Root Apps2sd+ and still low on memory???

[SUroot]

That could be. My contacts storage is 2MB, Facebook 200, gmail 100, other 40. O don't use people. I use android contacts. I steer clear of sense roms cause I hate people.... the app

 

[tnfelipe]

Is there a way to sync only a group of my gmail contacts? I don't want everybody I mailed in the last ~6 years showing in my phone.
And if I want to "link" my phone/gmail group contacts to theirs facebook accounts but don't want to add any other from FB?

 

[sookster54]

Dont know what a2sd you used / what went wrong, but dalvik cache is definitely on sd ext if done / implemented correctly.

We identified it was app cache in this instance anyway

Each update of CyanogenMod 6.1, I had to reapply dtapps2sd then rerun a2sd cachesd after boot.

 

[SUroot]

Oh yeah its not bundled In cyanogen

 

[danielvago]

I'm a bit puzzled by my internal memory as well.

I'm not rooted, and using the "app2sd" app, as well as "Quick App Clean Cache" (in the past I would just do it by going into manage all applications myself.

When I go into app2sd it tells me I have 147 MB total internal memory and have 21 MB free. But when I add all the apps I have on the internal phone memory it adds up to 70. Doesn't that mean I should have about 70 MB internal memory free?

In "manage all applications" the only other app of a significant size is "save contact" at 6.5 MB, nothing else looks significant.

Is this normal? It's not cache building up anywhere (that I can see anyway).
Whenever I go down to 14-15 MB internal memory I get the "low memory warning".

 

[SUroot]

Just so you know, this is about apps2sd+, not the apps2sd you are referring to.

One of the existing memory issue threads may be better suited for your question

If you click my name, on my public profile, are some links to some of these threads...

I hope you find them helpful

 

[surfinite]

Hi all,
First post WOO!
anyway...
I'm hoping someone *cough* danfrance *cough* is going to be able to help me out. Basically i dont think my app2sd+ is working correctly as apps are still taking up quite a bit of space on my internal storage.
I'm running Oxygen 2.0 RC5.
The pics below explain the situation better than i could in words.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

EDIT:
ok maybe it does need a little explanation.
I moved google earth to the SD card which i know is not where it needs to be if app2sd+ is working correctly, however doing so saves me 16mb of space on internal storage and does weird things to the size of the program? It still seems to work fine when its running from the SD card. Any ideas why anyone?

Thanks for the help
Mike

 

[SUroot]

Hi all,


ok maybe it does need a little explanation.
I moved google earth to the SD card which i know is not where it needs to be if app2sd+ is working correctly, however doing so saves me 16mb of space on internal storage and does weird things to the size of the program? It still seems to work fine when its running from the SD card. Any ideas why anyone?

Thanks for the help
Mike

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Its completely the opposite. The apps2sd+ partition is NOT SD. "Move to SD" actually moves it away from the apps2sd+ partition.

Everything should be moved to phone.

Apps2sd+ is a script that moves the apps from internal memory to the ext partition automatically. If the app is on "SD" then the script doesn't work.

 

[surfinite]

I moved google earth to the SD card, which i know is not where it needs to be if app2sd+ is working correctly, however doing so saves me 16mb of space on internal storage and does weird things to the size of the program?

Sorry if i didnt make myself clear but in writing the above i meant:

I moved google earth to the SD card. I know that it is supposed to be on internal memory, and understand completely why it needs to be on internal memory.
But then why does it cost me 16mb to store it in the CORRECT place? And when i put it on the SD card why does it seemingly take up next to no space and still work perfectly.

Ta x

 

[Hadron]

Hi all,
however doing so saves me 16mb of space on internal storage and does weird things to the size of the program?
Mike

It does weird things to the size of the program because "manage applications" is only reporting the internal storage that is used. When you move "to SD" the part of the app that's moved to the fat partition of the SD card doesn't appear in the reported app "size".

But note the underlining - as Dan has said, when using A2SD+ the "internal" storage is mostly on the ext3 partition, while "move to SD" means the Froyo method, i.e. move a smaller part of the app to the fat partition. You'll actually use up more of your "real" internal memory doing that, so when using A2SD+ you want everything moved "to the phone".

 

[surfinite]

I'm starting to think that the pictures were not a good idea, no offense intended but i dont think anyone was actually bothering properly looking at them...

Thanks for the reply Hadron, but it still doesnt solve my issue.

I'm presuming its a feature of Gingerbread that manage applications shows the internal memory used, otherwise it must have been modded in oxygen. Anyway, with google earth on the "phone memory" it reports 105mb used and 42mb free, but with it on the SD card i get 90mb used and 56mb free.

i.e. I'm saving myself internal memory space by moving the apps to the sd card.

Now unless a) i'm somehow horribly misunderstanding whats going on or b) the memory used and memory free values are inaccurate, then the way i see it i'm still better off putting apps on the sd card.

So now that we all hopefully understand the point i'm trying to make, is there anyone that can explain why this is happening and if something is going wrong?

Thankyou everyone for your patience
apparantly coherant message posting has not been on the cards for me today

 

[Hadron]

Sorry, you are right that I'd not seen the pictures - I guess my first click on the "show" button didn't register, and I assumed they were broken links! Apologies

So one weird thing is that the app size changes by more than the change in internal storage. Unfortunately I'm running 2.2 at the moment, so can't check whether there is a Gingerbread effect here. But I've done some experiments, in case the comparison is useful:

I installed Google Earth so that I could compare directly, and this took about 16 MB off my internal storage. Total app size was 22MB, as in your third pic. Then I moved to SD, and reported app size decreased to 16MB, not the 200kB you saw! My reported internal storage didn't change at all, though free space on the SD card did drop (as that's reported in 10MB units I can't be more precise than to say the last digit dropped by 1, but that's consistent with a 6MB change). Internal storage did not change, which would be consistent with 16MB remaining on the phone's internal - the amount that was originally installed there - and 6MB moving between ext and fat partitions.

So the funny thing is that the amount I'm seeing staying in place (16 MB) matches the amount you see your internal storage change by - coincidence, or a difference in behaviour or reporting?

So ok, I appreciate the puzzle now, and it certainly does appear different. Do you have an equivalent of the first picture for before the move to phone? How much do "internal storage" and "A2SD storage" change by when you move it? Is it all internally consistent? If not it might be a reporting issue (GB or Oxygen), whereas if it is consistent it might be that either GB or Oxygen is behaving differently.

 

[surfinite]

According to quick system info:
Free A2SD storage is reduced by 6mb when i "move to phone" which is in accordance with what you found, and adds up to 22mb, which is what the application size is before its moved to SD.

However free space on the SD card drops by 0.02GB when it is "moved to SD card"!

This leaves me with 2 questions.
I thought app2sd+ was supposed to move the entire app to the ext partition? not leave (in this case) 16mb on the internal memory.
and...
Does this mean that Gingerbread (or this oxygen rom?) has some sort of super app2sd that can move everything to the fat partition?!
which is what i seem to be seeing at the moment, consistent across all apps i've tried it with too.

 

[SUroot]

According to quick system info:
Free A2SD storage is reduced by 6mb when i "move to phone" which is in accordance with what you found, and adds up to 22mb, which is what the application size is before its moved to SD.

However free space on the SD card drops by 0.02GB when it is "moved to SD card"!

This leaves me with 2 questions.
I thought app2sd+ was supposed to move the entire app to the ext partition? not leave (in this case) 16mb on the internal memory.
and...
Does this mean that Gingerbread (or this oxygen rom?) has some sort of super app2sd that can move everything to the fat partition?!
which is what i seem to be seeing at the moment, consistent across all apps i've tried it with too.

Apps2sd+ does not move the entire app. It still leaves behind app cache, but it should still move more than if you move it to SD card via Froyo.

Not sure whats going on here tbh, I'll have to test it myself. (edit > D'oh forgot for a minute there I dont have apps2sd+)

have you tried this with other apps too?

google earth is a google app (obv) so maybe its written to be handled differently?

 

[surfinite]

consistent across all apps i've tried it with too.

Ok so i moved ALL my apps across and i saved 28mb on internal memory, not that great a difference really. But i save 20mb by moving just the 4 largest apps (all games).

If this is a Gingerbread thing it could be a real blow to the "rooters club". I am happy to have rooted anyway, but the only reason i did it in the first place was because i needed more space. If stock gingerbread can move all apps almost entirely to the sd card alot of people aren't gonna bother with custom roms.

EDIT:
I take that back.
Most people are gonna need a custom rom just to get gingerbread

 

[SUroot]

Ok so i moved ALL my apps across and i saved 28mb on internal memory, not that great a difference really. But i save 20mb by moving just the 4 largest apps (all games).

If this is a Gingerbread thing it could be a real blow to the "rooters club". I am happy to have rooted anyway, but the only reason i did it in the first place was because i needed more space. If stock gingerbread can move all apps almost entirely to the sd card alot of people aren't gonna bother with custom roms.

EDIT:
I take that back.
Most people are gonna need a custom rom just to get gingerbread

Nah

Apps2sd+ is old hat now anyway. There are recent developments that will render it pointless.

Look at my desire for example:

Data2sd

 

[surfinite]

Although that is pretty cool i'm not quite seeing the point?
Tell me if i'm missing something but it seems you taken all the system files, the files that are accessed more than any other files, and placed them on slower external storage...?
Its not because you need the space because you clearly have over 700 mb free so i am yet to see the benefit. (other than the fact that it makes my modding spidey sense tingle )

Also i still think my previous point stands, because there are gonna be alot of people whose sole reason for flashing a custom rom would be so they can use app2sd+ to gain more space. Gingerbread seemingly sorts that problem for them.

 

[SUroot]

The external media is faster than the internal NAND.

I Have used 250 MB of the /data partition so the 148 MB internal wouldn't be enough for that.

My I/O benchmarks are much faster. Get about 2200 on quadrant.

Still not convinced GB moves apps better than froyo ans even if it does, does it still depend on developers to code it in? Bet it does

 

[surfinite]

I was just about to post about the speed thing, i looked it up and realised i was wrong. I see what you mean about the 250mb too.

All i can say is test it for yourself. I'm pretty sure its not just me being dumb

 

[Hadron]

Looks like GB (or rather, GB+A2SD+) does do something differently: I booted GingerVillain (I have a nandroid on my card) and see the same behaviour you see.

Interestingly, the market describes the app as 6MB in size (the size of the bit I saw moving using 2.2), which supports the idea that the other 16 is something else. Reminds me a bit of the way that Angry Birds is huge but most of it is installed without A2SD+ as a data files on the (fat) SD card. Moving that game between "SD" and "phone" changes the reported size of that app hugely (like Earth), but only changes internal storage by 2 MB - if I move it in Froyo the app size reduces to 2MB when moved to SD, which is a similar pattern to what's seen with Earth. So for these apps the change in internal storage with GB corresponds to the bit that remains internal either way with Froyo.

Moving other apps has less effect: moving Kindle (which I've not really used) changes app size from 5.5 MB to 2.0 MB, but has no measurable effect on internal storage, which is closer to what I'd expect.

So, as you say the ones that make a big diff to internal are games, or Earth, which may be structured a bit differently from other apps. It's as if there are some elements which are left internal with 2.2 but moved with 2.3 when phone storage is selected.

As for whether this renders A2SD+ less relevant with GB, it would be interesting to see what happens with a pure GB which doesn't have A2SD+. The other question is, can you run widgets from apps "on SD" under GB (wish I'd thought of this before restoring DeFrost)? If not, there's still that advantage to A2SD+. But on what we've seen so far it looks like it might be better to keep some apps "on SD" rather than everything "on phone" when using GB.

 

[surfinite]

Interestingly, moving that game between "SD" and "phone" changes the reported app size hugely (like Earth), but only changes internal storage by 2 MB.

The reported size, when the app is on the "phone", will include the size of the stuff on the ext partition. Whereas when the app is on FAT it reports only the size of whats on actual internal storage (or so i've been assuming). This means a huge reported change in size is expected.
You say it only changes it by 2mb, but that change in internal storage means that GB app2sd is working 2mb "more efficiently" than app2sd+.
So when you say it had no measurable effect on kindle, that just means GB app2sd is probably doing the same as app2sd+
You might have known that already though, (just checking )

The other question is, can you run widgets from apps "on SD" under GB

No, unfortunately not

 

[Hadron]

Yeah, should have been clearer (I'd just been tidying up some other bits of wording): "no effect" did indeed mean "same result". And perhaps I should also have said that "huge change" meant "much larger than with Froyo" - looks like clarity isn't my strong point this morning!

I suppose that since Google's A2SD was only introduced with Froyo it's not unreasonable if it has been improved in Gingerbread. I'd not read about anything like that anywhere else though.

Well if the widget limitation is still there then there's that advantage anyway. I'm leaving Data2SD until it's a little more established (and until I have a faster card!).