Apps2SD and partitioning

[daveybaby]

Thread resurrection, hope that's okay:

Rooted and installed MoDaCo a couple of days ago. Partitioned up a new SD card, and i *think* everything has been moved across (phone storage says 89MB available, it was about 5MB before). However, i now seem to have no way of finding out how much space is used on my ext3 partition. Phone info reports the space on the FAT32 partition, and the phone's internal storage. But not the ext3 partition.

App manager pro, bless its heart, still seems to think all my apps are on internal storage, since it reports 5MB free. Confusing and slightly worrying.
[Edit] My mistake, app manager pro is correct, misinterpreted 5.999MB as meaning 6MB when its actually 6GB (german thousands delimiter).

ASTRO file manager doesnt seem to let me browse the ext3 partition. Again, can browse the internal storage, can browse /sdcard (which points to FAT32 partition). Cant see ext3 partition anywhere.

How do i find out what's going on in there? Is there an app which manages apps2sd? Is there any way of undoing apps2sd if i ever decide i need to?

Hmmm... in hindsight i should probably have sought answers to these questions *before* i used apps2sd...

 

[bluenova]

It's very easy to mount the partition from a GNU/Linux O/S and view what's on it and how much free space you've got. If you haven't moved over to GNU/Linux yet then you could also check it from a live CD such as Ubuntu Home Page | Ubuntu Just insert the CD re-boot and choose Live session from the menu. It will then boot into Ubuntu and wont touch your hard drive. Just plug in your phone and mount, the partitions should automatically open in a file browser after a few seconds.

 

[daveybaby]

Heh, changing desktop OS is probably slightly overkill just to read the contents of a directory (but yeah, i have a livecd or two kicking around).

Just seems odd to me if there isnt some way to do this from the phone itself. Frankly, i was very surprised that Astro didnt find the partition...

 

[Slug]

How do i find out what's going on in there? Is there an app which manages apps2sd?

Root Explorer file manager will display used/free space - that's what I use.

Alternatively, connect the handset to your PC and from a command prompt run "adb shell busybox df -h". The output will contain a filesystem mounted on /system/sd.... that's your ext3.

Is there any way of undoing apps2sd if i ever decide i need to?

Deleting the ext3 partition and wiping the handset will do it, but I suspect you'd prefer a less drastic solution. It may be possible to enable/disable via shell commands, I dunno.

 

[daveybaby]

Tried Android Mate and that managed to read \system\sd correctly, but only the first time i ran it. Every time after that it returned an empty directory (same as astro does). Bizarre

Edit: Just found that if you actually kill the android mate process and then re-run it, it will read \system\sd correctly again. Once. Move out of sd and then go back in again and it's supposedly empty. Dont know about anyone else but i'm not trusting a file manager that returns different directory contents on subsequent reads for anything. Un. In. Stalled.

But root explorer reads it correctly every time. Thanks.

(although thats yet another app installed to do *almost* the exact same thing as half a dozen others. Gah! )

Deleting the ext3 partition and wiping the handset will do it, but I suspect you'd prefer a less drastic solution. It may be possible to enable/disable via shell commands, I dunno.

Eeep! Yeah, that's pretty drastic. Was mainly wondering what would happen if i needed to replace, wipe or remove the SD card for some reason. (mental note not to do that unless it's *really* important)

 

[vjprakashbe]

Was mainly wondering what would happen if i needed to replace, wipe or remove the SD card for some reason. (mental note not to do that unless it's *really* important)

"nandroid + ext" backup will save us if we want to wipe/replace the SD card.

 

[bluenova]

"nandroid + ext" backup will save us if we want to wipe/replace the SD card.

Does + ext acctually work though now? I remember reading on XDA a lot of people having issues with it?

 

[vjprakashbe]

Does + ext acctually work though now? I remember reading on XDA a lot of people having issues with it?

For me it works perfectly...ever!!! just not one or two times... I might have switched 1.5 & 2.1 ROMs more than ~25 times in last one month with all possible ROMs available from XDA. I did not face any issue with +ext once.

 

[Xyro]

I had trouble with +Ext when I had an Ext4 partition. If I wanted to backup/restore +Ext I had to enter a command via ADB on the PC (Which you can find on the recovery image post on XDA).

Switched to Ext3 and haven't had any problems with it since

 

[Slug]

root explorer reads it correctly every time.

I find it invaluable. It reminds me of the old Xtree for Windows.... if you remember the limitations of the Windows 3.1 File Mangler and how an alternative shell was almost mandatory.

Was mainly wondering what would happen if i needed to replace, wipe or remove the SD card for some reason.

As noted, "Nandroid + ext" works reliably in the current RA_Hero_Recovery.

Btw, the command-line instructions I posted will also work via a terminal app on the handset such as Connectbot - no need to use "adb shell".

 

[bluenova]

I had trouble with +Ext when I had an Ext4 partition. If I wanted to backup/restore +Ext I had to enter a command via ADB on the PC (Which you can find on the recovery image post on XDA).

Switched to Ext3 and haven't had any problems with it since

Ah yes I think that's what I read now thinking about it, but I think I did see issues with ext3 as well. Anyway ext2 is said to be better for a flash drive due to the lack of journaling as there are less writes so the drive lasts longer.