Is it worth to format /system in f2fs? - Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi all! I'm running CM13 Snapshot, with ElementalX. As now I formatted /data and /cache in F2FS. Would it be worth to also format /system in F2FS, since is mostly read-only?

Well you simply can't, every ROM installation will re-format /system to ext4 automatically. And even if you could, you probably can't notice any improvements on the Nexus 5. The Nexus 5 still has pretty powerful hardware which can handle almost everything without any problems so I wonder why you would want to have /system formatted to F2FS. In my experience things never really got that much better with the /cache and /data formatted to F2FS, only benchmarks scores got a bit higher. In my opinion F2FS is pretty useless on this device. Could be helpful for lower end ones.

Thanks for the answer! I must say i jumped on the f2fs train without doing any benchmarks, and also going from KK to LP long time ago, so I couldn't do a proprer comparison. Also I didn't think about the rom installation process reformatting...well than my question is pretty useless

Short answer, no. From what I've read, F2FS has slightly better write speeds than ext4 and slightly worse read speed. On a partition that you write often to, such as data and cache, it could be beneficial because of the better write speed. But on the system partition, it would even cause performance drop since it's read-only.

No.
The system partition is mounted mostly with ro permissions anyway.
Write operations are few and rare.
Finally, f2fs seems to have more overhead (allocates more space) which might be an issue for devices with small-ish system partitions.

Related

[Q] [ZTE V970M] Formatting [email protected] as ext4 and moving /data to it. Possible?

Hey guys
Recently I've got a ZTE V970M (MT6577) phone and so far it's awesome. However, some people have been asking for a way to extend the /data partition because some games are heavy 'n stuff. That's alright.
There is a method which resizes the partitions by altering the MBR on the EMMC and that way the /data partition ends up with 2GB (from [email protected]) + 512MB (the assigned for /data), but I want to do something different, without having to edit the MBR that way. Dunno, it's fishy imo.
My idea was to format [email protected] (which comes in vfat) as ext4 and then editing init.rc and change the partition mount points from [email protected] to [email protected]
If I do that without formatting, the phone boots but it asks for an encryption key. Reading on the net, it's not asking for an encryption key, it's the fallback mode for when it can't mount the /data partition and then it believes it's encrypted, but it isn't.
If I format the [email protected] to ext4 (mke2fs -T ext4 /dev/block/mmcblk0p6), parted shows it's on ext4 and all that shiz, but the phone seems to disconnect itself from ADB once it finishes booting, and hangs in bootloop. Since I can't ADB it, I don't know wtf is going on with the phone. Something tells me I'm close to reaching the goal though.
Looking on the net I found this useful link -> http://blog.kangkang.org/index.php/archives/242 which talks about extending /data the way I want to do (for the Tegra2 one, but it shouldn't matter). However, Chinese isn't my main or secondary language (lol) and google translate does an horrible job at translating it.
So, anyone got ideas on how to extend such partition? I just want to swap the normal /data partition with the internal SDcard partition, so in theory if I format it to ext4 and swap the mount points it should work, it's just a swap, but why it isn't?
Any ideas are greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance!
- DARKGuy
I hate bumping but, nobody yet? I've seen this being done in other phones... any ideas?
I can't believe no one has an idea yet... come on, this is XDA... wtf is up?
Yeah, I wanna know this too. If formatting the EMMC on my Note1 to anything other that the FAT32 will help?

[Q] nexus s fstrim on /cache /system partition

Hello,
i am using lagfix on my nexus s. But by default , only /data partition is selected for trim command.
Can i check /system and trim it also safely without bricking or any other issues?
secondly.. the /cache partition is disabled altogether.. and i get a prompt that the /cache partition isnt supported due to hardware or due to the limitations of the kernel on the device. So my query.. whats the limititation? the h/w or the default cm10 kernel? is there a kernel that i can use so as to get trim to run on /cache partition? is it possible..
please share your opinion.
my nexus s seems to start lagging a lot . i want to bring it back to life.. any proven suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks so much XDA community.

going from full f2fs to mixed.

i was reading the temasek thread and noticed that keeping /system on ext4 is better for the phone. judging by the slow downs i found after switching to f2fs... i have to agree. so i am hoping to clarify something right quick. formatting /system back to ext4 - will not erase my roms, correct? thanks.
phermey said:
i was reading the temasek thread and noticed that keeping /system on ext4 is better for the phone. judging by the slow downs i found after switching to f2fs... i have to agree. so i am hoping to clarify something right quick. formatting /system back to ext4 - will not erase my roms, correct? thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Formatting /system will erase everything that resides in the /system partition obviously.
timmaaa said:
Formatting /system will erase everything that resides in the /system partition obviously.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
indeed obviously. i have so many issues with the drivers on my xp machine that i just wanted to be sure. if it erased my downloads... i would have been hours. i went ahead and took the chance a bit earlier. i should have updated. thanks for responding.

My findings so far

once i got the pixel 3 xl i got to tinkering with it, rooting, twrp, a few hacks and tweaks i do to all my phones to see if i could get more performance out of it
here are my findings coming from a oneplus 6
1. exremely poor ram management compared to my op6, redraws, apps reloading, slower app loading compared to my tweaked op6.
2. if you run decrypted data you can no longer register a fingerprint, the option is completely gone, and the screen pin can not be changed once set in settings, to change it you must delete the locksetting.db file in /data/system
3. sometimes running slow, not sure if its kernel related (i would like to think so because it sometimes becomes speedy out of nowhere) opening apps, switching apps, etc etc is slower than my op6
4. no journaling, the first phone i have ever seen to not run a journal on the file system partition, this has always been my #1 tweak when i unlock a BL - great move by google
5. notifications not appearing for google pay - or are delayed by tens of minutes eventhough the payment has gone through, i have done all the tweaks to disable battery management etc but still no go
currently i am experimenting /data partition formatted to EXT4 (if possible) since F2FS is running the encryption of a secondary partition (i believe this was a drawback of f2fs back in the day)
tweaks i have used:
editing the fstab to remove unneccessary options (i.e barrier, discard, background_gc, blockvalidity, etc)
there exists a journal on the /metadata partition - i have removed it with no consequence
edit:
i can not run /data as EXT4 - even after modifying the fstab and changing to ext4 in twrp - it returns with a corrupt error and only option is to try again or format data.
if anyone has any ideas on how to get it successfully working
yet to find a way on how to boot with /data as EXT4
keep failing boot once i edit the fstab to include EXT4 on the /data partition, and tells me to format my data before i can boot into OS
if anyone has any ideas on how to format /data as EXT4 please let me know
i have suspicions that EXT4 will run better on the /data partition

F2FS Performance/Reliability

Anyone tried F2FS with android 9?
Wondering how it performs in our phones and if it's reliable enough
I used to try it on my old Nexus 7... Memory flash on it was very slow and using f2fs the tablet performed really well.
In those days you needed a capable kernel and ROM to use f2fs in /system e /data partition

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