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Root Apps in system/app or data/app...

cmotion

Well-Known Member
Jan 24, 2010
140
18
Hey all,

Was reading a thread over at XDA talking about moving certain apps from data/app to system/app to help them run faster, or not get killed by Autokiller (don't even use that)... anyway, I opened up EStrongs File Explorer with root enabled, and it appears all of my apps are in system/app as opposed to data/app. Is that normal? I am currently on xtrROM 4.6 and used Titanium to restore my apps. Thanks for any info and/or insight!
 
Hey all,

Was reading a thread over at XDA talking about moving certain apps from data/app to system/app to help them run faster, or not get killed by Autokiller (don't even use that)... anyway, I opened up EStrongs File Explorer with root enabled, and it appears all of my apps are in system/app as opposed to data/app. Is that normal? I am currently on xtrROM 4.6 and used Titanium to restore my apps. Thanks for any info and/or insight!

Sounds like you are reading this thread: The Tweak Thread (Advanced Eris Projects) now live 10/23/10 - xda-developers (specifically post #2).

I think what DS36 is talking about is trying to cleanup the duplicate .apks that might exist in both of the aforementioned places--thereby freeing-up app memory and hopefully making your phone a little less cluttered (memory-wise) and therefore have less work for things like Autokiller to do.

I've never used Autokiller, but I think DS36 is having you move things like your 3rd-party launcher to /system/app to keep Autokiller from nuking it (the implication being that Autokiller will only tweak/kill user apps housed in /data/app). Makes sense.

If you do decide to move and/or delete anything, just make sure you've got a good Nandroid backup in your back pocket just in case, right? ;)
 
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Hey all,

Was reading a thread over at XDA talking about moving certain apps from data/app to system/app to help them run faster, or not get killed by Autokiller (don't even use that)... anyway, I opened up EStrongs File Explorer with root enabled, and it appears all of my apps are in system/app as opposed to data/app. Is that normal? I am currently on xtrROM 4.6 and used Titanium to restore my apps. Thanks for any info and/or insight!

I'm not familiar with how Ti Backup does its' restore operations, so I can't comment on the "normalcy" of that - but I can tell you that manually moving things from /data/app to /system/app will NOT make them run faster. (How would that be possible? Both /data and /system are physically on the same NAND flash memory hardware... and in any event, when an app is loaded, it is done from the dalvik-cache, not the "app/" folder.) The only way I could imagine this happening would be if you had a "split" dalvik cache (separate dalvik-caches for /data/app and /system/app, similar to the CyanogenMod approach), and the "data" dalvik-cache was somehow relocated to a slow SD card.

There is some small advantage of putting apps in /system/app - and that is simply that because the "/system" mount point is used in a read-only fashion, any unused space sort of "goes to waste" ... so, moving them to /system/app frees up space in /data to be used for other things. Some dev ROMs are indeed kind of "slim", so there is some opportunity here.

I'm not sure about the contention about "locking apps in memory" for all /system/app applications - I don't know one way or the other, but I am inclined to be skeptical about that claim (e.g. the Home laucher can get reaped if you set autokiller thresholds too high, and it is usually always installed in /system/app).

$.02

eu1
 
Upvote 0
Hey all,

Was reading a thread over at XDA talking about moving certain apps from data/app to system/app to help them run faster, or not get killed by Autokiller (don't even use that)... anyway, I opened up EStrongs File Explorer with root enabled, and it appears all of my apps are in system/app as opposed to data/app. Is that normal? I am currently on xtrROM 4.6 and used Titanium to restore my apps. Thanks for any info and/or insight!

maybe your dev already has the latest apps and you dont need to update
it not a big deal dont go killing yourself looking some people have them some people dont


I'm not familiar with how Ti Backup does its' restore operations, so I can't comment on the "normalcy" of that - but I can tell you that manually moving things from /data/app to /system/app will NOT make them run faster. (How would that be possible? Both /data and /system are physically on the same NAND flash memory hardware... and in any event, when an app is loaded, it is done from the dalvik-cache, not the "app/" folder.) The only way I could imagine this happening would be if you had a "split" dalvik cache (separate dalvik-caches for /data/app and /system/app, similar to the CyanogenMod approach), and the "data" dalvik-cache was somehow relocated to a slow SD card.

There is some small advantage of putting apps in /system/app - and that is simply that because the "/system" mount point is used in a read-only fashion, any unused space sort of "goes to waste" ... so, moving them to /system/app frees up space in /data to be used for other things. Some dev ROMs are indeed kind of "slim", so there is some opportunity here.

I'm not sure about the contention about "locking apps in memory" for all /system/app applications - I don't know one way or the other, but I am inclined to be skeptical about that claim (e.g. the Home laucher can get reaped if you set autokiller thresholds too high, and it is usually always installed in /system/app).

$.02

eu1


never really implied that moving apps make s your apps faster cause it doesn't like you said
moving along with deleting duplicates greatly (IF YOU HAVE THEM) does reduce memory use and more memory on your phone absolutely makes your phone operate faster.....there is nothing wrong with auto killer at all i dont get whats people problem with it. when used correctly is an excellent tool. all devs use some sort of auto killing in their roms to increase performance or what not. others give you auto killer (which is smarter) beacuse people use different amounts of memory phone to phone no user is the same.
-a system with 75mb left with auto killer set high will run like trash and get a lot of FCs
-move your apps and delete dups (if you have them) now you have 100mb a 25mb increase like i did is major and auto killer will be doing less work stabilizing your system
-autokiller is not a task killer nor does it run in the background
 
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