Root Information overload - just flashed, what next?

[NorthVanMark]

First of all, hello Androidforum users! I've been lurking here and the XDA forum for a couple of days trying to research the hboot/s-off/flashing ROM processes for my Desire

So, having read lots and lots of threads, my poor brain is overloaded!!!

This is the first time I've ever tried flashing a ROM so please treat my kindly

So I had a stock Telus Desire on Android 2.2 and I've now updated the drivers, s-off'd, partitioned my SD card with Gparted and flashed the ROM with CyanogenMod 7.1.0

What next?

(1) Do I need to install any other utilities? I think I read somewhere that this ROM also needs Apps To SD or something similar. If so, what exactly do I require and can anyone provide a link to step by step installation instructions?
Will this prevent me from running into the 'low space' issues? If not, what else do I need to do?


(2) I've got virtually no apps on the phone and want to try to re-load and/or re-install my previous apps but I don't have Google Market (or any other Google apps). I have downloaded "gapps-gb-20110828-signed.zip" but I don't know how to install on the phone. Again, confirmation that this is required and steps to install would be nice!

(3) I took a copy of my SD cards before partitioning the card - can I simply copy the entire contents from my PC to the SD card using Windows Explorer to re-install?

I'm not particularly bothered about which ROM I use, so if there's a different ROM which makes life easier for me, please let me know and I'll try that instead (as long as I can avoid the low space issues!!)

 

[SUroot]

Forget everything you read. Go to the rooting forum here and read the faq's.

 

[NorthVanMark]

I'm ploughing through the rooting FAQs but, AFAIK, several steps require certain apps to be installed on the phone

Example 1:
"How do I check it has worked?
Download "quick system info from" the market. It will show you an "a2SD" total size and free space.

If the free space is less than the total, the partition is being used for apps and it is working."

Example 2:
"I have got Dark Tremor a2sd and my internal memory is smaller than expected
Dark Tremors latest a2sd script does not move Dalvik cache by default as before. You need to download "terminal Emulator" from the market and run it.

Type "su" and press enter
Type "a2sd cachesd" and press enter.

The desire will reboot and you will see a big chunk of additional free space on your internal memory"

At this stage, I can't download ANY apps on the phone.

I'm thinking I may have choosen the wrong ROM for my first attempt as CM7 is too stripped out for my liking. I'm tempted to follow the advice in this http://androidforums.com/desire-all-things-root/473601-help-very-stupid-person.html thread and install a different ROM.
Problem is, my radio version is different and I don't have Titanium BackUp installed [and can't see a way of doing this!)

I feel like I'm in a catch22 situation - I can't download any apps with the current ROM (if so, I'd happily manually re-install all the apps I need!) and can't download any apps to prepare for another (better?) ROM.

If I can get Market installed* and download any apps I require, then that will get my over the initial hurdle...

Thoughts?


*If I try to install something from the http://market.android.com, the web site says the application is downloading but the phone does not show any evidence that any files have been downloaded (no progress bars, nothing in the 'downloads' folder [or any other folder in fact], no icons to launch app) so I'm really confused.
Having never partitioned a HDD or memory card, I'm not 100% certain I did everything correctly in Gparted...

 

[shauny13]

with your rom (cyanogen), you have to flash google apps (gapps) separately. This will give you the market. It can be found here.

http://androidforums.com/desire-all...oads-root-users-updated-22nd-july-2011-a.html

Edit, just seen you have this, to install it, just flash it exactly the same as your rom from recovery.

 

[NorthVanMark]

Thanks for the advice shauny13.

I'd spent an awful lot of time prep'ing the phone before flashing the ROM (reading many different threads/FAQs on several different forums and watching endless YouTube videos on the subject!) so I ended up doing a Nandroid restore back the original Telus ROM.

I've since installed Titanium Backup and Quick System Info.

Before I go any further, could you advise me about Quick System Info:
I've got a 16GB SDcard but the QSI is showing 13.85GB total with 8.41Gb free - as I partitioned the SD card for ~15GB FAT32 and ~1GB for EXT4, is this correct?

It's also showing:
A2SD storage as 93.17Mb, with 43.01Mb free,
Internal storage as 148Mb, 20.47Mb free
System storage 250Mb, with 9.16Mb free
Memory: Total 415Mb, free 106Mb and Idle 12.09Mb (is this RAM?)

Assuming the above is correct, is there an app I can use to simply force all of the apps stored on the phones internal memory onto the 1GB partition on the SD card instead (with the original Telus ROM) ?

 

[SUroot]

This is maths. Hardware manufacturers say 16GB is 16,000,000,000 bytes. This is not true. 16GB is actually 17,179,869,184 bytes.

So if 1GB is 1,073,741,824 not the 1,000,000,000 hardware manufacturers tell you it is, when an application tells you the truth its a bit confusing.

Here. You think you have 15GB.

Try this.

15*1000*1000*1000 is hardware bytes. Take that result and divide like so: /1024/1024/1024 = 13.96983862 GB. The true size

 

[countstex]

Assuming the above is correct, is there an app I can use to simply force all of the apps stored on the phones internal memory onto the 1GB partition on the SD card instead (with the original Telus ROM) ?

Titanium Backup has options for transfering apps between internal memory (Which will be the EXT if you have A2SD installed correctly) and SD

However I noticed you are saying A2SD is reporting 98MB total, I would expect that to report the 1GB EXT size, so perhaps it's not installed correctly.

Check out S2E (Simple2EXT) from the market. Works with CM and allows you to select which things to send to the EXT

 

[nicka3200]

Check out S2E (Simple2EXT) from the market. Works with CM and allows you to select which things to send to the EXT

If I understand correctly S2E is the preferred if not the only way to utilize an ext partition with CM ROMs.

 

[countstex]

If I understand correctly S2E is the preferred if not the only way to utilize an ext partition with CM ROMs.

I've used other methods in the past with success, but this is by far the most simple and controlled.

 

[SUroot]

Most methods work. Simple2ext ONLY works on CM though.