Database Info

Regarding disk space

Has anyone tried to repartition our /system and /data folders to create an /emmc partition for our phones? Seems like OE partitioning scheme is a huge waste of space and we could better utilize the extra space if it was in user mountable partition.
This should be easy to do via recovery yes?
Sent from my MB865 using xda premium

unsivil_audio said:
Has anyone tried to repartition our /system and /data folders to create an /emmc partition for our phones? Seems like OE partitioning scheme is a huge waste of space and we could better utilize the extra space if it was in user mountable partition.
This should be easy to do via recovery yes?
Sent from my MB865 using xda premium
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Yes both lfaber06 and I sort of do something similar, with the way we have safestrap setup, but we use the SDcard instead. The one issue I see with this is what the future brings for this phone, like what moto might do for us with ICS, and such, what may be needed in these partitions to make it work. Other that that I don't see an issue, but you will have to change a ton of start scripts if the partition numbers change.
Jim
Sent from my MB865 using xda premium

I don't think you understand, I want the space to be user accessible, like I have on my nook. I flashed a custom repartition from cwm to resize data and media partitions. The /emmc partition is a fat32 partition I believe (on my nook anyways). I've never even come close to filling my 2gb data partition, and now I have 4gb of space for music or videos storage.

unsivil_audio said:
I don't think you understand, I want the space to be user accessible, like I have on my nook. I flashed a custom repartition from cwm to resize data and media partitions. The /emmc partition is a fat32 partition I believe (on my nook anyways). I've never even come close to filling my 2gb data partition, and now I have 4gb of space for music or videos storage.
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Click to collapse
No, I don't think you understand what that really does under the covers. Both lfaber06 and I have been working on this device for a while, we are the ONLY two devs currently working on this device. What I am telling you is that if you change the size of ANY of the internal partitions, It might effect the ability to update to another version of Android. Your Nook, is not a Mototrola device, and Moto has completly messed with/up android, and therefore it is not safe to do what you are saying. No matter what you can not get access to the internal partitions, yes on AOSP devices / devices that can be AOSP (the nook is one), you can do those things. The Atrix2 still has a locked bootloader, so we are stuck with their kernel, and version of android. To do what you are saying you will need to have an AOSP kernel, and have MANY init scripts updated to understand the new partition table. It is not as easy as you make it out to be.

Okay, I was under the impression with rw abilities on /system and /data partitions we also have the ability to mount, unmount; also giving us the ability to edit the partition blocks via bootstrap.
Ok how about this, there is a guy in the Nook Tablet forum (locked bootloader, like us) who had the idea of basically running a fat32 "img" that in the /data (ext4) partition to that would mount via a script and be user accessible? That would be possible I would think.

unsivil_audio said:
Okay, I was under the impression with rw abilities on /system and /data partitions we also have the ability to mount, unmount; also giving us the ability to edit the partition blocks via bootstrap.
Ok how about this, there is a guy in the Nook Tablet forum (locked bootloader, like us) who had the idea of basically running a fat32 "img" that in the /data (ext4) partition to that would mount via a script and be user accessible? That would be possible I would think.
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Yes you do have access to all of those things with root, but Moto has done so much customization to this thing, that would not be safe.
Yes, that is also something that lfaber06 and I have thrown around as well, the logistics of it need to be worked out for our phone, and the proper init scripts need to be put together.
Are you up for the task? I only ask because he and I are currently working on porting cm7 and cm9 to our phone, which is a huge task. I can help you out, but I just can't take on anymore projects for this phone at the moment, since I have 5 different things I am working on for us right now.

I am definitely down to help, still going to be a bit of a learning curve for myself. Still pretty new to linux/android.

unsivil_audio said:
I am definitely down to help, still going to be a bit of a learning curve for myself. Still pretty new to linux/android.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
PM me, with as much info as you have about this, preferably any links that you have read, and I will help you develop a game plan, and what you will need to make this hack happen. You will have to do some research on your own, and I can help with the Linux/Android part, and help you figure out what you will need to do. I am also not sure on the what kind of speed to expect from something like this, so that will also be something to look into, since this will be a virtual disk file.

[Q] Resize internal partitions

Hi,
This has been asked many times before with no real solution that applies to different devices.
I'm running out of space on my /system partition and can't install any more apps even though I don't have that many installed.
I want a way to re-size the Android partitions manually to whatever size I want. Or just delete all current partitions and create new ones.
How do I do that? Is there any GUI partitioning tools similar to the ones available for Windows?
I don't want to move files from /system to another partition. I want to change the partition size.
My current /system partition:

For what reason are you moving apps to /system? You can't install them there, you have to push/move them there, installs go to /data. So keep them in /data, where they're installed by default. You have tons of space available there.
Partition table (start addresses and sizes) is hard-coded in bootloader, and can be redefined in kernel boot parameters (in this case recovery needs to be recompiled with the same parameters too, otherwise it won't write to the same partitions the kernel will read from). You're welcome to hack any of those. As you could probably understand from this paragraph, I wouldn't expect having GUI tools for that.

Thanks for the reply.
I'm not trying to move apps to /system. I thought apps are installed there by default because every time I try to install a new app it gives me an error message saying that there is not enough space on /system.
Now I know that apps are not installed in /system.
I just need more space in /system so I can install new apps without any errors.
What can I do to get more space on /system partition? Can I replace the bootloader?
I don't have any Android programming experience. I probably need something that is available out there to do the job.

In stock form, you shouldn't even have write permissions to /system. Nothing should be ever written there, and it can be 99.99999% utilized - there shouldn't be any free space left for anything, it shouldn't normally be used.
If you're getting that error when trying to install an app - you need to check what's reporting the error. It's not a "real" error, it means there's something wrong with your phone.

Try wiping cache partition from recovery...does this make any difference?
Jack is correct.
Swyped from my DesireS

refer to this
if this may help you http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1959691
:highfive:

mayank88288 said:
refer to this
if this may help you http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1959691
:highfive:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Way to bump a year old thread :thumbup:
“I'm bad and I'm going to hell, and I don't care. I'd rather be in hell than anywhere where you are. ”*―*William Faulkner

[Q] Why are there a lot of partitions in Android devices ? (DEV Question)

I think this is moronic , an ext4 partition to maintain the system and a swap partition for oom situations and cached processes is enough.
Obviously there are some benefits like if your system partition is corrupted you don't lose the data but since most non-dev users will end up either reflashing the device from scratch or take it to the service center anyway , it's not logical.
Plus , i've never seen an ext4 partition get corrupted on hdds let alone ssds...
USB connectivity is solved by MTP and you can do what you cannot with mtp with adb...
It would save the developers from a lot of work and not just devs on xda , manufacturers' own devs.
I looked at my partition table and there are over 10 partitions , what the f... is this i mean ?
When you compile a new kernel , you need to write scripts mounting over 10 partitions , manually...
and i'm not even counting the flags that refer to those partitions...
I had to learn a lot of things to compile a kernel for our device from the source , now i find out that i have to do this huge manual labor for no logical reason , i'm pissed off naturally.
Does anybody have something , i missed ? or Am i right on the spot ?
I'm really hoping that i missed something , because if i didn't then it'd mean that people who made this system are idiots.

How easy/difficult it is to partition eMMC on android devices using partition apps?

There are a plethora of apps on the PlayStore that claim to actually "resize" your eMMC partitions. How well do they work? Can you just install it and change your say internal partition from 500MB to 1GB?
To the best of my knowledge, partition tables are kept well hidden and behind lots of complexities on various devices. The repartitioning methods are different on each device and too complex to try out (I know many on the MIUI forum who ended up bricking their devices or damaging their motherboards while trying to repartition).
Then how do these partition apps work?

[Completed] Need info on the deeper levels of storage access: formatting, repartitioning, etc

I think I have a decent grasp of how the Android system functions, what the partitions are, what's stored on each partition, etc.
However, I've recently been put in a strange situation with my Note 4, requiring me to do a repartition of the internal memory, basically wiping everything and starting from 0. I realised I have basically 0 info on this, except using a PIT file in ODIN, and even then the concept is a bit fuzzy.
I need to understand some things:
- where exactly is the software that allows a connection to ODIN stored? Is it in sort of a BIOS of the phone? Is there an equivalent to a BIOS on a smartphone?
- can the internal memory ever be fully wiped and repartitioned like you can do to a PC's HDD or SSD? If so, how exactly? What are the tools needed? What are the risks?
- I keep reading about soft bricked and hard bricked phones. How exactly does a phone become hard bricked?
- Could you recommend some literature or wikis, forum posts, etc. on this subject?
Thank you very much.

SCViper said:
I need to understand some things:
- where exactly is the software that allows a connection to ODIN stored? Is it in sort of a BIOS of the phone? Is there an equivalent to a BIOS on a smartphone?
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Click to collapse
I'm not really a Samsung man but the software used to connect to odin is download mode which I think is the SBL partition (secondary bootloader.) On LG devices it's called the laf partition. That would be the closest equivalent to a BIOS. I found this thread which takes a good look into the partitions of various phones: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1959445. (It says it's for the El Grande but it has info for galaxy's, LG's etc).
- can the internal memory ever be fully wiped and repartitioned like you can do to a PC's HDD or SSD? If so, how exactly? What are the tools needed? What are the risks?
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Click to collapse
You can re-partition the internal memory but not exactly like a PC. Some people do it to increase the size of the /data partition with space from /sdcard (internal memory.) For some devices you can use a simple linux utility like parted but for a samsung it's done by editing your pit file. Have a look at these 2 links.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/gal.../mod-partition-internal-memory-t-989-t3051556
http://forum.xda-developers.com/xperia-l/general/guide-repartition-internal-memory-data-t3052242
- I keep reading about soft bricked and hard bricked phones. How exactly does a phone become hard bricked?
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Click to collapse
I've never hardbricked a device, even after wiping my main partitions. It's just a general term for when your phone is so badly borked that it's completely unresponsive and you can't even access it by pc. Mostly by hardware failure.
- Could you recommend some literature or wikis, forum posts, etc. on this subject?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check out the above threads and just have a look around here yourself for others. If you want to post a new topic it might be better to ask in your device section to get advice that's more relevant to your phone.

Thanks for this answer, I'll read the topics you've posted and see what's there.

Thank you very much Art, I've (finally) read the topics you posted and now have a better understanding of Android partitions.