Database Develop

5GB internal storage unaccessible to apps?

I'm a new nook user and successfully put nookie froyo on over the weekend. I would like to use my 5gb of internal memory for the reader apps (nook, aldiko etc) but they all only seem to look for an sdcard. I can see that media directory is there and I can see the files via ES File Explorer but can't figure out how to make the nook (or other reader apps) see this storage.
On my Samsung captivate the internal storage shows up as an sdcard and my external card is mnt under that so I was expecting a similar layout with the nook internal memory.
I'm not sure if this is just the way it is or have I done something wrong?
also when I go into SD card and Phone Storage settings it shows:
Total Space: unavailable
Available Space: unavailable
Mount and Format SD card options are greyed out
Internal Phone Storage Available Space: 513MB

WinoOutWest said:
I'm a new nook user and successfully put nookie froyo on over the weekend. I would like to use my 5gb of internal memory for the reader apps (nook, aldiko etc) but they all only seem to look for an sdcard. I can see that media directory is there and I can see the files via ES File Explorer but can't figure out how to make the nook (or other reader apps) see this storage.
On my Samsung captivate the internal storage shows up as an sdcard and my external card is mnt under that so I was expecting a similar layout with the nook internal memory.
I'm not sure if this is just the way it is or have I done something wrong?
also when I go into SD card and Phone Storage settings it shows:
Total Space: unavailable
Available Space: unavailable
Mount and Format SD card options are greyed out
Internal Phone Storage Available Space: 513MB
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The apps would have to know to look for it at /media, and if they do, they should readily be able to access it on that path.
I just tested this myself, I copied my /sdcard/Books to /media, renamed /sdcard/Books to /sdcard/Books-bak (just to make sure I wasn't accidentally still referencing the old location) and in FBReader I changed my Library path to /Media/Books and it works fine.
So you have access to R/W the path, just the apps don't necessarily know to look there. FBReader you can change the path, but not sure about others.

thanks for mentioning FBReader. Aldiko, like many apps seems to insist on SDCard as the root and doesn't find anything. I d/l FBReader and set it to use the internal memory so thanks for that.
Many other apps are the same in wanting an SDCard for storage. It would be nice to have an app or setting that would allow us to map that directory to "SDCard"

WinoOutWest said:
thanks for mentioning FBReader. Aldiko, like many apps seems to insist on SDCard as the root and doesn't find anything. I d/l FBReader and set it to use the internal memory so thanks for that.
Many other apps are the same in wanting an SDCard for storage. It would be nice to have an app or setting that would allow us to map that directory to "SDCard"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have not tried it, but creating a symlink would accomplish that.

i had the same problem with the initial flash of honeycomb but then i reflashed with "second edition" and it seems to be working fine now

cnewsgrp said:
Have not tried it, but creating a symlink would accomplish that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Except fat doesn't have symlinks Yes, it would be nice to ln -s /media /sdcard/media or something but it won't work.

Is that /media partition only good for storage? I noticed the few apps I installed so far put files on the SD card, and when the SD is removed, the apps don't work anymore. I tried copying everything on the SD to the /media and left the SD out but the apps still didn't run. Do I have to put all the .apk files under /media and install them from there? I'm trying to use SD only for media storage and no app bits if possible.

drazil22 said:
Is that /media partition only good for storage? I noticed the few apps I installed so far put files on the SD card, and when the SD is removed, the apps don't work anymore. I tried copying everything on the SD to the /media and left the SD out but the apps still didn't run. Do I have to put all the .apk files under /media and install them from there? I'm trying to use SD only for media storage and no app bits if possible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If an app requires an SD card, it requires an SD card. Period. It's not going to fall over to using /media magically.
You can use apps without the SD card of course, but again, if they need SD they are not going to work. Apps are installed in /data/app and typically app data in /data/data but a lot of apps, especially games, require SD storage.

How would I use adb to push a file to /media? I'm trying to store some movies in here and it gives me an error that media is read-only.
jv

I've got a question. Since I got a 16 GB mSD card, is there a way to resize /media (if there is a reason to) so that I have more room for applications?

johnnyv5 said:
How would I use adb to push a file to /media? I'm trying to store some movies in here and it gives me an error that media is read-only.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
While I have not tried it, I would imagine that you could use Root Explorer to change the folder from R/O to R/W
You could alternately do an adb command "adb shell" and then use Unix commands to do that.

Issue with file managers on the driod bionic

So far I have tried linda, astro, and root explorer.
When I try and click on the sd card it is showing me the 8gig partition share on the phone that is set up for app installs.
None of the file manager programs, besides the stock one on the phone, are properly showing the sd card.
Anyone else notice this?

Working fine for me. Root explorer included
Sent from my DROID BIONIC using xda premium

The internal drive is 16GB
Once formatted to FAT, is gets reduced to just over 15GB
Then the OS is placed on the drive in a separate partition which takes up roughly about 4GB bringing that once 16GB drive down again to about 11GB
The remaining partition is partitioned once again to create an internal storage area similar to the SDCARD partition on the XOOM, as well an an application area where programs are pre-installed to.
That is why your internal storage area says only 8GB
The numbers I used are not exact but are rough estimates.

you just have to look around in it. both sd cards are there. its just not as simple as the stock one. my xoom is the same way.

dellenrules said:
The internal drive is 16GB
Once formatted to FAT, is gets reduced to just over 15GB
Then the OS is placed on the drive in a separate partition which takes up roughly about 4GB bringing that once 16GB drive down again to about 11GB
The remaining partition is partitioned once again to create an internal storage area similar to the SDCARD partition on the XOOM, as well an an application area where programs are pre-installed to.
That is why your internal storage area says only 8GB
The numbers I used are not exact but are rough estimates.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is exactly right. Is there a way to use any file managers then? They are all being fooled into thinking the internal storage is the sd card when it obviously isnt.
I have found no setting or way thus far to point the file manager apps to the actual sd card instead of the internal partition.

its a messed up sytem if they gave us more memory then it wouldnt b so bad.

not at the moment. either devoplers will have to modify there apps or a custom rom is needed to remap the memory.
strunker said:
This is exactly right. Is there a way to use any file managers then? They are all being fooled into thinking the internal storage is the sd card when it obviously isnt.
I have found no setting or way thus far to point the file manager apps to the actual sd card instead of the internal partition.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

I actually found a temporary solution to this.. If you are rooted of course since you need to be to do anything useful on this thing.
I used root explorer for this.
For whatever reason they decided to name the internal memory application partition, to sdcard... This is why the file manager apps are getting confused.
The real sdcard is named sdcard-ext...
So All I did was rename sdcard (which is the internal partition), then I renamed sdcard-ext to sdcard. The file manager programs then pointed towards the actual sdcard..
However, upon reboot the folders renamed themselves back to the way they were... Not sure why they are doing that but they are...
If the folders would stop renaming themselves back the above method would be a solution for this prob.

In addition to the above, I dont know if astro has this feature, but on linda you can create a shortcut to the card and place it as a shortcut directly to the folder.
Wish it was possible to get the source to these apps. Could likely edit it and point it towards the proper folder.

Root explorer will allow you to view everything. If your phone is rooted you could edit them with this app as well.
Sent from my DROID BIONIC using xda premium

The SD Card is actually sd-ext in file managers sdcard is the internal

[Q] How to View SD Card Content from Vivid?

How does one view the content of the SD Card from the Vivid device itself?
I can connect the Vivid to my PC via USB cable and view the SD Card as a separate drive on the PC, but cannot see how to view the SD Card content from within the device.
Suggestions? TIA.

Get a file explorer app from the marketplace. Try Astro.
Sent from my HTC PH39100 using xda premium

DUTCH Van Atlanta said:
How does one view the content of the SD Card from the Vivid device itself?
I can connect the Vivid to my PC via USB cable and view the SD Card as a separate drive on the PC, but cannot see how to view the SD Card content from within the device.
Suggestions? TIA.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First, you need to get a file manager application from the market. There are many of them, mostly free or low cost. I'm not crazy about Astro, the one I downloaded, but it works. Look at some others.
On my Vivid in the root directory is a folder called sdcard. That is the 8.83 GB user portion internal memory portion of the "16 GB" internal memory. Also, I have a folder called sdcard2. It's the 32 GB micro SD card I installed.
Interestingly, there is also a folder in the root directory called mnt. Under it is a folder called sdcard. It is the same as the sdcard under the root directory. Under mnt/sdcard is ext_sd. That is the 32 GB external SD card. I don't know if this duplicate listing is the work of the file manager app, or if it is the Android OS, but I am able to find files and copy files from one place to another.
With me making no changes for applications and data during application installations (I'm not sure I can), all of the apps I have installed have gone into the other portion of internal memory. The data seems to be going into the user portion of internal memory. When I installed the external SD card, I copied music files to it from my PC. The music player found them with no problem. Also, once the card was installed, photos I took were placed on the external SD card instead of internal memory.

brucegil said:
First, you need to get a file manager application from the market. There are many of them, mostly free or low cost. I'm not crazy about Astro, the one I downloaded, but it works. Look at some others.
On my Vivid in the root directory is a folder called sdcard.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How does one access the root directory? Is that what the file manager app does?
(New to Android, and still in the learning phase.)

DUTCH Van Atlanta said:
How does one access the root directory? Is that what the file manager app does?
(New to Android, and still in the learning phase.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't feel alone. I just came from several years on the old Windows Mobile. In the file manager, I click on the Up icon until it won't go any further. You will see only a '/' in the address/location bar near the top. You will likely see folders such as acct, app-cache, config, sys, sysytem, etc., as well as mnt, sdcard and sdcard2. Tap on the sdcard2 folder icon, and you will see any folders you have on your external SD card.
In Astro, you can specifiy where the program opens when it starts. It can be the root directry, the exteranl SD card or any other location.
By the way, the other poster likes Astro. It comes with other tools. The "free" version has ads, but it might have a paid version. And it does come with an Exit button, something missing from a lot of Android apps.

brucegil said:
Don't feel alone. I just came from several years on the old Windows Mobile. In the file manager, I click on the Up icon until it won't go any further. You will see only a '/' in the address/location bar near the top. You will likely see folders such as acct, app-cache, config, sys, sysytem, etc., as well as mnt, sdcard and sdcard2. Tap on the sdcard2 folder icon, and you will see any folders you have on your external SD card.
In Astro, you can specifiy where the program opens when it starts. It can be the root directry, the exteranl SD card or any other location.
By the way, the other poster likes Astro. It comes with other tools. The "free" version has ads, but it might have a paid version. And it does come with an Exit button, something missing from a lot of Android apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks much!

brucegil said:
First, you need to get a file manager application from the market. There are many of them, mostly free or low cost. I'm not crazy about Astro, the one I downloaded, but it works. Look at some others.
On my Vivid in the root directory is a folder called sdcard. That is the 8.83 GB user portion internal memory portion of the "16 GB" internal memory. Also, I have a folder called sdcard2. It's the 32 GB micro SD card I installed.
Interestingly, there is also a folder in the root directory called mnt. Under it is a folder called sdcard. It is the same as the sdcard under the root directory. Under mnt/sdcard is ext_sd. That is the 32 GB external SD card. I don't know if this duplicate listing is the work of the file manager app, or if it is the Android OS, but I am able to find files and copy files from one place to another.
With me making no changes for applications and data during application installations (I'm not sure I can), all of the apps I have installed have gone into the other portion of internal memory. The data seems to be going into the user portion of internal memory. When I installed the external SD card, I copied music files to it from my PC. The music player found them with no problem. Also, once the card was installed, photos I took were placed on the external SD card instead of internal memory.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
/sdcard is a symlink to /mnt/sdcard/ its the same thing, just a 'shortcut' to the actual mounted partition located in /mnt
/sdcard2 is a symlink to /mnt/ext_sd/ same thing, just a 'shortcut'
the actual ROOT system is inaccessible unless you have root access and an app that can see it, like root explorer, or es file manager. there are probably a few others that can get into the actual root of the filesystem.

Pirateghost said:
/sdcard is a symlink to /mnt/sdcard/ its the same thing, just a 'shortcut' to the actual mounted partition located in /mnt
/sdcard2 is a symlink to /mnt/ext_sd/ same thing, just a 'shortcut'
the actual ROOT system is inaccessible unless you have root access and an app that can see it, like root explorer, or es file manager. there are probably a few others that can get into the actual root of the filesystem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the explanation. What I meant by "root" was the top level of the file system, e.g. C:\ on a Windows PC. "Root" apparently has a different meaning in the Android OS.
ES File Manager was the other highly rated file manager, along with Astro when I searched for "file manager" in the Market.

brucegil said:
Thanks for the explanation. What I meant by "root" was the top level of the file system, e.g. C:\ on a Windows PC. "Root" apparently has a different meaning in the Android OS.
ES File Manager was the other highly rated file manager, along with Astro when I searched for "file manager" in the Market.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
root in linux and subsequently, android, has an entirely different meaning.
in a sense, you have it right. / in linux/android is the root of the filesystem, equivalent to C:\ in windows pcs.
without having root (superuser access) on linux/android, you cant see the / or most of the directories below it. the general user only has direct access to storage, like /sdcard, /sdcard2 (also referred to as ext_sd, or sd_ext)

brucegil said:
First, you need to get a file manager application from the market. There are many of them, mostly free or low cost. I'm not crazy about Astro, the one I downloaded, but it works. Look at some others.
On my Vivid in the root directory is a folder called sdcard. That is the 8.83 GB user portion internal memory portion of the "16 GB" internal memory. Also, I have a folder called sdcard2. It's the 32 GB micro SD card I installed.
Interestingly, there is also a folder in the root directory called mnt. Under it is a folder called sdcard. It is the same as the sdcard under the root directory. Under mnt/sdcard is ext_sd. That is the 32 GB external SD card. I don't know if this duplicate listing is the work of the file manager app, or if it is the Android OS, but I am able to find files and copy files from one place to another.
With me making no changes for applications and data during application installations (I'm not sure I can), all of the apps I have installed have gone into the other portion of internal memory. The data seems to be going into the user portion of internal memory. When I installed the external SD card, I copied music files to it from my PC. The music player found them with no problem. Also, once the card was installed, photos I took were placed on the external SD card instead of internal memory.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was wondering about this, can we Not access the rest of this 16GB ...what happened to the other 8GB...?
I too just made the Jump from WM 6.5 (<-- nightmare), so I have no clue how a lot of things work too. ;P hehe I'm a noob again ;P

StrangeShadow said:
I was wondering about this, can we Not access the rest of this 16GB ...what happened to the other 8GB...?
I too just made the Jump from WM 6.5 (<-- nightmare), so I have no clue how a lot of things work too. ;P hehe I'm a noob again ;P
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the phone is marketed as having 16gb of onboard storage, but in reality, 1gb is dedicated to the ROM, aka /system
4gb is dedicated to /data which handles app installs and the like.
the remaining is storage for you to use.
be lucky you have all that. my other HTC phones all just had a mere 2gb or 4gb TOTAL storage (all allocated to /system and /data), which required you to have an SDCard just to be able to take pics or put music/movies/ringtones on it....

Pirateghost said:
the phone is marketed as having 16gb of onboard storage, but in reality, 1gb is dedicated to the ROM, aka /system
4gb is dedicated to /data which handles app installs and the like.
the remaining is storage for you to use.
be lucky you have all that. my other HTC phones all just had a mere 2gb or 4gb TOTAL storage (all allocated to /system and /data), which required you to have an SDCard just to be able to take pics or put music/movies/ringtones on it....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow! Yeah I figured at least a Gig for the Rom. The rest is pretty nuts though, any way we can see a detailed breakdown on our phone? Didn't expect it to be so much.
Can we install apps on the sd card, like some WM apps?

[Q] Xperia T file system question

Hi all,
Just got me an Xperia T, very happy with it.
Only thing I am having trouble understanding is how the file system works, please let me try and explain.
I have a 16gb micro SD card in the device and it also has 16gb of internal storage.
When I mount the device to windows it shows two drives (Internal Storage and SD Card), now these are pretty obvious as to which each one is.
Now my quandary: When I use astro file manager to browse the phone the file system is different (in fact pretty much the opposite).
The micro SD card shows up as "ext_card" and the internal storage (I think) shows up as "sdcard" and then there is another folder called "int_storage" that is empty.
Is this correct?
Could someone please clarify this for me?
Thanks,
Dave

Yes, this is the way it's supposed to be.
When you connect to the PC using MTP, you mount SDcard and ext_card from mnt.
Sent from my elegant Xperia™ Ion using xda premium app.

Cheers for the super fast response!
I thought that was how it was working but it was just a little confusing since it swaps around the name of each drive when plugged into windows.
Thanks again.

The way the T handles internal storage is a little odd...
Older devices have the "internal SD" formatted as FAT32.
Newer Android devices have this trick called emulated storage, where a FUSE module does special permissions magic to allow /data/media (on an ext4 system) to be mounted to /sdcard
The T is a little odd in that instead of using /data/media, it has int_storage or something like that, which is then remapped via FUSE to /sdcard. It's the only device I know of to have the internal SD formatted as ext4 but not "unified" internal storage (e.g. /sdcard is just a directory under /data)

Didn't really understand any of that.
But it's nice to know that I was right and it does handle the storage a little strangely (I deduced that much from your post at least).

PLEASE change path in Ativ S to install apps to SD card

Now there is all this new progress with unlocked Ativ S' can some clever hacker please allow apps to be installed direct to SD card. Maybe via a registry edit. This was done for the Microsoft Surface so may be possible in the Ativ S. The following is taken direct from my hints and tips thread for the Surface...
52. Install Apps Direct to SD Card
By default only media files can be installed to the SD cards and apps are installed to internal memory. If you have a 32gig tablet, you will realise internal memory is precious and limited. Free up internal memory by changing the location of where apps are installed. Run Regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Appx and change the location path of the PackageRoot key from C:\ProgramFiles\WindowsApps to say D:\WindowsApps (where D: is the drive letter of your SD card and WindowsApps is the name of a folder you created in your SD card). You may need to change permissions on the Appx registry folder so that you can edit the key. You can also change the app repository to another directory by changing the PackageRepository key in a similar manner.
PLEASE!!!

Currently, we can't even browse the SD card, much less install apps there. It's not even mounted at a visible path. I'll post if I find a way, though.

GoodDayToDie said:
Currently, we can't even browse the SD card, much less install apps there. It's not even mounted at a visible path. I'll post if I find a way, though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you sir! Good luck!

tboy2000 said:
Thank you sir! Good luck!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Looking at the fs directly, i'd say that everything is mounted through Mount point, like android/Linux do.

Don't be too sure it's a user-mode visible mount point, though. There's a special DLL in System32 for accessing the SD card. It may just be mounted on a different drive letter - -WOLF-'s hack accesses C:\ specifically, though it could access others - but there's no reference to an actual path for it anywhere that I can see.