, so while you will have 6.5 ( relative ) GB of space for Movies,Images, MP3's, Uninstalled apps, you are really limited to the 1.5GB for apps , well plus internal phone memory I guess. But for phone apps that's probably way more than enough.
question: how do you partition a 16gb sdcard? all the numbers and all that. ive done an 8 gb sd card and that was easy cause i was working with mb's. now with gb im lost. i got to parted and i typed up print and got 16.1gb if you could help me with the numbers for fat32,ext2/3,linux-swap. i would greatly appreciate it...
Personally, I would reccoment switching to a Cyanogen ROM. It's based off the same source as JF, but one of the features it has is automatic Apps2SD. This means you but have to push files here and there, whuch believe me can be a pain. It does still require an ext partition which you would have to format your self, but after that it will work without and modifications.
Do no more then 512 MB for your ext2(3,4) partition
Follow this guide for the card partitioning. Flash CM's rom and it will do apps2sd for you automatically.
Your other card is most likely not all lost and could be salvaged still, I would look into it if I was you, 16gb cards are not cheap.
And for the last time: it is Jeusus FREKE not Jesus Freak, Have some respect for the one who layed the foundation for us, at least enough to spell his name correctly.
AdrianK said:
Personally, I would reccoment switching to a Cyanogen ROM. It's based off the same source as JF, but one of the features it has is automatic Apps2SD. This means you but have to push files here and there, whuch believe me can be a pain. It does still require an ext partition which you would have to format your self, but after that it will work without and modifications.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I second that, and also jf won't be doing ROM any more :[
http://jf.andblogs.net/
I have Cyanogen ROM 4.2.5 installed with auto app2sd set up but I've become a little confused. I have a root file manager and am able to see where my apps are going, but where are the files for my apps being installed? I have Aldiko, but I cannot find where it is downloading the e-books to.
Pre-app2sd they were downloaded to /sdcard/, but now as far as I can tell no apps download any files to the main SD card partition. I assume they are all going to the ext partition. Can anyone help me out here?
Also, the gallery isn't working (in the sense that it never has pictures in it, and it cant find pictures). I think this might be related to the problem I'm having with themes (When I install theme's they never install the wallpapers), which might have all been caused by my app2sd installation.
Anyone have any ideas?
When I set up app2sd I used Amon-Ra Recovery v1.3.2. I partitioned the drive, established an ext3 partition, then reflashed Cyanogen's 4.2.5 ROM. Following that I put on the Minus Theme.
Thanks in advance. Hopefully I didnt do something completely retarded. (and yes I used the search tool first)
The ebooks may be in a separate folder on the sd card. updates to the program may change the directory
Maybe there is something wrong with the SDcard itself. it is possible it did not partition correctly. If so, back up all the data on the SD + Ext and repartition
Hi, first off I apologise if this is an easy answer, though I have been searching around and couldn't find a solution for a Donut Rom. I am running "Super D 1.9.3 with [Official] WG-Kernel v3-beta(10mb RHack)" which has Apps2SD set up automatic. However for speed purposes, I want certain APK's to be installed on the internal memory (ADW Launcher etc). I added APK's I wanted to be installed to the system directory, signed the rom, flashed without my memory card inserted and they all installed to the internal memory no problem. However after turning off my G1, inserting the memory card (with EXT3 partition) and booting up they have all been moved to the memory card. Is there a way on this rom that I can temporarily disable Apps2sd to allow me to install to the internal memory and keep them there upon 'activating' Apps2SD again? I found a solution which mentionned to edit a file within system/etc (setlocation or something like that) however that file does not exist on this rom.
I have tried pushing APK's with Android Commander to the system directory but they still get sent to my SD card!
Sorry again if this is in the wrong place, I know this may have been better suited in Super D's thread but given the Automatic Apps2SD on a Donut rom I figured others could help out too!
Check out firerats mtd hack in the forums. You may want to go that route.
sent from my superfroyo dream
Hello,
I am running Hypersense v2.6 and I have followed all of the directions on the thread to install it. The one thing that seems strange is that Apps2SD doesn't seem to be working correctly. When I look at the free space in the manage apps menu, it says 25mb, although I created a 1GB ext4 partition for apps on my SD card. Should I be manually checking the boxes on the SD card tab in the same menu (doesn't seem to make sense because it shows an SD card size that reflects the non ext4 partition)? I realize that this is a noobish question, but I am just a little confused.
Thanks!
The OS doesn't know anything about A2SD. You won't see this info. You'll see it only in Titanium backup, A2SD GUI, and such apps.
Did you move also the dalvik-cache to sd-ext?
Use "a2sd cachesd" in terminal.
I've recently hit the limit of my data partition and had to start uninstalling apps, but looking around at other discussions of the filesystem in Honeycomb, I'm seeing that this shouldn't be the case. From what I've seen, apps and media should be in one large partition, not separated the way the Streak 7 seems to be. Did Dell mess with the normal HC 3.2 setup so they could maintain the partitions set up when the streak ran Froyo? (I'm curious because my Streak 7 had HC from the start, so preserving the Froyo partitioning makes even less sense than usual.)
Ultimately, what I'd like to find out is if it's possible to repartition the Data and user storage to be more like the partitions on other HC tablets like the Streak 10.
Otherwise is it possible to expand the app space by using a partition on the external SD Card formatted to ext2, ext3, or ext4?
I've looked through the threads and not found an answer, the only other thread on expanding data partition seems to have trailed off into a 'you should never have more that 2 gb of apps' rant. Which would be nice, but it seems that app developers, particularly game app developers are making ever larger apps, and some are choosing to load the whole thing into data, likely assuming that in HC or ICS the data partition would be larger, and that GB users can just use app2sd. However it seems that with the streak 7, I've got the worst of both worlds, the giant app sizes meant for a system where app storage and media storage are shared, and the limited app storage of the old Froyo system.
I'd like to learn about this too. I use DTa2SD on my HTC Evo and having it on the Streak7 would be nice.
I'm showing 1.1GB used with 858MB free on Internal. I've got a 16GB microSD card that has 12GBs free. I'd like to move many of those apps to the SD. As an experiment I tried an a2sd app to see what would happen and nothing did of course.
I've ended up partitioning my SD card to have a 10gb fat32 partition for my media files, and a 4gb ext3 partition that I'm using with link2sd from the market to move over some of the larger apps. (Anomaly Warzone HD from the Humble Android Bundle is a whopping 153.48mb apk. Amazon's market has some other big ones.) Oddly while the apps work, and I see the internal storage space opening up, it keeps telling me I have 100% open space on the ext3 partition in the link2sd app. dunno what's up with that, though it does report correctly how much filespace is being used, just not how much is free... weird.
Keep in mind the S7 was sold with 2.2 preinstalled, which doesnt (at least by default) support 'dual' sdcards. (I dont actually know how it worked out in 2.2 on the S7 though, as I've never had a S7 with 2.2 installed)
It was originally partitioned with sdcard and data as seperate partitions. The reason it skipped 3.0 and 3.1 was because the S7 would have to drop sdcard2 support.
3.x also does not support moving apps to sd as devices that shipped with 3.x had a large nand that symlinked /data/media to /sdcard (ie sdcard is basically a shortcut to /data/media and moving to sdcard basically just moved it to a different folder on the same partition)
There's only 3/4 devices released in total that could even install 3.x and didnt ship 3.x, at the time the S7 did it in a reasonable way. (Official 3.x I mean, having unofficial ports dont count)
The ICS beta fixes this by turning the sdcard partition into the data partition (as it's the larger of the 2), but ICS is still beta. I believe ICS also brings back official apps2sd support, as phones definitely would want that (and no reason to turn it off on tabs if they support it)
tl;dr: no real solution without messing with the partitions/filesystem yourself as you've already done.
TheManii said:
Keep in mind the S7 was sold with 2.2 preinstalled, which doesnt (at least by default) support 'dual' sdcards. (I dont actually know how it worked out in 2.2 on the S7 though, as I've never had a S7 with 2.2 installed)
It was originally partitioned with sdcard and data as seperate partitions. The reason it skipped 3.0 and 3.1 was because the S7 would have to drop sdcard2 support.
3.x also does not support moving apps to sd as devices that shipped with 3.x had a large nand that symlinked /data/media to /sdcard (ie sdcard is basically a shortcut to /data/media and moving to sdcard basically just moved it to a different folder on the same partition)
There's only 3/4 devices released in total that could even install 3.x and didnt ship 3.x, at the time the S7 did it in a reasonable way. (Official 3.x I mean, having unofficial ports dont count)
The ICS beta fixes this by turning the sdcard partition into the data partition (as it's the larger of the 2), but ICS is still beta. I believe ICS also brings back official apps2sd support, as phones definitely would want that (and no reason to turn it off on tabs if they support it)
tl;dr: no real solution without messing with the partitions/filesystem yourself as you've already done.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's pretty much what I'd found. What I was thinking to do was find out if repartitioning the internal memory and creating the symlink myself might be possible, though it's a lower priority for me now that the Link2SD seems to be working for my apps. I'll likely switch to ICS once the camera is working.
TesseractSpace said:
I've ended up partitioning my SD card to have a 10gb fat32 partition for my media files, and a 4gb ext3 partition that I'm using with link2sd from the market to move over some of the larger apps. (Anomaly Warzone HD from the Humble Android Bundle is a whopping 153.48mb apk. Amazon's market has some other big ones.) Oddly while the apps work, and I see the internal storage space opening up, it keeps telling me I have 100% open space on the ext3 partition in the link2sd app. dunno what's up with that, though it does report correctly how much filespace is being used, just not how much is free... weird.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
daft question(we have just got a ds7) but by partition your sd card are you refering to the INTERNAL SDcard(storage) or physical sdcard????