Database Develop

How much free memory should I have after running taskiller?

I have task killer set to ignore two applications: Battery Widget and Weather Widget (donation version).
I've rooted my phone and am running Cyanogen 4.0.1 with Ted's hero theme. And I've formatted my SD to have FAT32, EXT3, and Linux Swap partitions and have my apps installed to my SD.
However, when I use taskiller to close all my applications I'm usually left with only 28 to 30 M free. Sometimes I'll only have 26 M or all the way up to 33 M left. Is this normal?
How much memory do you guys have left after you kill your tasks? Are my numbers low enough to make you think I've not partitioned my SD correctly or something else?
I feel like my phone should be much much faster than it was before I rooted it, but I don't see the huge improvements many people seem to.
Any help is appreciated.

yeah, I have questioned this too. I use Advanced Task Manager with 2 apps excluded. I usually am at 41 MB when all are ended. Prior to rooting this was in the 50's. I assume it is because the ROM has used some of this memory?
I also seem to have a lot less internal memory than others. I have 54MB when I go review my memory under settings. Not sure how others are in the 70-80 MB range. I clear cache frequently.
Also have 3 partitions 7.5GB/500MB/32MB
to the OP - have you deleted the cache of programs like browser, google maps?

I'm not sure how. I'd love to delete both of those and a few others (voice dialing I will never use you!!). I've gone into the apps manager but it won't let me uninstall them.
Yes, I'm a complete noob at this .

One thing I may have done wrong. I didn't reflash my cyanogen rom after formatting my SD. Could that be a problem?

Nagh, the rom would do it on the next reboot... go to menu... settings... sd card and phone storage. It should show all memory there (including second partition).
To delete cache, go to menu... settings... applications... app manager.
Click on browser, scroll down and delete cache. How much was there?

There wasn't much. It was like 1 to 1.5 megs, but it's gone now. I also set my gmail sync down to 1 day and cleared out it's data. Still though, my phone just feels like it's not getting the big speed upgrades others talk about.

I am hoping someone else will chime in on the low memory reported by task killer/manager in our cases.
How much internal memory were you showing under settings and removing cache?
You can sort the app manager by size too (of course the apps are on your sd card) but the cache is not.
I take it you confirmed your partitions were working?

They seem to be working. I've got 486 MB for my ext3 partition and only 413 available. I'm assuming 73 MB are being used by my programs.
I have 64 MB of internal phone storage available. I don't know what it was before.
I also have 5 desktops with a lot of icons on each one, plus I have a background that is about twice as wide as normal (1067x480 vs 640x480). Still the background is only 70k.

If you want to delete stock apps
Code:
adb remount
adb shell
cd system/app
ls
This will let you see the actual names of apps. From there you can just rm -r them as usual
example
Code:
rm -r VoiceDialer.apk
rm -r com.amazon.mp3.apk
rm -r VoiceSearch.apk
rm -r LatinIME.apk
Don't forget to clear your dalvik-cache after you done nuking stuff!!!
Code:
rm -r system/sd/dalvik-cache
mkdir system/sd/dalvik-cache
You can do all of this from terminal as well but adb make is much easier.
@ OP. I too have only 28-33MB of free ram after closing most of my widgets but I think it's pretty normal as too much free memory means too much wasted memory. And you will not see HUGE improvements in speed neither... there's only so much developers can do. What Cyan is trying to do is to introduce new features (global search, vpn, exchange) without bogging down the system (and doing a great job at it IMHO).
Good luck

^ that is an awesome post. Thank you for that.

Thanks a ton for that. Very helpful post. If I won't see any speed improvements by uninstalling apps I'll just pass on doing that.
Are there any ways I could see speed improvements beyond what Cyanogen already provides?

Limit the amount of desktops, and limit the use of widgets. Power wideget from donut seemed to use a lot of ram and slow things down a little.

why are you people confusing internal storage with system ram?
The information available under settings/sdcard-phone storage/available space reffers to the space available in the /data partition of your phone. Wether you have 1 or 100 (well, 89) mb free in this partition is irrelevant to your phone's performance. All that gets written to this partition is installed apps (not part of the system), dalvik-cache (for ADP or AOSP based roms that don't have their classes pre-compiled), and user data and settings.
People who have 70-89 mb free in that partition are using a2sd, data2sd, and cache to sd, which, imho, is a flippin waste because the internal nand is a lot faster than the bottlenecked bus for the sd card and it's just going to waste if you're not using it. Nothing, i repeat NOTHING is gained by having a free data partition (much like having free space in system which is never going to be used).
Your system has 192 mb of RAM, which is the actual working memory of the device, of those 192, only 90 are available to the dalvik VM, which is the Android part of your phone. This ram can be checked using "free" (if your build has busybox) at the terminal, and this will tell you how much ram is being used by the system, along with how much swap space (if you're using it) is being used. The used ram space fills up fast, and that's a good thing, because unused RAM is wasted RAM. Linux manages things and drops processes as required (to a swap file if available) to free up ram for processes that require it.
To keep your phone running smootly, I'd recomend a reboot every night (when you put your phone to charge). Android is full of memory leaks that have to be fixed, and until they're worked out, the 90 mb ram you have available is all you have to go with (unless you use swap, but one should never really consider that space memory anyway)

The biggest performance difference I've seen has been to shut down my battery widget. After I did that phone's responsiveness has been great.

Low space - does it really matter ?

I installed the eVil rom on my N1 and I am now constantly getting the low error message. I could not care less about it but it looks like it's preventing the phone from downloading any updates or new apps. Yes I still think I have more than 200MB available. I've zapped lots of apps and slim down what's on the phone to the barebone. I do not want to go through any A2SD workaround, also because I do not really have much on the phone and whatever I can move to the SD has already been moved.
Is there an alternative solution to this bugging message ?
P_

There isnt actually a workaround for this. You simply need more space. While its debatable how much space in enough space, most people would agree that you should keep at least 50mb internal space on a Nexus One. I have 132 apps installed and have 150mb free on mine.
Apps2sd/apps2ext is definetely worth the small amount of time it takes to setup.

You can't have more than 200MB available, since all the app storage space is 196MB.
Apps2EXT doesn't work in the same way as Froyo's Apps2SD, and frees MUCH more space - including Dalvik-cache.
With this message showing, you don't get any text messages (SMS) - they're lost.

Can't I just move the dalvik-cache manually and create a sim link to it.
P_

You can (move it to /cache). You also can do it to the "data/data" folder. You also can completely replicate all the work of Apps2EXT, and you can manually repartition the SD card and write the boot scripts that will mount the EXT partition. The question is - why would you want to waste your time doing that, when somebody already created something that you need.

First off, I suspect you're not looking at the right thing.. Settings->SD Card and Phone Storage and look at Internal Phone Storage for available space.. It's <20, yes?
You can try clearing Browser cache from the Settings->Applications...
How many apps do you have installed? Any HUGE apps, like Nook, Google Earth, Flash, etc? If so, maybe you do need to do apps2ext to free up space.
If that's not enough, then DO NOT move dalvik-cache to /cache, it's NOT BIG ENOUGH. If you're running out of space using apps2ext your dalvik-cache is probably 100M or more, and /cache has 96M, and you do not want to run out of space for dalvik-cache. If you must, move it to the SD card.

Low Internal Memory - SMS Warning too

I was surprised to see my wife's N1 only had 20 MB of internal memory. She is running Enomther's Rom, which runs great.. I don't think the issue is tied to that.
She has hardly any apps on her phone, and rarely does anything other than work emails (Touchdown) and Facebook/Twitter.
Considering how little she has on the phone, and how little she does with it I, was just really shocked that she would have so little internal memory. She called me just now and stated she has a notification that she missed a text message because she did not have enough memory.
What the heck could be taking up so much memory?
What's the fix? There isn't really anything to delete (that I'm aware of)....
Search seemed helpess with "internal" and "memory" there were WAY too many posts. Please help if you can!

Browser cache might be huge, if she has many sites opened in many browser windows.
Her "not many" apps might be "many" enough for a phone with limited internal memory like Nexus - having ~200MB for apps, data and cache together.
There are exactly 3 solutions:
1) Keep browser in check. It's always a good practice.
2) Use native Froyo method and move apps to SD.
3) Use Apps2EXT method and move apps to SD. You can also move Dalvik-cache to /cache.

Hmm, she has MAYBE 10 apps?
I downloaded a cache cleaner and ran that, it removed maybe 8 MBs? That was this past weekend, and she got that message about low memory today. I doubt she has even opened the browser since then to be honest. Very light user.
I sent enomther a tweet, his reply was:
RT @enomther @CallipH need to implement either dalvik-cache-2-/cache or apps2ext in SpareParts (DataStorage options) ... sysdc-2-/cache is default on cm6
okay, so option 1 is to move dalvik cache to sd, which I think you do in Advanced > Amon's recovery, right? Any ill effects from doing this if I switch roms?..
Option 2, apps2ext... she does not have an ext partition and frankly surprised this is needed... is the nexus that low on memory? My Vibrant has 1.6 GBs. same question, any ill effects if moving to another rom with the apps on the ext? I did that a lot back in the day with the G1. I remember having some issues and having to do fix permissions a lot.
Thanks for all the help man.

Check, what's using the memory. Just go over the apps.
You can't do Dalvik-to-SD, because it requires EXT partition, which you don't have. You can do Dalvik-to-Cache.
There is no hassle in having apps on EXT whatsoever. The only hassle is getting them there.
ROM has nothing to do with application data usage either.

Have you tried wiping the Dalvik cache? Worth ago in case there's some built up crap I spose.

^^ thanks.
^ I did before flashing the rom. Will do it again.
I know it's relative, but how much internal memory would you expect someone to have when they just have about 10 apps?

Depends on the apps. I can count 2 - Google Earth and Motonav, for example - that take together 50MB of space without even counting the cache part. Another 4 apps like that, and you're out of memory (if you don't move them to SD using Froyo's method or old Apps2SD-EXT method).

There's also numerous games that are > 10MB, can easily add up.

I'm curious if Touchdown (Exchzange work email) is doing something funky... I know the apps on her phone and they are all very small. Thank you guys all for the posts.
I think I may format her card and partition it and move the cache to the ext partition and see what her memory looks like after that.
Any issues you guys can think of with that, or other ideas?

Download DiskUsage, and it will give you a good idea of what the problem is...
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App

[q] sd-ext s2e

Hello all. I have problem with my sd-ext. What i mean. It happend with 2 different ROMs. Yesterday with CM9 and today with Apocalypse. All works ok till i use S2E. I checked in S2E option Mount as ext4, reboot, checked move apps to sd-ext and all gone. No have them and system looks like after reinstal - fresh. Inn app manager apps are but only as browser.dolphin.firefox.opera... or com.sygic.aura. But they are invisible in drawer. What i am doing wrong. How to move safetly to sd-ext without that problems. Help!

try darktremors app2sd

But i want to know what heppend... It is S2E fault or sd-ext sth wrong?

Wojtys said:
But i want to know what heppend... It is S2E fault or sd-ext sth wrong?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried S2E today, and it did not work. Looks like undocumented rubbish to me.
I tried moving only the Dalvik cache, but after I activated that function and rebooted, all the settings but the last were greyed out, so I could not even undo what the piece of garbage had done.
Another point is that it has a setting allowing you to choose between ext3 and ext4. This is stupid, because the normal user cannot possibly know what to choose there. He cannot know whether his ext partition is ext3 or ext4, because the most common recovery, Clockworkmod, has no such choice in its SD card partitioning function. If the program itself cannot find out, how can the user? It is not even clear what the setting actually does.
So we keep wading through the idiot swamp, until somebody writes a usable program and documents it properly, if a really good program needs documentation at all.
My general advice is, look carefully at a program. Check its settings. Check its documentation for quality and completeness. As soon as you spot the first sign of madhouse style, drop it like a hot potato and look for something better. There are too many garbage programs around these days to waste our time with.
If you cannot find any that fulfills the minimal requirements for decent software, give up on the apps-to-ext idea. Buy a phone with more internal memory, if you have money to spare, or delete the programs you can do without.
The minimal requirement for an apps-to-sd program would be that it can cleanly move installed programs to the ext partition and back. Since you may have installed too many programs to move them all back, I would think that the program should help you to uninstall enough programs to make the rest fit, if you have to move them back.

hgmichna said:
I tried S2E today, and it did not work. Looks like undocumented rubbish to me.
I tried moving only the Dalvik cache, but after I activated that function and rebooted, all the settings but the last were greyed out, so I could not even undo what the piece of garbage had done.
Another point is that it has a setting allowing you to choose between ext3 and ext4. This is stupid, because the normal user cannot possibly know what to choose there. He cannot know whether his ext partition is ext3 or ext4, because the most common recovery, Clockworkmod, has no such choice in its SD card partitioning function. If the program itself cannot find out, how can the user? It is not even clear what the setting actually does.
So we keep wading through the idiot swamp, until somebody writes a usable program and documents it properly, if a really good program needs documentation at all.
My general advice is, look carefully at a program. Check its settings. Check its documentation for quality and completeness. As soon as you spot the first sign of madhouse style, drop it like a hot potato and look for something better. There are too many garbage programs around these days to waste our time with.
If you cannot find any that fulfills the minimal requirements for decent software, give up on the apps-to-ext idea. Buy a phone with more internal memory, if you have money to spare, or delete the programs you can do without.
The minimal requirement for an apps-to-sd program would be that it can cleanly move installed programs to the ext partition and back. Since you may have installed too many programs to move them all back, I would think that the program should help you to uninstall enough programs to make the rest fit, if you have to move them back.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Undocumented rubbish? What? The app or ur brain? You cant just call an app like that just because you cant make it work. Alot of users have been using it without problems.
Sent from my GT-S5830 using xda premium

Shadow xD said:
Undocumented rubbish? What? The app or ur brain? You cant just call an app like that just because you cant make it work. Alot of users have been using it without problems.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What exactly do you mean by, "make it work"?

S2e moves all non System apps to SD-ext. So, it will move itself to SD-ext aftwr reboot. This means the SD-ext won't be mounted at boot, and non System apps won't be accessible after boot (even if their shorcuts are there).
Simple solution for this problem; make s2e a system app before running it, and use some common sense before flaming a great app.
How to make it a System app? Move s2e to System/app and give rw, r, r permissions.

FuFu 98swaponv5 mod - Internal storage swap!

Hello there! now that we have custom kernel, I want to share with you this Little trick I used in my old Motorola z6 when I used to develop xD
Due to the fact that memory cards have sometimes low data transfer rates, swapping on our devices sometimes is a Little bit slow... to solve the issue, I used to place a swapfile in the internal storage of the phone, wich has pretty fast data transfer rates... so I did this once again with my milestone, and the peformance is amazing!! I'm currently using CM7.2.4 with a 48mb swapfile placed inside /data...
Just wanted to share this with all the people of this community, I also modded the script written by FuFu, so the script insted of creating the swapfile in the sd-card, it creates it in /data
I won't post the modded script because I want FuFu himself to decide if the mod is OK, and make his own reléase! Just a matter of respect...
So that's it, try it out people, you're gonna be amazed....

no Problem, you can post your modded script here
i also tryed to use a swapfile on /data, but for me it wont work, if i try to use swapon on /data it sayes:
invalide argument
but i will take a look at your modded script and also i will include it in future updates
i think it may be very interesting for all users to get some extra performance

I'm not sure it is as good idea as it sounds first.
Memories based on flash technology are degrading when writing on it. (I know they are degrading anyway.)
Swapping means a lot of writing and reading and while you can easily buy a new SD-Card you cannot change your phone's internal memory.
Maybe my fears are baseless, but i don't wanna risk.
May someone with better knowledge correct me.

Plus, it is not possible to enable swap on yaffs filesystem "out-of-the-box" as they are incompatible.

I have CM7.2.4 now and three primary partitions on SD Card: Fat32, Ext2 and Linux Swap.
I installed 98swaponv5 after CM7.2.4 rom with OpenRecovery. Does 98swaponv5 have some settings or how I can know it's working?
Well it seems that I can multitask and change from Facebook to other apps and back and it doesn't reload, so I guess the swap is working.
But the default browser always reloads the page when I switch to the browser. Looks like all the other apps work great with the swap except the browser, I wonder why?
EDIT: Right now the browser doesn't reload anymore when I switch to it. I have rebooted and installed some apps, killed some apps. Looks like the Milestone just keeps getting better.

If you have Terminal Emulator installed, you can type free and it will show you the amount of total/used/free memory and in the row "Swap" the informations about swap.