Is there better way to get applications on sd card. Why are we using ext2 ? We can format sd card and partition it without using pc . We can format it into native supported file system of fat. why are need to make dev when in /dev/block device exist ? we need just to modifiee mounted.conf and /etc/fstab
I think because it's easier to say then to do But if you can make it so easy i love to use youre methode! (newest way is pretty easy, flash modded JF rom and exec a script and you are done: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=480582)
I would think that you could run into issues with permissions/etc if you tried to use a FAT filesystem to store applications.
About the only advantge of FAT is its ubiquity. In every other regard there is a better solution out there. Ext2 is by far the most widely supported linux filesystem that supports the full POSIX feature set.
simply put FAT32/VFAT is a horid horid filesystem, and does not support unix permissions, symlinks, etc.
EXT2 is a native linux filesystem, supports all of the above and has been time tested as stable.
That said it would be slick to get EXT3 (or 4!) support, or even reiserFS support.... journaling FTW
Well, you could just compile the kernel module, but your flash would probably survive a week with journaling... theres a reason you don't use it on flash.
Flash gets worn down by use, and journaling writes every second... So, journaling FTL.
tritron777 said:
Is there better way to get applications on sd card. Why are we using ext2 ? We can format sd card and partition it without using pc . We can format it into native supported file system of fat. why are need to make dev when in /dev/block device exist ? we need just to modifiee mounted.conf and /etc/fstab
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the phone is linux .. EXT2 is linux .. FAT does not support proper file permissions and if you wanted to try setting something up feel free .. however .. you mention "native" supported file system and that is linux .. storage on the SD comes standard with FAT file system simply because the phone only uses it to store extra files like MP3 and JPG etc .. applications need a higher level of communication that FAT just cannot handle .. that's why Microsoft gave up on it for windows
Hi all
I have all my apps and data moved to the sdcard a while back but my phone crashed and I decided to move only the apps to the sdcard.
I'm trying remove the /system/sd/data folder on the sdcard and keeps getting that error message. How to fix it?
Thanks
This should only happen if an NFS export is mounted to a linux box of some sort, and that export has changed or otherwise become inaccessible.
any idea how to fix it?
i have this problem, i'm not able to delete the data folder beacause of that error. :/
your ext2 partition is corrupted. this happens quite a lot if data is moved to the sdcard. boot up linux and run fsck on the sdcard and that should fix it.
cool. I'll give that a try.
Thanks
I'm having this problem too. Can you provide some basic instructions for how to mount and fix under linux? I have an ubuntu vmware image I can boot to on my windows pc and a usb card reader. Will that suffice?
When you plug the card into an ubuntu box it should automatically mount it as the next available drive. You'll have to figure out what device node the card shows up as, unmount it (umount /dev/<insert device name here>), and then run a filesystem check (fsck /dev/<insert device name here>) on the unmounted card. The utility will report various problems about "inodes" which you will want to say yes to fix. Once it has run through the file system should be in a consistent state and ready for use again.
You run the risk of losing stuff written to the card (which is probably corrupt anyways) when you run the fsck so you may want to take a copy of the data first.
On a side note: I am not sure what the default mount options are listed for moving the stuff onto the sd card in the faqs but I suspect it may help prevent corruption to mount the card on android with the sync option. Though, this will definitely slow writes to the card. It would definitely be a bad idea to remove the card while your G1 is running either way.
equid0x said:
On a side note: I am not sure what the default mount options are listed for moving the stuff onto the sd card in the faqs but I suspect it may help prevent corruption to mount the card on android with the sync option. Though, this will definitely slow writes to the card. It would definitely be a bad idea to remove the card while your G1 is running either way.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was thinking of using the sync option, but then I read this at http://linux.die.net/man/8/mount:
sync
All I/O to the file system should be done synchronously. In case of media with limited number of write cycles (e.g. some flash drives) "sync" may cause life-cycle shortening.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Busybox seems to have an fsck command built in, but I don't think all the supporting stuff is there. I'd like to have a way to fsck my ext2 partition while on the go and not near my linux box.
I know that you can't fsck without unmounting the partition and of course it would be bad to unmount the partition with apps on it while the phone is running, but I was thinking it would be nice to be able to boot into the recovery console.
I tried this and attempted to do a fsck on /dev/mmcblk0p2 with the fsck in busybox as follows:
Code:
busybox fsck -t ext2 /dev/mmcblk0p2
But the error I got was that fsck.ext2, which is the actual executable that should be used, isn't there.
What would it take to get this onto the system so that I could boot into recovery and do a quick fsck and then reboot back into phone mode?
I was thinking of using the sync option, but then I read this at http://linux.die.net/man/8/mount:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Where flash lifetime is concerned... I agree, this will certainly have some impact. However, the amount of wear concerned really depends on the number of write cycles the particular flash you are writing to can handle, and how good any wear leveling in the memory controller is. Modern flash memory will likely last on the order of years even with tons of writing going on. If all you are moving to the card are the apps, that data will likely be written once (or maybe a few times over the life of an app) and only re-read from that point forward. The caching will eventually commit any data in the buffer to "disk" regardless of how much is actually there. The idea is to line up all the writes so they can be done efficiently. Where ext3 is concerned, the commit interval is 5 seconds by default, I am not sure what it was in ext2 but I imagine it is similar. Ext2 is not really a flash optimized filesystem, but it is readily available on basically any linux distro, and is supported on Android. A better fs for flash drives where write cycles are an issue might be something like jffs2 or yaffs.
At any rate, sd cards are cheap. Why not just throw it away when it starts to die?
But the error I got was that fsck.ext2, which is the actual executable that should be used, isn't there.
What would it take to get this onto the system so that I could boot into recovery and do a quick fsck and then reboot back into phone mode?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You would have to compile an ARM6 compatible version of fsck and get it onto the recovery partition so you could run it.
just turn off your phone, pull out the sdcard, boot on a linux os and
then in console type :
fsck -p /dev/your_ext2_partition
Is there any way to clear this error message on a windows xp computer?
Maybe use pargon partion manager, but where do I go to fix it in pargon?
equid0x said:
Ext2 is not really a flash optimized filesystem, but it is readily available on basically any linux distro, and is supported on Android. A better fs for flash drives where write cycles are an issue might be something like jffs2 or yaffs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm... Well, we know that yaffs is supported on Android because that's what the onboard storage uses. So I wonder why the tutorial for apps-on-sdcard suggests creating an ext2 partition? Couldn't we create a yaffs partition on the sdcard and use that instead?
Maybe because yaffs isn't as commonly supported in non-Android partitioning tools (which you would have to use to set up the card initially)?
In any case, if there's no real downside to having the partition be yaffs, how can I go about formatting it as such? I don't recall seeing such an option on gParted or anything, but then again I didn't look that carefully.
So can anyone clue me into how I might add yaffs/yaffs2 support to my desktop linux box? I'd like to try using a yaffs2 partition rather than ext2 to see if I get better reliability, but I need to add support for that filesystem first. Can't seem to figure out how to do that quite yet...
You will likely need to create the partition from the terminal using something like fdisk or cfdisk which will allow you to select the proper filesystem ID. The command for creating the filesystem is mkyaffs. The fstab in android will need to be modified to enable mount of this file system at boot. You will need to install all of the yaffs support tools on a linux desktop to get access to the mkyaffs command.
Yaffs is designed to be used directly on NAND or NOR flash memory (not abstracted through the controller built into an SD card) but it may work anyways. I am not very familiar with the specifics of this particular FS. Most of these flash filesystems are designed to provide a bootable root filesystem for an embedded device.
Yaffs kernel support can be built into a custom kernel with the instructions here:
http://yaffs.net/howto-incorporate-yaffs
Its not likely you will find pre-made packages for any of this in a common distro like Ubuntu. So, you will need to know how to compile it all by hand. A good starting point for a lot of linux info is The Linux Documentation Project at:
http://www.tldp.org/
FWIW I have built homebrew linux based routers for dual ISPs, IPSEC VPN and the like using a lightly modified version of CentOS and 4GB CF cards plugged into an ATA adapter. I used EXT2 on these and they were in production use at a small 13 server farm for a couple of years before being replaced with newer equipment without any failures whatsoever.
I have also used CF cards in small 200Mhz cube PCs as basic web kiosks for extended periods of time without any failures as well.
Under normal usage patterns on a mobile device probably does not require a large amount of writes in the grand scheme of things. I'd say it is fairly likely that your card will outlive the device you are using it in regardless of the filesystem in use.
If you are seeing lots of corruption I would suspect a flakey/failing SD card or some other hardware related problem. It definitely pays to buy high quality flash media. I would also suggest not allowing the phone to constantly run dead if you know things are being written to the SD card, since random power failures during a write to flash can permanently damage the media.
So I was using Slax. Great LiveCD/USB linux, extremely customizable, modular, fast, and small, and has the capability of either:
- saving changes to its rootfs onto an AUFS mounted on a non-linux FS (FAT32, NTFS) using posixovl (POSIX Overlay FS) with metadata (permissions, etc.) being held in files
- saving changes to a fixed-size loop mount image.
This got me thinking.
If we could insert all the necessary modules, code, etc. for posixovl into the Android linux, and make a modified a2sd script that takes advantage of posixovl, we could effectively do away with the requirement for crazy partitioning.
It should be simple enough for ROM devs to implement, assuming it's ready and installed:
1. Create folder on main partition if it doesn't exist, something like /sdcard/system/[app, app-private, dalvik-cache, app_s]
2. In the init scripts, before the a2sd stuff, mount /sdcard/system with posixovl on /system/sd
3. Run a2sd as normal, it should automatically just work.
I'll hopefully test this once I get my phone to a stable development/testing stage, and I don't need to make phone calls for a while. Anyone else is welcome to try to implement this idea.
My current test environment:
- HTC Dream (T-mo G1) with the deadly SPL of doom
- Cyanogen Experimental, latest build
- Amon_RA's modded recovery
- Wipe /data, move all existing apps to backup, remove a2sd partition, Backup for Root Users to restore some settings and data
Anyone with ideas or improvements, please let me know.
To be tested:
- Feasibility (can it work?)
- Functionality (does it work?)
- Portability (Can it work on other ROMs and devices like Hero, Pulse, Blur etc.? If so, will likely be moved to XDA's new Android board)
- Stability (Will everything Force Close on boot? Does it run fast enough? Does anything get corrupted over time?)
Links:
- http://sourceforge.net/projects/posixovl - Sourceforge page for posixovl
In desktop linux you can create a file with the touch command, and mount the file to a mountpoint after formatting it to ext4 for example.
Maybe this is the easier way?
I have done this about 5 years ago, but I will try it today and report if it worked.
edit: ok done already:
1. create a file of the desired size, eg: dd if=/dev/zero of=filename bs=filesize count=1
2. use mke2fs to format the file
3. create a mountpoint and mount the file
thats all. Now I have a 128MB file on my PC, mountable and usable like a partition.
Archont said:
In desktop linux you can create a file with the touch command, and mount the file to a mountpoint after formatting it to ext4 for example.
Maybe this is the easier way?
I have done this about 5 years ago, but I will try it today and report if it worked.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As far as I know, you can do that on the mobile Android, too, and that does work in theory. This technique involves mounting a loop filesystem, and it too will allow one-partition apps2sd, but it's less flexible, and I would think slower, than the overlay method.
For a 512MB apps image:
Create empty 512MB file
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/sdcard/apps.img bs=1024k count=512
Format it to Ext2
# mke2fs -L Apps2SD /sdcard/apps.img
Unmount existing a2sd
# umount /system/sd
mount new a2sd image
# mount -t ext2 -o loop /sdcard/apps.img /system/sd
Make the usual directories, and a mountpoint for the old a2sd partition
# mkdir /system/sd/app; mkdir /system/sd/app-private; mkdir /system/sd/dalvik-cache; mkdir /system/sd/apps-tmp
Mount the old a2sd partition
# mount -t ext2 /dev/mmcblk0p2 /system/sd/apps-tmp/
Move all files from the old partition to the image file
# mv /system/sd/apps-tmp/* /system/sd/
Unmount and remove the mountpoint, we don't need it anymore
# umount /system/sd/apps-tmp
# rmdir /system/sd/apps-tmp
Finally, you add the following line to the init script where the a2sd auto mount happens, and comment out the old line.
Code:
[...]
mount -t ext2 -o loop /sdcard/apps.img /system/sd
#mount -t ext2 /dev/mmcblk0p2 /system/sd/
[...]
This should do what you described, in theory. I can't say whether it will work or not. I can't tell whether it will or won't screw up your phone, I can't be held responsible if you screw something up or overlook the details. Either of us might have made a typo somewhere; apply common sense before doing anything.
This sounds great! I think this would also be usefull for someone like me, who has a sd card that doesn't want to be partitioned anymore (cross-linked files??). Only thing possible is fat32 or ntfs.
Am I correct with my assumption?
This sounds a lot harder and more complicated then partioning. Your also talking about a lot of work needing to be done just so people can avoid doing a simple thing like partioning a sd card. I would say it would be very difficult alone to get the os to run a virtual mounting service especially since that will take up resources and slow down the phone. There is a reason they only use this technique on live cds is it works but its slow. most of the computers they are running on have 1gig of ram and 2ghz cpu's. i really dont think the g1 can push this.
I do not think that this is great, it definitely is slower than a ext4 partition on a good class 6 microSD card. And it is more vulnerable to data loss since 2 different filesystems including a 20 year old non-journaling fs at the base of this construct are involved.
Another problem that came to my mind: when you mount your SD card as external USB device to a PC, the file containing your apps will no longer be accessible, or Android will make using the phone as external data storage impossible.
Interesting.
There is, however, a major problem: What happens when you unmount the fat partition on the phone in order to connect with a computer using UMS? Answer: everything on the phone will crash and burn since the apps filesystem will suddenly disappear = BAD.
posixovl is a nice find though...
Note that aufs, loopmount linux filesystems, etc., wouldn't be needed with this since posixovl appears to be vfat with posix extensions, so you should be able to just use posixovl directly on the sdcard.
There are several problems with that though... i.e. how reliable is posixovl regarding users tampering with it?
In any case, a prerequisite for use of it would be certain other changes being planned...
You might want to contribute to this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=577941
(note: the thread links to a thread at android-platform, the one here has, as expected, gone off on a tangent... just ignore the junk.)
TylTru said:
So I was using Slax. Great LiveCD/USB linux, extremely customizable, modular, fast, and small, and has the capability of either:
- saving changes to its rootfs onto an AUFS mounted on a non-linux FS (FAT32, NTFS) using posixovl (POSIX Overlay FS) with metadata (permissions, etc.) being held in files
- saving changes to a fixed-size loop mount image.
This got me thinking.
If we could insert all the necessary modules, code, etc. for posixovl into the Android linux, and make a modified a2sd script that takes advantage of posixovl, we could effectively do away with the requirement for crazy partitioning.
It should be simple enough for ROM devs to implement, assuming it's ready and installed:
1. Create folder on main partition if it doesn't exist, something like /sdcard/system/[app, app-private, dalvik-cache, app_s]
2. In the init scripts, before the a2sd stuff, mount /sdcard/system with posixovl on /system/sd
3. Run a2sd as normal, it should automatically just work.
I'll hopefully test this once I get my phone to a stable development/testing stage, and I don't need to make phone calls for a while. Anyone else is welcome to try to implement this idea.
My current test environment:
- HTC Dream (T-mo G1) with the deadly SPL of doom
- Cyanogen Experimental, latest build
- Amon_RA's modded recovery
- Wipe /data, move all existing apps to backup, remove a2sd partition, Backup for Root Users to restore some settings and data
Anyone with ideas or improvements, please let me know.
To be tested:
- Feasibility (can it work?)
- Functionality (does it work?)
- Portability (Can it work on other ROMs and devices like Hero, Pulse, Blur etc.? If so, will likely be moved to XDA's new Android board)
- Stability (Will everything Force Close on boot? Does it run fast enough? Does anything get corrupted over time?)
Links:
- http://sourceforge.net/projects/posixovl - Sourceforge page for posixovl
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lbcoder said:
Interesting.
There is, however, a major problem: What happens when you unmount the fat partition on the phone in order to connect with a computer using UMS? Answer: everything on the phone will crash and burn since the apps filesystem will suddenly disappear = BAD.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I kinda overlooked that point. Oops.
Though this same problem does exist on regular apps2sd when you remove the card without dismounting it, killing all apps and their processes, and freezing Dalvik's method of autostarting some apps.
I do tend to swap cards every now and then, but only after a reboot. Dalvik re-enumerates and caches dex, which makes for a slow boot, but it seems to just work in most cases that the apk install doesn't drop the app's functional payload (helper Linux/shell utils, libraries, NDK .so's) in /data/data (like some emulators, the Android Scripting Environment)
lbcoder said:
There are several problems with that though... i.e. how reliable is posixovl regarding users tampering with it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As far as I know, the metadata files are marked as hidden and system files, and begin with a '.'. And I haven't tried this, but I think modifying the actual files under Windows has no negative effects, but moving, deleting, or copying files would likely be a no-no.
Also, I don't think there's a 'fsck' for posixovl, meaning that if any metadata files were screwed with the wrong way, the entire overlay FS would be trashed.
lbcoder said:
In any case, a prerequisite for use of it would be certain other changes being planned...
You might want to contribute to this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=577941
(note: the thread links to a thread at android-platform, the one here has, as expected, gone off on a tangent... just ignore the junk.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I checked that out. It was actually a small inspiration for what I was thinking of.
In any case, Android's package management system needs an overhaul. The package storage needs to be de-Linuxified, as all it is is a bunch of .apk files and .dex/.odex files, the UIDs of apps are in the AndroidManifest.xml, right?
In a somewhat unrelated note, app data needs to be moved to a specified folder structure on the sdcard. My card is full of folders in the root directory with random names.
If I'm understanding you correctly, you're talking about storing an image file on the normal SD card partition(which has to be FAT32 as far as I've seen) and then mounting it, correct? This idea has been talked about at length before on at least 3 separate occasions(2 of which were on this very forum) and found to be a bad idea due primarily to massive security risks since FAT32 has no permissions.
Also, I believe cyanogen ended up dumping unionfs/aufs due to rampant memory issues.
If you are talking about mounting an image from the FAT32 partition, please don't endorse this. We don't want to be throwing in security bugs into android, especially ones such as this which can't be plugged up.
As a modification to what I said: If you're suggesting doing this(or something similar) on a separate filesystem, after that project to change the AOSP to support one with permissions is finished, then I'm in full support.
If you want to go for a single partition on the sd card, why don't you just make the entire card use ext4? Your linux desktop reads it anyway, it uses journaling and so on, I guess it would be faster compared to fat32 and it is definitely safer to use.
And i guess it is not too complicated to mount this partition and use it for pictures, music and so on.
I have not tried this (yet) and I go to bed in 20 minutes, but maybe I will start testing something in that direction tomorrow.
[email protected] said:
If I'm understanding you correctly, you're talking about storing an image file on the normal SD card partition(which has to be FAT32 as far as I've seen) and then mounting it, correct? This idea has been talked about at length before on at least 3 separate occasions(2 of which were on this very forum) and found to be a bad idea due primarily to massive security risks since FAT32 has no permissions.
Also, I believe cyanogen ended up dumping unionfs/aufs due to rampant memory issues.
If you are talking about mounting an image from the FAT32 partition, please don't endorse this. We don't want to be throwing in security bugs into android, especially ones such as this which can't be plugged up.
As a modification to what I said: If you're suggesting doing this(or something similar) on a separate filesystem, after that project to change the AOSP to support one with permissions is finished, then I'm in full support.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
UNIX permissions don't do anything in the way of "security" unless you have no access to the actual storage device from another computer (as is the case with the unrooted Dream's internal memory), or unless encryption is used. The posixovl driver OVERLAYS Unix permissions over Fat32 filesystems. But even still, with Unix permissions, nothing's stopping someone else from mounting the Ext2 partition and using chown and chmod.
And the image file on the SD card's Fat32 partition is a complete Ext2 partition complete with Permissions. Nothing is lost.
Archont said:
If you want to go for a single partition on the sd card, why don't you just make the entire card use ext4? Your linux desktop reads it anyway, it uses journaling and so on, I guess it would be faster compared to fat32 and it is definitely safer to use.
And i guess it is not too complicated to mount this partition and use it for pictures, music and so on.
I have not tried this (yet) and I go to bed in 20 minutes, but maybe I will start testing something in that direction tomorrow.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We'd just have to find the part in the Android that mounts /sdcard/, and change 'vfat' to 'ext2'. The only reason I wouldn't do this, is because it would immediately make it incompatible with Windows and Mac's default FS drivers. As far as I know, the only FS's that are supported universally within Linux, Mac, and Windows, are FAT and NTFS. And NTFS can be made to have crude support for permissions through security descriptors. Although, the Dream SPL, the Recovery images, and most of Android only uses FAT32.
This is discussed in android-platform Group :
http://groups.google.com/group/andr...read/thread/bf0709c157451cd9/f6aee1830c84620f
The goal is to be able to integrate this in android.
And not having to partition the SDCard is one of the requirements so far...
Unix permissions are not stored using fat or vfat, and ntfs is not really supported in desktop linux and i guess it cannot be used in android linux.
I would not use windows anyway so this is no problem to me, and there are drivers around to mount ext systems in windows. As Mac OS is based on unix there will be a solution for this too.
Access usind adb push and pull, via ftp and so on is not touched by using ext4 on the entire sd card I guess.
And if you don't go the easy way using gparted on a live cd or usb device to create 2 partitions, you will have to live with some disadvantages anyway.
Finally I want to say that my ideas are far from being perfect or usable at all, I see this thread as a kind of brainstorming.
im not as linux or android savvy as probably any of you but before the current method of creating a swap partition became the "standard", people used a swap file on the sdcard and linked that. seems similar to what you are suggesting here.
ofcourse when mounting the fat partition elsewhere (ums in windows for example) that swap file could no longer be used within android. i dont see a way to get passed the same issue, but worse here, due to android not having crucial apps when the fat partition is mounted.
then again, i am pretty much over my head in this conversation and could be over looking something...
I'm kind of fascinated by the FUSE + posixovl method of doing this. In the long run I have a feeling that it's going to perform like ****, but I think it's worth testing.
I managed to get both libfuse and mount.posixovl built and running on Android.
posix-overlay(/sdcard/fuse) on /sdcard/fuse type fuse.posixovl (rw,nosuid,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions)
Giving this a little testing now, it definitely works.
Code:
/sdcard/fuse # ls -l
drwxr-xr-x 2 1000 1000 4096 Nov 5 17:17 test
TylTru said:
UNIX permissions don't do anything in the way of "security" unless you have no access to the actual storage device from another computer (as is the case with the unrooted Dream's internal memory), or unless encryption is used. The posixovl driver OVERLAYS Unix permissions over Fat32 filesystems. But even still, with Unix permissions, nothing's stopping someone else from mounting the Ext2 partition and using chown and chmod.
And the image file on the SD card's Fat32 partition is a complete Ext2 partition complete with Permissions. Nothing is lost.
We'd just have to find the part in the Android that mounts /sdcard/, and change 'vfat' to 'ext2'. The only reason I wouldn't do this, is because it would immediately make it incompatible with Windows and Mac's default FS drivers. As far as I know, the only FS's that are supported universally within Linux, Mac, and Windows, are FAT and NTFS. And NTFS can be made to have crude support for permissions through security descriptors. Although, the Dream SPL, the Recovery images, and most of Android only uses FAT32.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ya, I meant more from the standpoint of a rogue app. Since FAT32 has no permissions, what would prevent such an app from modifying the stored image file to, say, change a trusted app with superuser permissions to some new code of its own making to, for example, watch for credit card numbers and send them back to the person who made the original rogue app? I'm always hesitant with any ideas that suggest storing an image file on the sdcard for appstosd for this reason.
Forget it, it's useless.
An overlay filesystem prevents you from enabling USB storage.
If you want to play around with FUSE on Android, here's a repository for my port of libfuse..
http://github.com/cyanogen/android_external_fuse
Hi,
I have an idea. I used symbian S60 of Nokia, Symbian can install app to sdcard. I see that when I mount sdcard to PC, my phone immediately hold all activations of all applications on my phone. And they have a PC sync software that help us access sdcard but not mount sdcard (like that we copy file from computer to sdcard via debug mode on android).
I think we should find out how symbian can do it and we will use their way .
I'm not a developer, I'm just an user.
I talked to a few people about this, and some deep kernel voodoo is going to be needed for this to really happen without partitioning.
Another idea is to forge ahead with this, and ditch the "unmount fs for usb storage" and use RNDIS + Samba or something like that instead to access files on SD. I kind of like this idea.
Hello guys,
I want to use my GTP to watch movies through my projector. I did some research, and found I can connect GTP to project by HDMI adapter.
The biggest problem is 4GB limitation of file size. External SD card format is fat32 which is allowed to have only maximum 4 GB.
I formatted it as ext4 and could copy bigger than 4GB. However, GTP can't recognized sd card. It said "not support file system".
Does anyone know how I can make my Tab recognize ext4 format sd card?
My tab is vanila, not rooted and has original factory ROM.
Official answer, you can't.
There is no direct support on an unrooted stock kernel to mount the external sd anything other than FAT32.
Even with a custom rooted kernel, getting the system to mount the external sd as an EXT4 partition would require some pretty fine work quite possibly using an init.d script or similar.
Have you tried the solution posted for the similar 7.7 model tab?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1522134
There is also a way to mount NTFS format cards using the method and apps in this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1493294
Let us know how it works out. My tab is currently on loan so I can't try it myself.
I believe you need root to execute the mount command but I'm not certain.
Note that you will need to use the mount command manually each time you, e.g., reboot the device.
I suspect you may be able to get away with just adding it to /etc/fstab - that's what I would do with a Linux box but I'm not sure if that's deprecated with Android in particular.
acolwill,
Yes, I agreed that. I tried to search some script that can mount ext4 sd card, but gave up. Also, GTP does not have custom rom, doesn't it?
I appreciate your reply.
bydo,
Thanks for the solution!! It looks it is way way worth it to try!
I will try, and update the result here soon. I can't wait.
Thanks again, bro
h2g2,
Yes, but my GTP has random re-boot problem. LOL. Every 2 days, it re-boot randomly. I think rooting is not a big deal. Many awesome developer and hacker here already made good application for rooting. After that, I tried to find the command that can mount ext4 sd card, but gave up. After google, so many ways for different devices with different custom rom version. It was finding a needle in heystack.
But, I will try bydo way, and update the result for you guys.
Guys, once again, I really appreciate you answers.
I tested it!!!
Do you guys want to know the result?
It is working!!!!!
Lol, awesome!. I just tested 2 mkv 1080P and 720P movies.
Those movies worked perfect.
1080P movie was 8GB and 720P movie was 4.4GB, and sound was DTS codec.
I will make another post how to mount ntfs partition, how to play those movies. Guys, I want to post here, but I think we should share this with more people. That's why I want to make a new post, and describe in detail.
I will post the link here, so you can find it easily.
Special thanks to bydo!
I wrote a new post.
here is the link. You can get instruction on this link.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1552674