Root Proposal/Theory for External SD storage solution on F6

Hey everyone!

Sorry to be out of reach for a while, been rather busy - this project among my list.

First, yes, the development is going well, but I switched directions. My early experiments were done using shell scripts, then I added the bash binary so they could advance to being Linux bash scripts, but bash programming is actually not suitable. It's fine for simple things, but there comes a point when the target design is complex enough that the limitations of shell scripting make development exponentially more complicated than it should be.

So I switched to C++, my "native" development language. Zinit will now be implemented as a Linux binary running on Android (yes, we can do that - though many will claim it's not possible because Google says Android applications are Java - but Google is not always a credible source of such things).

The result is a lot better, more solid and robust (capable of handling diverse situations).

I'll attempt to post something installable on an F6 for testing by tomorrow.

On themes from posts I had not yet responded to:

"Where are you?"

Sorry, yes...sometimes I get quite loaded down, and while conceptually this seems like a relatively simple thing to create, in reality anything that's well engineered ends up dealing with lots of trivial things (like making sure a directory actually exists).


"After researching, and much trial and error, it's apparent that all mods are essentially temporary to say the least... "


Yes, the existing solutions are incomplete. They address the apk files stored in the /data/apps directory, MIGHT deal with data stored in the /data/data directory, but ignore dalvik-cache, which is typically about 1/3 (or more) of the storage required by an application. You can squeeze out a few hundred megabytes, but all existing solutions eventually leave you in a state where there are gigabytes of free space on the external card, but Android has no room to install more applications.

Zinit solves that, and it's permanent (given the caveat that you could uninstall it) - permanent in that all of the storage of Android is remapped to the external card, dalvik-cache, /data/data...everything.


"Any possibility on being able to partition a 16gb sdcard into 2 8gb fat32 partitions and use the internal/external swap method? Swap the internal with 1 of the 8gb partitions and still use the other 8gb partition as a external storage location? "

You can if you modify the script to address the second partition (come to think of it, I haven't tried it to see if the LG automatically mounts a second vfat partition, but it's a trivial mount in a script).

I don't know what benefit there would be in doing that, though.

The swap software doesn't actually swap the entire internal card. It only swaps the mount referencing /data/media, the rest of the internal card isn't swapped with anything.

The entire premise of the swap approach is that existing features which point to internal storage are taking up room on the same 1.27Gbyte partition as the rest of Android, with no good way of pointing Android elsewhere, so swapping them helps.

It does, but it can't address the rest of the storage problem.

What's the purpose you have in mind for two partitions on the card?




".. are the multi part uploads viable? From earlier in this post when he was still in development?"

Not sure what that means. Do you mean upload some portion for testing while I'm still working, or something else?


"By the way, is anyone else getting the frequent software update every time when you restart the phone? "

I don't have link2sd on this device, or the swap software (though I did at one point, before I did a complete restore in early January).

So far I've not seen this happening, and Zinit (in various versions as I've been advancing) has been running with one main installation and two secondary installations since late January.

I've received a few updates, and it did them for each personality, but only once.

......

I may not have clearly defined what I mean be "each personality"....so I'll mention that.

Android is actually built in two pieces, as a design. Linux is the outer piece, it gets running first. Dalvik is the inner piece, it's what makes Linux into Android.

Linux considers the root of the directory of all storage to be /

Just a /

Everything is under /, the root directory.

Android, on the other hand, is vaguely aware that anything exists outside of /data.

Whatever is under /data is what we think of as Android (it could be said it's Android's root). So, imagine you have 3 different SD cards, each one with a /data directory which Zinit mounts at boot.

Each card starts out as a minimal system, but one is labeled "Mom", the other "Son" and the third "Dad".

Mom, the person not the personality in Android, likes Whatsapp. She has contacts from all over the world speaking 3 languages.

Son, the boy, doesn't like Whatsapp. He never uses it. However, while he's at school his phone buzzes in his pocket all day long because Mom is receiving messages through Whatsapp from people Son can't even read, because they're not in English.

So, Mom has her own SD card with a personality named Mom. When Son surrenders the phone, because Mom doesn't have one of her own, we can switch SD cards.

Now, Son no longer has Whatapp. Mom's contacts don't exist, and Whatsapp isn't even installed when the "Son" personality is booted from his SD card.

Mom as actually more prone to brick the phone than Son, because Mom says yes to nearly every dialog while Son realizes that's a bad idea.

So Mom's SD card has a backup on Dad's PC.

It's been restored nearly 3 times every week because Mom loves Facebook, and Facebook doesn't like AVG stopping it from peering through the contacts, bricking Moms installation.

That's what multiple personalities are doing when Zinit is installed

It's also reasonable, if size permits, to have multiple personalities on one SD card, and instruct Zinit which one to boot.

It's also possible to put a small, emergency backup installation on the vfat partition in a virtual filesystem, limited to 2Gbytes.

It's also possible to put a virtual filesystem with an emergency backup inside the original, internal storage if there's room. Yep, that means Zinit can, as a configurable option, mount the original internal version of /data under /storage/stock_data when booted from ANOTHER personality.


Ok, back to work....finishing up the "seed" and "virtual seed" features (ways to copy installations of Android, and now part of the installation of Zinit...the initial seed from the stock operating system).

Hang in there....it's coming...not stalled, not by a longshot. It's actually gotten better.

hubsabubs said:

... an option to move to SD Card. ...wtf is this "App", and why is it not placing my data on my sd card.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately this is one of those "it depends" things.

The SD cards are formatted in vfat, which doesn't record the permissions and identities required by the Linux filesystem, and many applications can't function correctly unless they are stored on a Linux filesystem.

They fudge with virtual filesystems, but the end result is that the application that's doing this can't really inquire much more than what's in the manifest as to what to do to relocate the program and all it's data. If it's data were image files, you'd probably have less issue than if it's a SQL lite database. Bottom line, move to SD card is, even at the best of the theory, only partly functional because it can't move the dex files in dalvik-cache - though it could do a better job than it does.

hubsabubs said:

As time goes on these no contract pre paid phones are getting locked down like fort knox... why?

Click to expand...

I have to wonder who's phone they think it is anyway.

Remember the US case law regarding unlocking?

There was a time, long ago, when unlocking a phone was protected by law. Then, it wasn't.

Just recently congress acted to allow us to unlock our phones again.

I think that is related to this issue. The etiquette and standards of practice in the mobile market have been subject to the whims of large corporations who want to rule your device for you. They want to know when you've rooted it, used it, installed anything on it, browsed with it.....some application vendors want to read through your contact lists, know your location, and...they want to be able to void your warranty on the slightest whim.

Back when owning a computer made you unusual, say the 80's, there was no interest or opportunity to exploit the machine in these ways.

When cable put the digital box on your TV, they didn't do it to give you a better quality picture and sound. That's what they hooked the public with, but they did it to know what channel you're tuned into, and how much you watch.

Now that nearly 1 billion devices are in the hands of people, as the move about their daily life, the sinister interests of advertisers, vendors, government and hackers give them all wet dreams over the possibilities.

The best and worst thing ever done was to close the device within a wall. It's best, in the case of Apple, because it reduces the possibility of infection by malware. It's the worst because it means they can lock us out of our own damn equipment.

This....is the 21st century, early beta.

hubsabubs said:

I don't know if this helps anyone or not, or if it even works for the Optimus F6. But I myself am to Leary to give it a try.

Click to expand...

Bottom line, that one doesn't. Loki might. The suspicion you have is correct. You can end up having to restore the phone at some point, starting over.

The idea IS possible. Loki has an unlock for the F6, if it's equipped with certain versions on certain carriers. If the wind direction changes, it might not. It's also not a seriously well engineered installer - it can happily generate an invalid boot image without informing you (at least as of a month ago).

Even then, you have to cobble together your own solution to storage - and it's a one way ticket. You have no options unless you re-install a different boot image.

hubsabubs said:

For this phone to go anywhere as far as storage goes, its going to have to involve a completely custom rom

Click to expand...

If you've read my posts, this would be known to be untrue.

Link2sd won't solve the storage issue completely. Neither will the swap utility.

I'm about 90% certain you can't use the internal SD storage mixed with the external to get a large storage partition. I don't see the required support from the underlying Linux installation.


You got a really good price on the phone. It's one single major flaw is storage space (it should have used an 8 or 16Gbyte internal device, but LG and some exec with a spreadsheet tuned that to what it is.

However, it really doesn't matter in the long run. This problem is not entirely LG's fault, though it was within their power to fix that. Every Android device has this problem, at different limits. Whether it's the puny 1.27 Gybte space, or 3 to 6 Gbytes of room, it's still a wall that many users will hit at some point.

Imagine if you bought a camera only to discover that memory cards don't store pictures...they're only for miscellaneous files, like mp3's. It would be absurd. Fortunately there are no cameras with that problem, but with Android - that is universal to all the devices because Google never considered the issue.

As I've posted earlier, on my F6 I have a 30Gbyte partition which Zinit mounts as the primary storage of Android. I have 30Gbytes for applications, data, dalvik-cache...everything.

I also have several installations I can boot from at option, including one for emergency use if I manage to brick the primary installation (without spending time recovering the phone....just switch and boot).

I'm close to releasing it in beta.

hubsabubs said:

I would like to root my phone and dive into this head first, but from what happened with my Coolpad after rooting it never being able to update it. I want to be patient and wait for the update if it ever does come. I'm kinda flabbergasted with this phone, because I wasn't expecting to face this issue with all the bells and whistles it came with. IMO there should be a standard of a 4gb internal memory requirement for any phone manufacturer. The medium isn't that expensive. I like the other guy was tempted to pop this sucker open and hardsolder a new larger flash memory to it.

I have faith in your Jvene, and I shall wait for your beta to see if its a lasting solution.

Click to expand...

) That was me....desoldering the old one!

Thanks...that was nice!

Flablitz said:

I am a noob when it comes to development - with that being said, is thia phone anything like the LG Motion? I know that they were able to merge internal and external storage. Not like it the Motion needed it, it had 5.59gb of internal storage.

Unrelated, but you seem quite helpful and a nice person. I was wondering if you would take a look at this thread I posted. It is about storage. I cant seem to get the info I need.

http://androidforums.com/metropcs-optimus-f6-all-things-root/831707-list-apps-remove.html

Click to expand...

Well, I don't have an LG Motion to compare, so about the only thing I can say is that generically all ARM based Android devices are similar at the core. There is nothing about the LG Motion that could provide it that feature unavailable on other devices, except that software is or isn't on the device to support it. For example, there's nothing stopping us from building a binary for Linux with the NDK which provides TCP/IP gateway services, thus making a phone a generic hotspot, even if otherwise it appears the device is unable to do that. Even if the hardware on the device isn't suppose to support it, we can emulate the functionality in software (in some rare cases, this might also require a driver for the client devices).

However, I'm dubious about the reality of the claim without further study. I don't mean that to question your statement, what I mean is that what seems to be happening may technically turn out to be something else entirely. Linux/Unix does have ways to treat multiple drives as a single unit (we call that JBOD, for just a bunch of drives), but for Android it can bring problems similar to those encountered on striped RAID drives....if one of the two devices fails, the entire OS is lost. You can't switch SD cards unless the new one is an exactl duplicate of the old one, etc. In Linux/Unix, while this works, it's always recognized as a dubious choice that requires some careful management, and there has to be a good reason to do it. It generally slows down the filesystem (if for no other reason the increased complexity of filesystem operation), decreases reliability, and in the case of a fixed internal storage device it marries your phone to the SD card (precariously).

To date I've not found the real binaries on Android to support doing it, though I personally could pull the source code for the system level support, build it with the NDK and put it on the phone.

It's just...the F6 I'm targeting is my son's phone, and my wife uses it...so knowing the engineering reasons not to do that, I personally would choose not to, and I wouldn't suggest it for anyone else. I would hope none of the manufacturers would suggest it, too.

I visited your thread, but thought I'd reply hear rather than bump it from a month ago. Oddly, as much as I know about this technology, I don't know which apps to pull cleanly. My wife nearly choked laughing at me last week because with the F6 in my hand I had trouble making a phone call (I had never used it AS A PHONE before!).

Generally, the stuff you shouldn't remove probably won't let you, and the ones you really want to remove probably won't let you easily.

Flablitz said:

Thanks for the quick reply. It seems they have a v2 for the motion. It is listed here
http://androidforums.com/motion-4g-...r-real-sdcard-mnt-sdcard-v2-lg-motion-4g.html
******NOONE TRY ABOVE LINK ON F6 REFERENCE TO A QUESTION ONLY******
Is this what you are trying to accomplish with the F6?

Click to expand...

No, this is one of dozens of similar methods which have the same limitations. It can't handle the directories which fill up no matter what is done, unless you're willing to drive Google and similar infesting apps nuts and virtually disable your phone doing it.

What I've written acts before dalvik (thus Android) launches, and therefore can perform management on the "underbelly" of Android. Anything that uses Universal init.d or Smanager to initiate the work is already too late to act on the important subjects involved, because they're already in use and Android is dependent upon them. You can create boot looping, constant error message popups and soft bricking if you dig deep enough with those approaches (not necessarily by USING a pre-built solution that's known to be workable, but by trying to make one of them).

Zinit, instead, assigns the primary storage of Android to a partition on the external SD card. Once it's done, there's no need for further management as long as the size of the card has enough room for all that you want installed (like, say, 20Gbytes to 60 Gbytes, if your card is that large).

In fact, if you have an Android device which could attach a USB drive, you could run Android from that with Zinit. Zinit allows you to have multiple installations of Android, each on a different personality (different Apps, completely separate contact lists, etc).

Flablitz said:

Also, as long as i dont remove google or lg apps, should be good? Quite a bit of stuff like metro apps and google play movies music ect.

Click to expand...

That's about the gist of it.

In theory it's possible to remove everything except the Android OS itself, but these vendors plug in their own little nefarious kinks to block that.

hubsabubs said:

Alright, so I went ahead and did it, I rooted my phone and installed Link2SD using a Partitioned SD card, 8.5gbs external Fat32 / 6.5gbs internal Ext2. I let everything do what it needed to do, I should mention I did all this on a fresh wipe of the phone.

Used the pre-installed app manager to uninstall all apps that came on the phone, disabled and force stopped all other apps n services from metro and Google I didn't need. Installed the recovery that was listed under the rooting thread I used. Let the phone update all the new apps over Wi-Fi, used Link2SD to create links and move them to my SD card, also linked and moved everything else on the internal storage.

To the point I suppose after doing all this, and having all the updates, removing the bloat ware and unnecessary apps and new apps about 10 + (ADW Launcher EX + themes, Titanium, Root Explorer, etc. etc.) a handful or so of games 50-200mbs each. My phone stands at 158Mbs Used / 1.2Gbs Available.

Click to expand...

I'm curious as to how long it took to do that?