Re-using the cache partition - Mi 3 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Having flashed the extended partition zip, no problems at all with customer ROMs :good:
However, looking at the Mi3's mounted partitions, I see Cache is always heavily under-used. It always shows 372MB free, out of 378MB. I have never seen this value change.
Could some of this be switched to the /data partition?
Or to rebuild system1 and system2 to eg 750MB each, so we can safely have dual boot again?

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[Q] Partition sizes at Flash

I need to resize my /system partition on my phone since its out of space. It seems like the only way I'll be able to do it (regardless of what I do), will be to reflash my phone and make sure the partition is large enough this time.
My question is: In the process of flashing, how are partition sizes for data, system, cache, etc. determined? I notice in Odin3 there is a box for "repartition" so I assume that somewhere there must be a way to define the sizes.
Thanks

I could really use some help solving my A2SD+ problem

For the life of me, I CANNOT get A2SD to work properly.
ROM: MIUI 1.9.16
SD Card: 16GB w/ 1GB EXT4 partition
Problem:
When I do a fresh install of MIUI (wipe cache, wipe dalvik, wipe data/factory reset) A2SD+ in settings->system->storage says available and used are "0.00B".
If I use dark tremor a2sd install scripts, they 'claim' to have activated the space. It appears space is used on it too (around 100mb, despite previous wipe of all data which says it wipes SD-EXT). When new apps install they east away at my meager "internal" storage (IE: 20mb remaining) and my programs area says I ahve a total of something like 200mb of storage (shouldn't this change to over 1GB because of the partition?!).
As of right now I've restored my previous install, which says "0.00B" for A2SD+, and I have a 1GB EXT4 partition sitting here doing nothing.
a2sd is auto on MIUI after flash/reboot--shouldn't need to run scripts--but you can
try reformatting sdcard outside of phone and with sdformatter, then partition it as ext3 0 swap
ext4 never worked quite right for me
then fresh install with system/data/cache wipes 3 times each
Thanks for the reply. What's with this common habit of wiping 3 times? Doesn't wiping just unlink all the inodes from the partition table, then mark the sectors as free space anyways?
Anyway, MIUI at flash point never picks up this partition. I will try changing it to EXT3 and seeing what happens.
I am not a tech, but I think the phone doesn't do thorough job. That's why I format outside phone. Don't know for sure on System wipe, but most peolple recommend 3 or more times on data/caches.
I have been using these methods for quite awhile now and have much fewer flash issues between roms. Thanks to Temasek on his Format zips--------
ken
Well would you look at that. Fresh flash of the ROM with an EXT3 partition and it works! Didn't have to flash any DT zip. Thanks!
EDIT:
After using MIUI backup to restore my apps and stuff, I'm already out of space. My sd-ext isn't being used! how do I fix this?!
Your Welcome--
Sorry for double post, but I spoke too soon. A2SD still doesn't appear to be working correctly. I've attached a few screenshots to help show what I'm talking about. Titanium backup doesn't see the space (I don't think) either. It appears MIUI sees the space available... but doesn't use it. I just did an a2sd zipalign, followed by a a2sd cachesd to move the dalvik cache to the SD card which helped my space woes a bit, but my a2sd partition seems to be completely unused, other than the dalvik cache!
I can't view your thumbs, get error on page. May be my work computer
Had that happen once and a2sd was doing its thing, just not showing in Root Explorer as ext being used
Do you have any low mem warnings
You could try Quick System from market and see what it says
Your A2SD is working fine. As you can see, you have >100 MB of apps installed on it (0.94GB SD-EXT partition size, 832MB free). The reason you still see your internal memory being used is - 1) Dalvik-cache is still on the internal memory, 2) App data is still on internal memory. You can change that in A2SD GUI settings. If it tells you that Dalvik is already on SD - it's lying, the app isn't too correct, the script is much more correct. You can run the script to move Dalvik to SD in that case.
And the integration of A2SD isn't system-wide - actually, the system has no idea that A2SD is present, and doesn't report anything else for its partition sizes but the original sizes.
Jack_R1, after a random soft reset occurred, titanium now shows the a2sd. Thanks for clearing some of the information up for me.

Reduce /cache partition under CM7

Just a quick question:
What happens to system-dalvik-cache under /cache, if I resize this partition to e.g. 5 MB?
I've read somewhere that CM7 moves it to /data. true? Are there any other disadvantages of such a small cache-partition?
many thanks!
Someone?
10chars
Yes, on CM7, if the cache partition is too small, it will move it to the /data partition. I think it is /data/local/cache
Dalvik-cache never resides on /cache anyway. /cache is for Market and OS OTA downloads. If you make it too small - your Market downloads might fail.
I didn't even realize he was talking about dalvik cache. The dalvik cache resides on the /data partition by default for both system and data apps.
As Jack_R1 said, the cache is only used for temporary files, like OS upgrades and market downloads. If the cache partition gets below a certain point (I think it is 5MB), CM7 will automatically change the cache directory to the /data partition.
On my device the market download folder has already a symlink to my /data partition. Other then my system dalvik. At least it seems so.
Thanks for your help. So i can go ahead and resize with blackrose

/system file system question

Hey there.
In twrp I can't change my system partition file system to F2FS. To do it, I enter twrp and do the "normal" steps (wipe, advanced, change to f2fs).
TWRP says it changed but if I perform the same steps the file system type remains ext4.
Is this supposed to be like this?
You cannot format the system
It's really not practical to change the filesystem of /system since it's distributed as an image and not as files. You theoretically could do it, but it would be a lot of work and you'd have to redo it from scratch every time you updated your ROM. Also, you wouldn't get most of the benefits of f2fs since you'd almost never be writing to it.

[QUESTION] Missing GBs?? Maybe Partitions? Questions Post-Brick!

Finally I've got everything installed and set up and logged in, etc, after reviving from brick. But then I just realized... This is a 128GB phone and things are saying I'm low on space (kinda)...
Anyone have any idea what can cause this or how to fix? The only thing in my mind that might be relevant is that the Data partition is in F2FS when before my huge issue I had it in EXT4? The OP level 2 support guy used a 7.1.1 factory image to revive my device. Can this matter?
Settings/Storage it's showing SYSTEM is taking up 89GB?!?!?!
Mixplorer says all of Internal Storage is only using 1.62GB or so
Desktop shows the phone as having 24.8GB storage in TOTAL with 6.9GB used
I don't know how to interpret these screenshots at all or what to do about it...
Edit: A full TWRP backup of every partition checked in the options is 7.75GB in total (as displayed in Windows), system image & all!
Edit2: Also in TWRP, there is no option for resizing the Data partition (which is f2fs, every other partition is EXT4) ...
If no one has any ideas... This is the only thing that seems like it makes sense to try doing to switch data from f2fs to ext4 and hopefully not have to clean flash? https://forums.oneplus.net/threads/...-without-losing-internal-storage-data.439999/
But if that doesn't work, and a regular clean flash doesn't work, that's what I'm most concerned about before even messing with it... JUST got it all set up perfectly after reviving from bricked state...
Switch to ext4, as its the most common Linux' file system. f2fs seems to be the culprit. And you'd better done a clean flash.
Erase userdata partition from fastboot and then format it (also via fastboot). Should work.
Don't forget to make a backup of you existing data (including internal).
As warned by many, F2FS is unstable and causes many errors. Try switching to Ext4, via ADB. This ought to give you the corrected partitions.
Confirmed
Just posting to confirm the above messages.
i converted my system to ff2fs and my system was taking up a little over 40Gb.
Reverting back to ext4 sorted it

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