Database Develop

ext4 vs ext3

I did a search but couldn't find anything specific... so my question is, should I upgrade my ext3 to ext4? if so why? if not.. also why

gmelchert said:
I did a search but couldn't find anything specific... so my question is, should I upgrade my ext3 to ext4? if so why? if not.. also why
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No. Most (all?) of the new 2.1 test build leak based ROMs do no support a2sd on ext4. On (most of) these same builds ext3 works automatically.

danknee said:
No. Most (all?) of the new 2.1 test build leak based ROMs do no support a2sd on ext4. On these same builds ext3 works automatically.
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thanks thats good to know!

I know most of you are not Linux users so let me break this down for you:
EXT2: Very basic filesystem when it comes down to it -- think of it as a Unix filesystem you could place inbetween the likes of FAT32 and NTFS. I would nearly argue that this is the modern equivalent of FAT32 (which really really needs to die). We really shouldn't be using FAT32 but lack of native windows compatibility stops EXT2 from being a candidate for this usage.
EXT2 is highly recommended for your flash card. It won't over stress it and there aren't many alternatives that are better these days unless you're dealing with raw flash, which you'd then use something like YAFFS2 or JFFS2. The flash in compact flash cards is not raw flash.
EXT3: Picture EXT2 with a journal. It is backwards compatible with EXT2 (just doesn't read the journal).
A journal is NOT recommended for flash devices. (At least when the filesystem was not designed for raw flash and isn't tuned properly like YAFFS2 and JFFS2). Do you really want your phone to write all the metadata to the journal first and then to the filesystem? That's a ton of unnecessary I/O. If it has full journaling enabled you're writing all your data twice. This is not a good idea for your phone. This is one reason why NTFS has not become a standard for flash devices: Journals on flash are bad unless it's designed for flash from the ground up.
EXT4: same as EXT3 but is a copy-on-write FS with delayed allocation (holds data in memory longer before writing to disk to be more efficient / prevent fragmentation), increased number of files and size of files (more than a phone ever could need in our lifetime), etc. Some improvements across the board but not backwards compatible with EXT3 anymore if you're using the delayed allocation. Most likely to eat more memory on your phone.
This is completely unnecessary for a phone and really does not fit your needs. I don't understand why anyone would attempt to use this unless they simply thought "4 is bigger than 2 or 3 so it must be better!"
So there you have it. I may have forgotten a minor detail here or there, but this is the gist of it.

feld said:
I know most of you are not Linux users so let me break this down for you:
EXT2: Very basic filesystem when it comes down to it -- think of it as a Unix filesystem you could place inbetween the likes of FAT32 and NTFS. I would nearly argue that this is the modern equivalent of FAT32 (which really really needs to die). We really shouldn't be using FAT32 but lack of native windows compatibility stops EXT2 from being a candidate for this usage.
EXT2 is highly recommended for your flash card. It won't over stress it and there aren't many alternatives that are better these days unless you're dealing with raw flash, which you'd then use something like YAFFS2 or JFFS2. The flash in compact flash cards is not raw flash.
EXT3: Picture EXT2 with a journal. It is backwards compatible with EXT2 (just doesn't read the journal).
A journal is NOT recommended for flash devices. Do you really want your phone to write all the metadata to the journal first and then to the filesystem? That's a ton of unnecessary I/O. If it has full journaling enabled you're writing all your data twice. This is not a good idea for your phone. This is one reason why NTFS has not become a standard for flash devices.
EXT4: same as EXT3 but includes is a copy-on-write FS with delayed allocation (holds data in memory longer before writing to disk to be more efficient / prevent fragmentation), increased number of files and size of files (more than a phone ever could need in our lifetime), etc. Some improvements across the board but not backwards compatible with EXT3 anymore if you're using the delayed allocation.
This is completely unnecessary for a phone and really does not fit your needs. I don't understand why anyone would attempt to use this unless they simply thought "4 is bigger than 2 or 3 so it must be better!"
So there you have it. I may have forgotten a minor detail here or there, but this is the gist of it.
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Nice explanation.
You left out the part about how apps load faster from RAM then they do from any sd card. The people running slower sd cards especially may potentially be experiencing a performance decrease due to a2sd.
I have abandoned a2sd because after I load every app that I use, (plus 10 random ones) I still have room left. Then I use the extra half a gig on my sd card for another 5 cds worth of music.

feld said:
I know most of you are not Linux users so let me break this down for you:
EXT2: Very basic filesystem when it comes down to it -- think of it as a Unix filesystem you could place inbetween the likes of FAT32 and NTFS. I would nearly argue that this is the modern equivalent of FAT32 (which really really needs to die). We really shouldn't be using FAT32 but lack of native windows compatibility stops EXT2 from being a candidate for this usage.
EXT2 is highly recommended for your flash card. It won't over stress it and there aren't many alternatives that are better these days unless you're dealing with raw flash, which you'd then use something like YAFFS2 or JFFS2. The flash in compact flash cards is not raw flash.
EXT3: Picture EXT2 with a journal. It is backwards compatible with EXT2 (just doesn't read the journal).
A journal is NOT recommended for flash devices. (At least when the filesystem was not designed for raw flash and isn't tuned properly like YAFFS2 and JFFS2). Do you really want your phone to write all the metadata to the journal first and then to the filesystem? That's a ton of unnecessary I/O. If it has full journaling enabled you're writing all your data twice. This is not a good idea for your phone. This is one reason why NTFS has not become a standard for flash devices: Journals on flash are bad unless it's designed for flash from the ground up.
EXT4: same as EXT3 but is a copy-on-write FS with delayed allocation (holds data in memory longer before writing to disk to be more efficient / prevent fragmentation), increased number of files and size of files (more than a phone ever could need in our lifetime), etc. Some improvements across the board but not backwards compatible with EXT3 anymore if you're using the delayed allocation. Most likely to eat more memory on your phone.
This is completely unnecessary for a phone and really does not fit your needs. I don't understand why anyone would attempt to use this unless they simply thought "4 is bigger than 2 or 3 so it must be better!"
So there you have it. I may have forgotten a minor detail here or there, but this is the gist of it.
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Click to collapse
I had never thought about this before. It makes a good point, flash memory dies after x ammount of Reads and Writes. Given it's mostly in the 100 millions, but it does more reading and writing than you would think it does, and you are effectivly killing the memory card twice as fast.
Good thing these things are relativly cheap.

this is all really good to know. thanks. i spent $100 on my sd card so maybe i should just foemat the whole thing to fat32.. (its class 10) while you guys are here, what exactly is the use of swap?
Sent from my HERO200 using the XDA mobile application powered by Tapatalk

gmelchert said:
this is all really good to know. thanks. i spent $100 on my sd card so maybe i should just foemat the whole thing to fat32.. (its class 10) while you guys are here, what exactly is the use of swap?
Sent from my HERO200 using the XDA mobile application powered by Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
SWAP = Page file in the Linux world. From what I have read (This may have changed since then) We don't have the ability to use Swap yet.

danknee said:
You left out the part about how apps load faster from RAM then they do from any sd card. The people running slower sd cards especially may potentially be experiencing a performance decrease due to a2sd.
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Click to collapse
You're right -- apps do load faster from RAM. However, when you're not using a2sd the applications are not on the phone in "RAM". They're in a flash chip inside the phone -- just like on your sd card. The performance should be nearly the same when you're using a2sd as it is when you're not using it.
The only reasons why a2sd should be slower are:
1) You have a cheap, slow SD card
2) The interface from the SD card to the phone is cheap and slower than the internal flash chip's interface. It was just a cheap design choice the manufacturer made.
3) The internal flash is simply faster from it being a better flash chip

feld is right. Using anything other than ext2 for the apps2sd partition boggles the mind. I have no idea why people insist on a: providing support for it and b: encouraging people to do it.
Ok, provide support for it for the people who know what they're doing/just want to do it for the hell of it, but having a journalled filesystem on an sd card makes no sense whatsoever.
As feld says ext4 uses up more RAM than ext2, which might be all well and good for things like the N1/Evo/Desire etc but not everyone has such a RAM beefy phone.
Besides that, the bottle neck in speed is the SD card/controller. No "faster filesystem" is going to improve that. Adding more IO is only going to slow things down.

Moved as not Android Development.

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] heating problem and internal storage

Problems with my N1 are continuous...
I really need your help guys...
If some of you read my topics, the most terrible problem I have had was that I lost signal and sometimes I have "only emergency call"...now this problem disappear, and it works fine...
but I can't understand if another problem is important or not!
I mean, my phone became hot...some times warm when I play, or using many many apps...and more I use it and more it became hot...but not so hot that i can be burned!
but yesterday I starting to worry about it, because I've done a 20 minutes call without 3G (only wifi ON but not connected because no hotspot was usable) and the phone became really hot, we are in summer and it was pleny annoying have it in hand...
Is it normal?
Can I monitor the temperature of the phone? how?
I hope that I don't have to give my phone to htc for warranty
Another 2 question:
Can i reinstall the radio rom? what is the lastes for nexus1?
Can some one explain me the problem of the internal storage? because I'm on cyanogen and I've activate the option that all app have to be installed on SD, but I've read that someone make an ext partition, someother use script with app2sd, other said that app2sd is old from froyo...
I didn't unsterst if I have to wipe and make this partition or not...
thanks a lot in adavance

Temperature:
Relax. Phones, and their CPU, get hot.
A2SD:
Read FAQ, question 9. Then read the thread it points you to. Then read some more threads, until you know what you want. It's not one answer, it's a matter of preference.

thanks how much space I have to reserve to ext4 partition?

Again, it's a matter of preference. If you see yourself loading a LOT of apps, and/or want to try MIUI or Sense-based custom ROMs, then you'll be good with 1GB EXT4. If you just want to move your apps but use stock or CM - 512MB EXT4 will be enough.

thanks jack
I have CM...but...i cannot understand:
1. what is the difference between DT, Data2ext e data2whathever
2. if I make an ext partition of 512Mb then all apps goes there? or it work like the internal memory so part of the apps goes in the ext partition and the other part in fat partiton?
3. what is better using Miui with integrated script? or CM + DT?
really really thanks a lot

I'll try to explain.
The OS isn't aware of the change, so it keeps acting just like it usually does - putting the apps either on internal memory or on internal+FAT (depends on your settings, app preferences, etc).
Each app consists of 3 parts:
1) The app itself.
2) The app's data (saves, logs, databases, etc).
3) The system's Dalvik-cache for the app (the environment which is running the app).
DT by default moves part 1 to EXT. Unlike Froyo default method, it moves the whole app to SD (which isn't always the case with default method), and allows this also for widgets etc (which isn't the case with default method). It can also move parts 2 and 3 to SD, but it isn't default and requires explicit user command to initiate. The common use is to move parts 1 and 3 to SD, and leave part 2 on internal NAND.
Data2ext and Data2whatever do essentially the same, but they're moving all 3 parts by default, AFAIK.

thanks a lot!
but if the whole app goes in the ext4 partition 1gb is really few I can't install offline navigator, games and really heavy size apps...
so maybe it's like the default froyo app, one part in the FAT partition and the other in the internal memory...
and with DT one part in the EXT4 and the huge part in the FAT and if it is like I said 512Mb or 1Gb is enough

Each big app - game, offline navigator etc - is by default programmed to use the FAT for the huge databases that it holds. When you download a Glu game, for example, it asks you if to save the data to internal memory or to the SD card. This is additional mechanism, that doesn't depend on the OS at all, and is completely app-specific. ALL the big apps have it, since they're all aware of the low internal storage in smaller/older devices.
I had quite an amount of apps installed on the Nexus, and never needed more than 512MB EXT4, using DT's A2SD with Dalvik2SD enabled (options 1 and 3 enabled from the previous post). I think 1GB should be more than enough for 99% of users.

thanks now it's clear...
I've installed everything...
after giving the a2sd cachesd command
i have to give also the a2sd datasd command? or it is unecessary?
EDIT:
Before I execute the a2sd cachesd the a2sd check working fine, now after the a2sd cachesd if I check I always have permission denied

no one ansewer but I have another problem...
I've installed the last CM 7.1 RC1
I've done a full wipe
installed CM
installed DT
installed gAPPS
everythings works fine but, I see in the Application Manager some app that doesn't appear in the launcher...
for example street view and google books...
I've try to flash again the zip via recovery but nothing change and I can't uninstall them -.-
(Streetview work via google maps however, but google books is a ghost app)

About cachesd and datasd - it's all about your preferences. My suggestion is - if you're light user, don't use any of them, if you're a heavy user - use cachesd (don't execute datasd).
Can't help you with Google books, sorry. Street View isn't considered a separate app, it's add-on for Maps, so it's not supposed to show, AFAIK.

[Q] Nexus one flash partition layout, lowest 63MB...

I've been trying to recover some space on my Nexus one and have been largely successful in doing so with a combination of tricks, but while looking at my partitions and tallying up the numbers something didn't seem to be adding up right; the unit is supposed to have 512MB flash, but I was coming up about 60MB short.
I found this thread which discusses the partition layout of the N1; the sizes they show all seem to match up well with what my device shows. Now, the hex address of the end of the last partion (user data) ends just a couple MB short of 512MB; the start of the first partion (misc) however seems to start over 60MB into the memory space... is there a reason for this, and if so what's occupying those lowest 63.75MB of flash space?

Baseband, AKA "radio", is what you're looking for. Unless you want your Nexus not to boot anymore, it's not advisable to try and repartition baseband space.
Instead of working hard and uselessly wasting effort, use A2SD or any other kind of linking to SD-mounted EXT partition. No matter what you try, Nexus doesn't have nearly enough internal space for any common use.

That answers my question, thank you.
As I mentioned in my original message, I was successful in freeing enough space on my device; a combination of moving apps and libraries (copy to system/lib and symlink back to original location) into the system partition and clearing out bulky or unnecessary apps has left me with over 60MB of free data space without even having to resort to fancy A2SD business (just normal android move to SD card). I was simply curious about what was filling in the remaining space on the flash chip and the radio pretty much fits the bill.

As someone with pretty average amount of user apps (a bit less than 100) and 700 MB user space taken, I can't see the point in doing what you mentioned for anything but pure fun. But if that suits you - I won't argue.

Well, by my app drawer I'm sitting at ~125 (44 purely in data, 34 moved to SD with standard android method, rest either native system or moved there) apps, and if my "puny" N1 can have 60MB free and not even need ext-style A2SD I'm not quite sure how the N1 doesn't have "nearly enough internal space for any common use". Seems to me the point (not "pure fun" as you dismissively imply) of doing what I've done is to able to keep using a pretty decent phone that still has more than enough storage space if you make the least bit of effort to manage it.
But hey, who am I to judge if you prefer to buy whatever latest phone the carriers tell you you should want every 12 months just so they can cram more bloated apps on it?
I appreciate the answer to my initial question about what's using the lowest block of flash storage (I was simply curious about what was using it - I couldn't find information if it was flash overprovisioning or some other low-level portion of the OS using it), but I don't really appreciate the unnecessary negative attitude and commentary for what was just a simple question. Thanks anyways.

I guess you didn't understand my point(s). I'll elaborate:
First and foremost, my point is this: N1 is a crap of a phone. Having it for over 1 year, and trying to adapt it to my wife for 3 or 4 months later on before giving up on it, taught me that this phone can't be dealt with by anyone who doesn't want to accept its touchscreen limitations. It was so refreshing having the phone (MT4G in my case) just react without fuss and not expecting it to crap out at any given time - not even mentioning the huge speed-up. The price of "upgrade" (selling the N1 and buying any previous-generation phone, like DHD/MT4G/DS/DZ) can be brought down to as low as $50, and the benefits are huge, I already wrote it a couple of times on the forum.
To the storage point (actually, several points):
N1's NAND is painfully slow, compared to anything, even to regular Class 2 SD card. You can try copying any large file from NAND to EXT and back, from NAND to NAND and from EXT to EXT and see what takes more time. You're likely to discover that A2SD actually adds performance instead of hurting it.
My app data (/data/data/*) alone takes roughly the same space as your whole internal /data storage has, so I guess the amount of apps alone isn't that meaningful of a measurement. I still call it a perfectly normal and average data usage - I don't have anything special installed, no heavy games that save 200+ MB of data on internal memory, just apps like Goggles, Flash, iGO and a couple of other big apps that aren't movable by normal means (and tend to crap the system out when they're forced to move). The problem in your approach is not even the one-time amount of work you had to invest to make that space, but the amount of work you'll have to invest to keep the phone running - moving system updates to /system upon every update, clearing browser cache, etc - generally, keeping things in constant check. Free time is something you learn to appreciate when you don't have enough, and more hassle-free setup is always preferred IMHO.
But again, different people have different needs, so while I can post my point of view - I don't argue with yours.

Thank you for elaborating, actually; it clarifies much that was not apparent in your earlier posts. This thread isn't really about the pros and cons of the N1 so all I'll say is that the advantages of the N1 (small size, OLED, build quality, tricolor trackball LED, etc..) still outweigh its manageable downsides for me, even compared to very modern handsets - so I'll stick with it until I can find a suitable upgrade that I'm happy with (is it so hard for HTC to make a <=4" qHD AMOLED? Seriously...).
Your point about the NAND being slow is interesting; this is something I hadn't heard and will have to benchmark; if it pans out it would be a point in favor of A2SD, but not really in favor of replacing the device over it
The upkeep I don't find that bad; Titanium backup makes integrating updated system apps a single touch for the batch, and I've only got a couple libraries symlinked into system that are unlikely to be frequently updated. With the space I've freed I shouldn't need to clear browser caches nearly as often - so it actually saves me time and frustration regularly for the one-time effort.
Thanks again for taking the time to reply and to clarify your points

If a2sd+ doesn't work for you you could do custom mtd partitions like I did using fireats custom mtd if u google it u will find it basically you can shrink ur system partition down to almost half because it is being wasted I mean whatever size u want to define it as. I'm using miui and my system partition that i defined is 120 mb (4 mbs are free just in case) and my cache partition is 15 mb. Now that leaves 301 mbs free for user data. I have 107 user apps installed about 10 games or so and I still have 120 mb free for user data for me that's more than enough. This way ur phone won't be buggy because u will only use the system partition for ur rom again I would suggest miui since it takes minimal space and is very smooth and stable with amazing battery life (I use tiamat kernel). Hope this helped
---------- Post added at 06:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:52 PM ----------
Oh if u use a2sd in conjunction with custom mtd then u can have close to 750 mb of space available for user data given that ur sd ext partition is 512 mb (which was stable for me using 8gb card) that's basically rivaling new phone memory so don't just call the nexus one off just yet it can surprise anyone that knows how to play with it or stuck with it for 2years like me lol.

I've already been using root access with shell and titanium backup to move apps and libraries into the system partition without resizing it, so I'm already using the available space there. The only major difference is you've dramatically shrunk your cache partition from the default of (IIRC) 100MB down to 15MB; this seems like a pretty huge reduction, and I feel this would have performance implications, especially when running larger apps...
Other than that, if I find my current space as set up proves to be inadequate in the future (it seems just fine for now) then a2sd appears to be the best option for those who need even more additional space on a nexus one.

15 mb is more than enough for cache partition unless u plan to download huge 3d games and as we all know gaming isn't the reason that we have held on to nexus one for so long I haven't seen any app large enough to not install due to my partition size. I messed around with that too first I had it set at 5 mb but that made market force close every time then I set it at 10 was stable but large apps couldn't download and then I tried 15 and hasn't given me a single problem. Otherwise all that space is wasted so why not dedicate it to user data? With 20 mb partition u can download almost all games that can function on nexus one but since I'm not a big mobile gamer I stuck with 15 mb cache.

Most normal programs don't use /cache.
To fix your cache market issue:
Code:
su
busybox mv /cache/download /sd-ext/download
ln -s /sd-ext/download /cache/download
If you don't have a sd-ext you could use /sdcard/download instead. The directory will already exist if you've downloaded anything from the browser, so I just remove /cache/download before linking. I used to get package file invalid errors from this setup though...
Ti backup will also let you move stuff to /system and re-odex your rom instead of shrinking /system. Sure, everytime system stuff updates you need to click a few times, but unless space is real tight, it works fine. The re-odex-ed rom seems to boot faster for me than with external dalvik-cache, too, but that could just be me pretending. I've never busted out the stop-watch.
I like to keep apks on a2sd and put dalvik-cache on internal memory. It's kinda like raiding the two interfaces together to get the sum of the bandwidths of both when launching a program.
siberx: I'm sticking with the N1 until I find a decent phone that has been designed to fit in my pocket instead of sitting in a purse or on the bar too... I considered the glacier for a while, but, near as I can tell, the only benefits of going there are better touch screen and gpu.

I used firerat's mtd patch to rejigger my girlfriend's desire paritions to something more sensible (something like a 230mb system partition stock? ridiculous!) and that worked smashingly; the same trick against my N1 didn't go so well though. Seems like my Nexus with CM6.1 on it is still using the cache partition for dalvik at least partially, and I think shrinking it down to 20mb made it too small to boot right. Not a big deal anyways; I've got enough space to work with as is
I tried to do some benchmarks on my internal flash for comparsion, but the only decent benchmark I could find (without getting manual about it on command line) was Passmark's mobile benchmark; problem is they wan't 90MB free to run the internal memory benchmark, so my 60MB isn't cutting it for that
Anybody know of a decent benchmark that will bench both internal and SD read/write speeds that doesn't need such a huge chunk of free space?
ezdi: I considered for awhile buying a G2 for the faster CPU/GPU and improved touchscreen, but ultimately decided against it due to the extra weight and thickness (combined with the nexus' other advantages like OLED and tricolour LED). Eventually some manufacturer will figure out there's a still a market for compact high-end phones...

ezdi said:
siberx: I'm sticking with the N1 until I find a decent phone that has been designed to fit in my pocket instead of sitting in a purse or on the bar too... I considered the glacier for a while, but, near as I can tell, the only benefits of going there are better touch screen and gpu.
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Better touch screen is a reason enough by itself.
GPU, much faster and bigger internal memory (both system and data), much faster and bigger RAM, and most of all - 90% HW-compatibility to one of the most popular devices in the world (DHD) - means staying updated and speedy with ROMs that fly where they crawl on Nexus (if they exist at all). Plus - all ROMs besides ICS are 100% functional, CM, MIUI, Sense 3/3.5, you name it. And if it's not enough, 20% hassle-free overclock is standard.
From quite satisfied Glacier owner.