Database Info

data2sd

Hi All,
Here is my first contribution to the community, hope it is useful!
I've rezzed up a construct to produce a new /data on sd. It makes use of a second partition formatted ext2 or ext3 mounted to /system/sd with /system/sd/data then mounted over /data.
I've included a lengthy readme file which should explain things in greater detail.
Read the readme first to get a list of dirs & files this construct adds to the /data, then copy the files as explained and off you go!
currently my /data "volume" is 2GB and all is lovely!
Things to note:
I'm rom JF1.51 ADP1 CRB43, the sdcard is 8gb class6
The sd /data contains several scripts of my own design which if not needed can be deleted. I include my modified bootdeb.sh script as it mounts to /data/local/mnt/debian vs /data/local/mnt (that is a script I modified for my own needs which you may find useful)
Feel free to adjust any of the scripts according to your needs. Just note that if I update the construct, that your changes may be undone if you use it, so back them up in that scenario.
Also, I include my mount.ak.sh script which make use of a loopfs to accomplish the roughly the same thing, but in a single partition environment (intended as proof of concept).
**There is NO booting into recovery and wiping of the phone for this mod!**
Thanks to JesusFreak for the roms and saurik for the Debian info!
Cheers!

Wow! Nice, Going to try it out. Thanks

is that mean after running data2sd the phone's completely running on sd? and so much faster?

Hi,
To followup on xnycen's question, why would we do this? Is the benefit only in providing more space, or is there also a performance increase (or decrease)?

hate to see the sdcard fail with this change

well...
Yes, after the install you are running complete on sd,
but because of the method used, if you reboot, and take out the sdcard before the boot starts, you will be running as you were before the data2sd aka normal; put the sdcard back in, reboot and you are in data2sd mode again.
This effectively gives you two android run modes: "normal" and data2sd. If the SDCore can not be located the Android will boot in normal mode. You can of course try to keep them sync'd, but if you do the data2sd from a clean slate you can effectively have a "safemode" and if you have an issue with some app, go into this "safemode" and do some investigations or adjustments as the SDCore will mount if you put the sdcard in after the system is in "safemode" but the apps and such will not be loaded until you reboot.
The size expansion is the primary benefit of the construct. As far as speed goes, I haven't checked to see if there are any speed gains in moving /data to the sd... Can someone who's interested check that out and let us know?

Darkstrumn said:
Yes, after the install you are running complete on sd,
but because of the method used, if you reboot, and take out the sdcard before the boot starts, you will be running as you were before the data2sd aka normal; put the sdcard back in, reboot and you are in data2sd mode again.
This effectively gives you two android run modes: "normal" and data2sd. If the SDCore can not be located the Android will boot in normal mode. You can of course try to keep them sync'd, but if you do the data2sd from a clean slate you can effectively have a "safemode" and if you have an issue with some app, go into this "safemode" and do some investigations or adjustments as the SDCore will mount if you put the sdcard in after the system is in "safemode" but the apps and such will not be loaded until you reboot.
The size expansion is the primary benefit of the construct. As far as speed goes, I haven't checked to see if there are any speed gains in moving /data to the sd... Can someone who's interested check that out and let us know?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Speed is all I'm interested in If it speeds the device up, why not?

Anyone have anything to report about the speed? I am very interested in this

wow having this "dual boot" seems like an incredible idea... can anyone report on this?

can someone please give a more noob friendly instructions? from what I understand as of now is:
1) boot into recovery and wipe the phone (I'm assuming we can keep whatever ROM we had before)
2) place data2sd.img in root of SDcard (fat32)
3) and this is where I get lost... how exactly do I move the sh file to that location? how do I chmod it? how do I run it? what are the adb commands? thanks!

Hmmnm I thought we weren't doing this because of inheriant security risks?
Not to mention what happens when you mount your fat32 partition....are the apps no longer (as well as your data) available?

NO booting into recovery and wiping of the phone!
Hold up people!
**There is NO booting into recovery and wiping of the phone!**
My bad for not being clear on the wipe instructions!
1) (optional) If you are to wipe it (your choice it is not required), then press menu->settings->SD card & phone storage->scroll to bottom of screen and select "Factory data reset". This will wipe the /data partition only removing all apps and settings. BACKUP YOUR /data dir to sd, First or you will need to down load all your apps again to include paid apps!!
2) place data2sd.img in root of SDcard (fat32)
3) terminal in or adb shell in.
4) cp /sdcard/data2sd.sh to /data/local/bin - to copy the script to your user-space
5) chmod 0750 /data/local/bin/data2sd.sh - to make it executable
6) /data/local/bin/data2sd.sh or data2sd.sh may work to run the script
7) once the install is done it should tell you to reboot. If you had the ddms debugger running, you can observer the log as it is working.
8) done. It may boot a little longer if you clean-slate installed and then restored your apps by copying them back into /data/app and /data/app-private which has the affect of reinstalling everything, and thus the boot will take a while if you have alot of apps like I do. Again you can observe this as the Android boots if you have the debugger running.

thanks a lot man, will give this a shot in a few hours! not at my comp right now

security risks and (u)mounting /sdcard
TheDudeOfLife said:
Hmmnm I thought we weren't doing this because of inheriant security risks?
Not to mention what happens when you mount your fat32 partition....are the apps no longer (as well as your data) available?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure why there would be any security issues, the Android is already rooted. If someone can steal the sdcard, they can steal the entire Android, and if the sdcard is left lying about, then yes it can be strolen then too.
The construction of the SDCore assumes all the original permissions, so nothing has access to things it shouldn't save the scripts that use the cache as a backup mount point, but it is given the same permissions as /data, so no worries.
With this construct in place, you can't physically remove the sdcard without first powering off the Android, or rebooting it and removing the sdcard first thing. But while the system is operational, you can mount the sdcard to usb and umount it from usb without issue as long as any mounts to the sdcard are released (loopfs, etc) prior to trying. vold will give 10 tries to umount /sdcard to include attempting to kill the processes with file locks on /sdcard when it tries to umount the volume to attach it to usb.
A a matter of fact, if you observe via teh ddms debugger during boot, the vold service is busy checking the sdcard and mounting it well after the system has already mounted the sdcp2 and begun initializing apps from the sd /data.
So, as long as "sdcard partition2" (sdcp2) remains mounted and all, you can mount the sdcard to the connected Host and back and still have access to your apps and data all you want. I reckon this is how the app2sd and dalvik2sd constructs also perform.
The only thing to really note is that the first partition must be vfat (fat32) and the second either ext2 or ext3 (currently as they support file permissions). vold only cares about the first partition which it expects to be a vfat volume. So as long as p1 is vfat and p2 is posix compliant, we're golden!
The only real question I don't have a good answer for is the speed gains question. My card is a 8GB class6 and things seem fairly responsive. I don't know how much different it would be with a class 4 or 2, or the real speed difference with the built in storage. Honestly it feels a little more responsive, but I haven't really done things that make it feel sluggish.

Oh, I saw the .img and assumed you just mounted the .img from fat32. My bad for not reading all the instructions.
Any problems with apps crashing? I have had a lot of quirky issues in the past with merging the entire partition.
Thanks for the response. I like what you've done here. I'll have to try it out for sure.

TheDudeOfLife said:
Oh, I saw the .img and assumed you just mounted the .img from fat32. My bad for not reading all the instructions.
Any problems with apps crashing? I have had a lot of quirky issues in the past with merging the entire partition.
Thanks for the response. I like what you've done here. I'll have to try it out for sure.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No worries; the .img file can be thought of as an install cdrom it is only used the one time during install.
As far as apps crashing, no problems!
During my experimentation building the construct, permission mangling happens if apps are moved out of /data/app, /data/app-private but /data/data and maybe /data/dalvik-cache are not cleaned up prior to copying apps back into their respective app dirs.
What happens is the app dirs are monitored. if you move an apk into the dirs android will install the app. Likewise if you delete an app from those dirs PackageManager will uninstall the app. If /data/data already has the dir for the app, it will use it. if the /data/system/packages.xml and /data/data don't have the same id assigned to that app, you get a permissions\\id conflict; the PackageManager will not manipulate the dir if the id's don't match.
The app /data/local/bin/archiveApps.sh, /data/local/bin/softWIPE.sh and /data/local/bin/restoreApps.sh scripts allow one to backup thier apps to the new /data/app-archive and /data/app-private-archive dirs, clean out /data/data/ /data/dalvik-cache, and restore the apps to their app dirs. As the apps are copied into their dirs, the PackageManager will update /data/system/packages.xml proper and rebuild /data/data and the dalvikVM will build the /dalvik-cahce proper.
Someone made a seemingly nice script (I've not used it yet) called fix_permissions.sh that will parse the /data/system/packages.xml and update the ownership id of the apps /data/data sub dir proper and thus is more scalpel like in operation, but that process doesn't make a backup of the apps; so using both may be the most effective replacing the softWIPE.sh part of the process with the fix_permissions.sh instead.
The only time you should run into issues is if say you have 10 apps installed in teh SDCore /data and 6 in Android /data and then attempt to sync them (because the 6 are different than the 10) by copying\\merging Android /data with SDCore /data the SDCore /data/data /data/dalvik-cache and /data/system/packages.xml will now be mangled.
/data/system/packages.xml will now no longer know about the 10 apps that were installed prior, and on boot PackageManager will "install" them, but /data/data will have dirs inside with now different id's from what was newly assigned them in /data/system/packages.xml, and the 10 apps will now not work correctly but the 6 will as dirs with matching id's were created when they were "installed" new.
To fix, either the softWIPE.sh process outlined above, or the fix_permissions.sh process also mentioned above.

So did anyone try this at all?

Can this be done after doing the apps2sd by marcusmaximus? I tried it but when trying to chmod 0750 /data/local/bin/data2sd.sh it said "No such file or directory" so i tried mkdir /data/local/bin and got "File Exists" so i proceeded with copying data2sd.sh to /data/local/bin again which went without showing any errors and when trying to chmod 0750 /data/local/bin/data2sd.sh again i got the same error so i tried to ls /data/local/bin and just got # what am i doing wrong?

looks interesting! might try this during the weekends ill give an update if i encounter any issues or not

interesting. I'll be looking into this!

[Q] Samsung Galaxy S Duos GT-S7562

Hello!
Is there actually a way to mode Apps to SD Card without ROOT the phone? I'm new on Android system.
Thank's for the support!
Simon

Link2SD does not require root, and has a GUI, too.
Edit: ^That's not true!

Hello!
Thank you for the answer. On the description of the app it's written:
"Link2SD is an application that makes it easy for Android 1.6+ users with root privileges on their phone to move applications to the SD card."
Doesn't it mean I need a ROOTed phone? I know, could test it before to ask, but haven't the phone with me.
Thank's
Simon

Um, actually, yes. I'm not sure what I was thinking yesterday. All those *2sd methods are scripts, which are intended to execute upon startup, and tell the system to mount another partition. So, yes, you definitely need root.

post-mortem said:
Um, actually, yes. I'm not sure what I was thinking yesterday. All those *2sd methods are scripts, which are intended to execute upon startup, and tell the system to mount another partition. So, yes, you definitely need root.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry for interrupting but did you mean that all those *2sd function will work after rooting? Because they don't work on my phone now without root.

The *2sd scripts are intended to run during the startup process, like in Windows you can set some programs to run automatically every time you start the computer. in this case, these scripts are only a couple lines, and they typically tell the system to mount a certain partition on the SD card as a folder. For example, if you move everything in /data/data to a partition on the SD card (i.e., /sd-ext/data), then mount the /sd-ext partition as /data/data, then every time the device tries to read or write to /data/data, it will actually be accessing /sd-ext/data. You need root authority to mount and unmount partitions.

post-mortem said:
The *2sd scripts are intended to run during the startup process, like in Windows you can set some programs to run automatically every time you start the computer. in this case, these scripts are only a couple lines, and they typically tell the system to mount a certain partition on the SD card as a folder. For example, if you move everything in /data/data to a partition on the SD card (i.e., /sd-ext/data), then mount the /sd-ext partition as /data/data, then every time the device tries to read or write to /data/data, it will actually be accessing /sd-ext/data. You need root authority to mount and unmount partitions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, I'll try to do this way...
Can you tell me the exact folder which I have to redact, please.

Hii
I need clear answer and solution...
I. Is it dose all *2sd need root or no.. cause as above people said it's not working ??
II. If it's possible without root please share the app name or the steps to do that simply please...
Sent from my GT-S7562 using xda app-developers app

about kyle open rom
hi all,
This is my first post.
I am using galaxy s duos s7562(india) from last 7 months. i tried to install kyle open rom updated v2.0 to my mobile but it shows network issues. installed perfectly but only network issues i faced. In installation process cheatman said that first install XXALJ4 as base ROM, but i am not able to find that rom for my country. Please solve my issue. Thanks in advance

SDCard and SDCard-ext wrong location

I just installed a new ROM and the SDCARD and SDCard-ext are in the wrong location. They are listed under the root director ( / ) and /storage instead of under /mnt/sdcard

Does it work? You could create a symlink. If that fixed it, put it in a script on bootup.

post-mortem said:
Does it work? You could create a symlink. If that fixed it, put it in a script on bootup.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does it work is a relative question. (wasn't meant to sound wise-a$$). I can access them, but apps do not see them at all. They are looking for the cards in /mnt therefor not finding them.
I changed them in /system/etc/vold.fstab but now it won't boot. The not booting is not an issue, I can fix that, but I don't know how to fix these incorrect paths/

No one else who's using this ROM is having these problems? I say either reflash, create symlinks, or choose another ROM.

post-mortem said:
No one else who's using this ROM is having these problems? I say either reflash, create symlinks, or choose another ROM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure if anyone else is running it. Haven't been able to find a thread on here for it. How do you do symlinks?

mikemikemikexxx said:
Not sure if anyone else is running it. Haven't been able to find a thread on here for it. How do you do symlinks?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ln -s target shortcut
See a bit more here.
Make a script in your /system/etc/init.d directory, so these links will be created on every boot.

post-mortem said:
ln -s target shortcut
See a bit more here.
Make a script in your /system/etc/init.d directory, so these links will be created on every boot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From what I have read you cannot use them on FAT.
Why does editing this file not work? I fail to see how Android could do anything other than read the file, provided permissions are the same.

mikemikemikexxx said:
From what I have read you cannot use them on FAT.
Why does editing this file not work? I fail to see how Android could do anything other than read the file, provided permissions are the same.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The internal memory is not FAT; typically, only the 1st partition on the SD card is FAT, everything else should be EXT. So, executing ln -s /storage /sd-ext should work (or wherever it's currently being mounted).

post-mortem said:
The internal memory is not FAT; typically, only the 1st partition on the SD card is FAT, everything else should be EXT. So, executing ln -s /storage /sd-ext should work (or wherever it's currently being mounted).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I meant the card but ln is not working.
One more thing I am going to try is an ADB pull and push. If that doesn't work I really need some community support.

bump to the front.

Are my questions that complex or that dumb that I get so few replays? /bump
Sent from my XT875 using xda app-developers app

Is there a good reason that you don't want to use another ROM?

Mainly speed and compatibility. I need the offline commands only available in JB. Stock ROM is dead slow and is only ICS. Other custom ROMs were also on the slow side and/or battery hogs.
Sent from my XT875 using xda app-developers app

So, is this right?
FAT partition is currently being mounted as /storage
EXT partition is currently being mounted as /mnt/sdcard

post-mortem said:
So, is this right?
FAT partition is currently being mounted as /storage
EXT partition is currently being mounted as /mnt/sdcard
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well the way my phone is laid out is
System (I assume too large so they split it in two which resulted in the below SD-Card)
SD-Card
SD-Card EXT (The actual SD Card) - FAT32
I assume the System and SD-Card are standard Android partition format.

Do you use a file manager on the phone, such as ES File Explorer? Are you familiar with using adb?
Edit: Basically, I'm trying to figure out the exact path of the mounted partitions, and where they're supposed to be mounted.

post-mortem said:
Do you use a file manager on the phone, such as ES File Explorer? Are you familiar with using adb?
Edit: Basically, I'm trying to figure out the exact path of the mounted partitions, and where they're supposed to be mounted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They are 100% supposed to be mounted under: /mnt/sdcard and /mnt/sdcard-ext
Right now they are mounting to: /storage/sdcard and /storage/sdcard-ext
There is also an entry in under root ( /sdcard and /sdcard-ext --- For these two I am booting into stock ROM to see if they are suppose to be directly in root as well, will post up when I know)

Check the scripts in your init.d to see if one of them is mounting the sd partitions under /storage.
I suppose you could also try booting without the sd card in place, and see if those /storage directories still exist. Not sure how much that will tell you, though.

post-mortem said:
Check the scripts in your init.d to see if one of them is mounting the sd partitions under /storage.
I suppose you could also try booting without the sd card in place, and see if those /storage directories still exist. Not sure how much that will tell you, though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The init.d for sure says to load sdcards to /storage . (on this particular ROM only)
I will try without the sdcard as you suggested and let you know. Battery died on me, phone won't boot even when plugged in until at least 10%.

Which script is mounting the sd card to /storage? Is it part of the ROM, or is it something which the dev included in this ROM? I ask in case the ROM expects the sd card to be mounted there.
Regardless, try changing the script to link to /sdcard.

[Q] What does Mounting System, Data and Cache mean?

I am a newbie into this rooting and upgrading stuffs on my android phone. Iv rooted, installed custom ROMs etc etc and tinkered with my phone a lot of times. I am also a curious learner. could anyone please tell me what exactly mounting storage, mounting data or mounting cache mean. Iv mounted and unmounted them alot of times going by the guidelines provided for the specific installations. Would be nice if i actually know why i am doing it Also Kindly let me on what actions can be performed or not performed when.they are mounted/ unmounted thank you.
#wannabeDeveloper

if you want to install a custom rom, sometimes a procedure for mounting tell you, it's like you open a permission to install that rom to your device
Sorry for my bad english

Achesh97 said:
I am a newbie into this rooting and upgrading stuffs on my android phone. Iv rooted, installed custom ROMs etc etc and tinkered with my phone a lot of times. I am also a curious learner. could anyone please tell me what exactly mounting storage, mounting data or mounting cache mean. Iv mounted and unmounted them alot of times going by the guidelines provided for the specific installations. Would be nice if i actually know why i am doing it Also Kindly let me on what actions can be performed or not performed when.they are mounted/ unmounted thank you.
#wannabeDeveloper
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mounting is the point where you can edit the files in the folder that you mount, it similar to that of mounting drives.
Similarly there are mounting such as when you use root explorers you can mount them as read/write or read only.
A Linux user can explain you in the best way, coz they usually mount their partitions as drives to work on them.
Hit thanks rather than typing it now Free

zipperX said:
if you want to install a custom rom, sometimes a procedure for mounting tell you, it's like you open a permission to install that rom to your device
Sorry for my bad english
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
your English is fine
so everytime you have to perform an update or flashing anything, you have to make sure that all the three are mounted? rigjt?

parkourkarthik said:
Mounting is the point where you can edit the files in the folder that you mount, it similar to that of mounting drives.
Similarly there are mounting such as when you use root explorers you can mount them as read/write or read only.
A Linux user can explain you in the best way, coz they usually mount their partitions as drives to work on them.
Hit thanks rather than typing it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank You there so whenever i have to flash a zip file or particularly an update, i have to mount everything? and what should be their states before rebooting? like mounted or unmounted?

Achesh97 said:
Thank You there so whenever i have to flash a zip file or particularly an update, i have to mount everything? and what should be their states before rebooting? like mounted or unmounted?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No need of mounting everytime you flash.
Mostly the zip files itself contains scripts to mount your partition, they do the job theirself.
In rare cases the developer of the flashable zip file would recommend you to mount the partitions required, in those cases only you need to mount through CWM
Hit thanks rather than typing it now Free

Link2sd lost 2nd partition (f2fs)

While working with Link2sd, I moved a ton of apps to the SD's 2nd partition, using f2fs file system. Rebooting the phone (XT926 - 4.4.2 - rooted), the 2nd partition was no longer accessable and, of course, the apps vanished. Worse, I can't re-install some of them. I get the "not enough storage" gripe. Short of doing an FDR, is there any hope of recovering the data or at least making it possible to re-install the lost apps? FWIW, I tried reading the SD under Win7 (nothing found, of course) and SuSE Linux with f2fs.tools installed. Still nothing.
How SOL am I?

I did an FDR.
It looks as though EXT3 is a workable choice. Right? Wrong?

I posted following is posted at the end of Working CWM Recovery for LOCKED 183.46.15 + Deodex and more
[... I]t appears that two related problems have shown up. And those error messages lead to 2 points.
A) Apps like Link2SD and Apps2SD, which move data from the internal "SD" to a real SD, fail to work. The errors all feature some form of the mount failing.
B) busybox isn't visible to these apps.
Busybox is located in /system/xbin. The link apps try to mount a second partition on the external SD. The mount utility is supplied by busybox. The errors say that /sbin/busybox can't be found. I think the system PATH is supposed to make calls to /sbin/busybox resolve to /system/xbin/busybox. I created a symlink from /system/xbin/busybox to /sbin/busybox. That changed the nature of the error messages somewhat but otherwise didn't correct the "mounts don't work" problem. After rebooting the phone, the symlink had to be created again as it wasn't present after the reboot.
I spent a lot of time with the Apps2SD developer (no reply from the Link2SD developer), trying to figure out what was going wrong. At the end of the day (literally), the problem was, in her mind, the ROM. Of course the ROM in the MAXX HD is locked up, so that can't be the source of the problem. But... is it possible that deodexing, or at least the process that installed the deodexing mod, subtly broke something related to busybox?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There isn't much to be added here except to ask if anyone has used one of the "link to SD" apps successfully.

RBEmerson said:
While working with Link2sd, I moved a ton of apps to the SD's 2nd partition, using f2fs file system. Rebooting the phone (XT926 - 4.4.2 - rooted), the 2nd partition was no longer accessable and, of course, the apps vanished. Worse, I can't re-install some of them. I get the "not enough storage" gripe. Short of doing an FDR, is there any hope of recovering the data or at least making it possible to re-install the lost apps? FWIW, I tried reading the SD under Win7 (nothing found, of course) and SuSE Linux with f2fs.tools installed. Still nothing.
How SOL am I?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sent from my Eon_62i using XDA Free mobile app

You don't say... [/wink]

So does Link2SD not work with f2fs? I get "Second partition not found"