I made this to tide myself over until $auron can finish UrukDroid 0.6. This is a combination of the stock Archos 2.1.04 firmware, Ardatdat's Overclocked Kernel, and a manual EXT4 Conversion. It is permanently rooted and includes SuperUser. My main reason for making it was to enable read/write access to the filesystem, which rooting DOES NOT do on the stock Archos firmware, as the squashfs will still be mounted read only by /etc/mountpoints. Also, EXT4 is much faster than the compressed squashfs Archos uses. Quadrant gives ~2200 with the data partition converted to EXT4 as well, ~1800 without conversion. I have already updated Busybox to a fully compiled version, 1.16, another thing Archos decided to "secure" despite the supposed Open Source status. I have NOT edited the .hosts file to block ads, as I believe the app developers deserve to make some money, you'd be amazed how little they make, but you can do it yourself without Archangel scripts now, as the filesystem will be read/write again.
I designed it on an A101it, but it should work on any Gen8 with internal flash storage. A70H users, I can't remember your block allocations, it may work fine, but I'll need someone to post the storage layout of /dev/block/ to be sure.
For the power users, here's a quick install outline: First, make a second partition on your storage/sdcard in EXT4, extract the rootfs.tar.gz to it, and flash the appropriate initramfs and zimage. Pretty easy.
For the rest of you(probably most of you):
There is only one short step in Linux, which is setting up an EXT4 partition on your Internal Storage or your SD Card. You must make it as a second partition, not 1st, 3rd, or anything else. This means you can still use it as a storage device as well as running Android. I find it incredibly simple, and can be done in less than 3 minutes, but I will be relying on you guys to tell me what you don't understand, and I will update the instructions as needed.
This can be run off the SD Card or the Internal Storage, both versions are included in the download. It will use the existing data partition if you already have the SDE installed and 2.1.04 firmware. Otherwise, you will need to flash the SDE, which erases your data, so please use Titanium Backup first if necessary.
Step 1:
Download my files:http://www.multiupload.com/HR6SRRR8P8
And install the SDE from Archos: http://www.archos.com/support/download/firm_dev/firmware_archos_android_gen8.aos.
Step 2: Boot into stock Android and connect to a Linux PC. If you do not have Linux, download Tuxboot and use it to create a GParted Live Disk:http://gparted.sourceforge.net/liveusb.php
Step 3:
Mount your Internal Storage/SD Card from the Archos. It should now show up in GParted on the Linux PC, make sure you have the correct device selected, it should be called Archos A101T(make note of the location, e.g. /dev/sdb). Resize your existing partition with GParted, leaving about 300MB at the end of the Internal Storage/SD Card. Make a new partition in the empty space, and select ext4 as filesystem. Apply Changes. Now open a terminal, elevate yourself to root by typing
Code:
sudo -s
and format the new partition by typing
Code:
mkfs.ext4 -O ^huge_file /dev/sdb2
Substitute "sdb" for whatever your device location was in GParted. The "2" on the end of "sdb" denotes that it is the second partition. Do NOT format "sdb1" or any other "sd"s. Mount the new partition by opening Nautilus or any other file manager and double clicking on the "300MB Filesystem" entry on the left. Untar the rootfs.tar.gz from my files with the Archive Manager, it works just like winzip or winrar, into the root of the new partition. Eject the device from Linux, then reboot into the Developer Menu by holding vol- or vol+ while booting.
Step 4:
Flash the initramfs.cpio.gz and the zimage from my files. Use the files from the "internal" folder if you are running from Internal Storage, or the files from "sdcard" if you are running from the SD Card.
Step 5:
Use the Dev Menu to boot into Developer Edition. Let me know about any bugs. After I removed the Android Boot option from the Dev Menu, I had a few strange loops of the Archos animation while booting, but it did boot, and function, just fine.
Thanks go to Ardatdat for the kernel, Archos for the crappy "securing" of the squashfs, and $auron for motivating me to get back into development.
Hi msticninja ,
I did it It seems so smooth. I used my internal storage. But linux steps were not so simple for me I used a Fedora 14 VMWare image.
I'm at work so I can't play with it but it seems stable and it can awake.
Quadrant (I know it's not accurate) score is about 1900 (internal and ext4).
I think that you should add some descriptions about linux steps (for noobs like me).
Thanks...
PS: Did I move my DATA partition to EXT4? (I did all steps you wrote). If no how can I do?
Nice work! I'll be trying to add more instructions for the Linux section for the next couple of days.
Your data partition is still EXT3, I haven't found a very easy way to convert it yet. Basically, I made another partition on the Internal Storage, copied the data partition there, and flashed a new initramfs to boot off the new data partition. Then you fdisk and format the original partition from a terminal in the Archos or ADB, copy everything back, and flash ANOTHER initramfs to use the original, now EXT4, partition.
So far, I don't think the performance gain for the data partition is worth all that work.
It works and installs well but your guide how to install it is not complete. For example, I had to manually maintain write permissions of the partition and sudo is needed by the mkfs.ext4 -O ^huge_file /dev/sdb2
Hondaracer said:
It works and installs well but your guide how to install it is not complete. For example, I had to manually maintain write permissions of the partition and sudo is needed by the mkfs.ext4 -O ^huge_file /dev/sdb2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, i automatically elevate permissions when I do stuff like this. I've added sudo to the instructions. As far as manually maintaining the partition permission, what did you have to do there?
msticninja said:
Sorry, i automatically elevate permissions when I do stuff like this. I've added sudo to the instructions. As far as manually maintaining the partition permission, what did you have to do there?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had to type this: sudo chown -R username:usergroup /media By the way thanks for the work you've done
Hondaracer said:
I had to type this: sudo chown -R username:usergroup /media By the way thanks for the work you've done
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If that was before using mkfs.ext4, then that is strange. After mkfs though, the owner should be root. I should point out that the rootfs.tar.gz should be extracted as root, which means you have to open the archive manager from a terminal. I need to find an easy process that will work on all distros, as I don't know how many have nautilus installed.
Thanks for your replies, this is much needed feedback.
msticninja said:
If that was before using mkfs.ext4, then that is strange. After mkfs though, the owner should be root. I should point out that the rootfs.tar.gz should be extracted as root, which means you have to open the archive manager from a terminal. I need to find an easy process that will work on all distros, as I don't know how many have nautilus installed.
Thanks for your replies, this is much needed feedback.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had to do this to be able to write the rootfs to dev/sdb2. But I must say I did a reboot before I copied the files cause Ubuntu started to act very weird. And for the beginner I'd might be good to mention that you have to unmount in GParted.
I've tried it and feels slower than Uruk 0.6RC2 on Scandisk SDHC 8GB Class 4 (without OC).
Thank you for your great work!
chisco said:
I've tried it and feels slower than Uruk 0.6RC2 on Scandisk SDHC 8GB Class 4 (without OC).
Thank you for your great work!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not surprised. This is the stock firmware with none of Uruk's enhancements, other than ext4 and a new kernel. As i said, this is to tide people over until the official Uruk thread gets 0.6. You're already on the beta 0.6, so there's not much need for my firmware.
I just wrote an automatic install script. All you have to do is copy a file to your internal storage or sd card, and flash the initramfs/zimage in the Dev Menu. This one will replace the current Archos partition so you won't lose any space on your storage device. Should be uploaded tonight.
I tried this method with last OC Kernel (11 FEB): very good... With this method, we use same data as for stock ROM, so no need to reinstall all apps...
Thanks.
Related
My sdcard(class 4 8gb sandisk) is causing problems with fat32 fs...i use debian all the time and wud like to have a much advanced fs like ext4 for saving my music,videos,pictures etc instead of fat32...how can i achieve taht...Does android use a fstab or something for mounting on boot ???
I'm quite sure android uses fstab for mounting, you just need to set the proper mounting option on your FS to force it to check fstab options. I have one question(since I don't use a linux machine), can you access your ext(2nd) partition(if you have one) when you connect your phone to the PC using debian?
Yep,Android uses fstab to mount all.
anybody interested in setting it up i dont have the requisite knowhow
I have not toyed with fstab myself... but I did find this page which seems to have want your looking for.
http://androidandme.com/2009/08/news/how-to-manually-partition-your-sd-card-for-android-apps2sd/
It isn't exactly what your explaining, BUT seems to go through the commands needed for what you are wanting to try.
Just remember to back up! Good luck!
Sent from my LG-P500 using XDA App
Instructions:
-Suggested at least fat32 partition to be 1gig and the rest to your ext partition. Also, try to use root explorer for everything else. Must have init.d support.
1. On your SD card, make a folder to serve as a door/portal to access your ext partition files.(When testing this, I just used the default "/sdcard/media" folder)
2. Make a blank text file and name it as "11usext"
3. Using root explorer, edit the file and add this line inside it:
Code:
#!/system/bin/sh
busybox mount -t auto /dev/block/mmcblk0p2 /mnt/sdcard/media
change media to the folder that you just made on step 1. Exit and save.
4. Using root explorer move this file to /system/etc/init.d
5. Again using root explorer, change the permission to "rwxrwxrwx"
6. Reboot and play. This would allow you to access your ext partition through the /media or the folder that you have created.
If this does not work, then you should give more details on what setup you are running.
ungaze said:
Instructions:
-Suggested at least fat32 partition to be 1gig and the rest to your ext partition. Also, try to use root explorer for everything else. Must have init.d support.
1. On your SD card, make a folder to serve as a door/portal to access your ext partition files.(When testing this, I just used the default "/sdcard/media" folder)
2. Make a blank text file and name it as "11usext"
3. Using root explorer, edit the file and add this line inside it:
Code:
#!/system/bin/sh
busybox mount -t auto /dev/block/mmcblk0p2 /mnt/sdcard/media
change media to the folder that you just made on step 1. Exit and save.
4. Using root explorer move this file to /system/etc/init.d
5. Again using root explorer, change the permission to "rwxrwxrwx"
6. Reboot and play. This would allow you to access your ext partition through the /media or the folder that you have created.
If this does not work, then you should give more details on what setup you are running.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's a quite dirty implementation. All he want's is an ext4 partition mounted as /sdcard. I want to do the same, but right now I'm messing with the internal fs. I'll look into it.
That's a quite dirty implementation.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dirty it might be(I even tried a dirtier one), but that's all he's got at the moment. If you have a better solution(even just a rough plan), please do share. Maybe we can exchange knowledge on stuff like these.
Using 2 Ext4 partitions on SD instead of one Ext+fat32
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Would mean that no Fat32 partition exist, and I've never heard of anything like that.
I have one question(since I don't use a linux machine), can you access your ext(2nd) partition(if you have one) when you connect your phone to the PC using debian?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And since no one answered this, I have no idea how you could transfer files to your phone without using card readers.
ungaze said:
Dirty it might be(I even tried a dirtier one), but that's all he's got at the moment. If you have a better solution(even just a rough plan), please do share. Maybe we can exchange knowledge on stuff like these.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Probably it involves messing with the init.rc (and I think that involves messing with boot and recovery images, but, I'm not sure) or init.d scripts or fstab. Anyway, I'm not sure, but it should be possible.
ungaze said:
Would mean that no Fat32 partition exist, and I've never heard of anything like that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes. The /sdcard partition would exist, just not fat32 formatted.
ungaze said:
And since no one answered this, I have no idea how you could transfer files to your phone without using card readers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Linux systems can read and write to ext4 partitions without problems. In fact, it's a linux filesystem. I had problems once when I had a sd_ext partition (for Apps2SD), because both partitions would get mounted when using mass storage mode, while Android only unmounts the /sdcard (fat32) partition, leading to file corruption (because of the same partition being mounted on both systems at once).
We could create the partitions using gparted or cfdisk on a pc. I'm not sure, but maybe simply mounting it with different params (like the filesystem type and other options) at /sdcard would do the trick. Everything else that follows would be easy.
I've been doing some testing and research.
On recovery side:
I've done a little modification in Mik's ClockWork recovery to make it accept ext4 and vfat as valid file systems for the first partition on sdcard. It involves just a little change on /etc/recovery.fstab file, but then you need to rebuild the recovery image.
This is working fine.
On the OS side:
It's not an easy mod. It involves patching the vold (volume manager) and recompiling. There are some proposed patches to Cyanogenmod, but I don't know if it's been accepted and if it made it to Miks CM7 port.
I'll do some tests and post results.
ilarrain said:
I've been doing some testing and research.
On recovery side:
I've done a little modification in Mik's ClockWork recovery to make it accept ext4 and vfat as valid file systems for the first partition on sdcard. It involves just a little change on /etc/recovery.fstab file, but then you need to rebuild the recovery image.
This is working fine.
On the OS side:
It's not an easy mod. It involves patching the vold (volume manager) and recompiling. There are some proposed patches to Cyanogenmod, but I don't know if it's been accepted and if it made it to Miks CM7 port.
I'll do some tests and post results.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This got my interest
Mik's CM7 (beta 6.2) recognizes and mounts the ext4 partition just fine.
BUT:
As vfat is a non posix fs, there wasn't any need for the OS to manage permissions, so it's a mess.
Applications on the SD card (I'm not using Apps2SD or Data2SD) don't load, internal applications can't be moved to SD, and many apps can't store data on the SD, even I've set read+write permissions on all files and directories (chmod -R 777 /sdcard/). I have no idea why. I'm stuck.
Hi.
I've rooted my A70s with chulri's kernel and it seems to work ok.
My next goal is to get more app room ... so I guess I need to resize the app/data partition.
I've thought that having my internal storage formatted on ext4, it would be possible to ln the /data folder to /storage/data without problems, but then I should create a boot script for that. The question is... can I do this with my current root status? What would be the way to do it? I'm don't know enough of linux os to make it on my own.
If the system can't be fooled with a ln, then is there any way to resize the data partition, even if I have to backup/restore my current data?
I don't want to use Urukdroid, since all the versions I tried were very unstable on my machine.
Cheers!!
search the forum: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=14710945#post14710945
Follow chulri's method, or repartition your internal storage in Linux, mount it on the archos, and copy the data there. Then edit init.rc and change the data mount line. If it gets mounted in the kernel, you'll have to umount it first to remount it to the other partition.
I contributed only a tiny bit to the CM7 Alpha thread in the Development section, explaining how to use MiniTool Partition Wizard as a start to prep an SD card if you're in Windows. I decided to try the Ubuntu method just to have that in my pocket but ran into some trouble.
I've used Ubuntu CD boot before, but never to do something like gparted. I've done this in other linux systems so I'm a little familiar with it. What happened was I removed all the existing partitions from my guinea-pig SD card, used gparted to create the 50MB FAT32 and 2 2GB ext4 partitions. Formatted. Did the lba and boot on the FAT32. But when I went to copy the system files into the system ext4 I got "permission denied". Both ext4 partitions did not allow write access, and I could not change it using either the Permissions panel or command line chmod. I suspect this is something obvious but I can't figure out what to do.
I believe you have to copy the files to the system partition as the root user.
Enter the command:
Code:
$ sudo file-roller
After you enter your password, this will open up the archive manager as root. Open the system.ext4.tar from within archive manager, and then extract the files to your system partition.
Yeah, I did that. Don't know why it didn't work. I'll give it another try tonight.
Hi!
Partitioned my 32GB sdcard, and put CM10.2 on it, but when I check it I have only about 400mb of space or something like that. I had the same amount of space on a 4GB sdcard I used before. Why am I not able to use up the rest of the GB's?! Can someone tell me how to fix it, I don't know if I'm partitioning wrong or doing something wrong, but I want to be able to have lots of extra space for music, apps, etc. Please help! Thanks!!!
I believe you used a low level utility like dd or similar to flash an image onto a partition.
You need to run fsck on that partition, then run resize2fs to expand the ext2/3/4 partition.
Let's say your partition is /dev/block/mmcblk1p1
You would do (in a terminal):
adb reboot recovery
adb shell
# umount /dev/block/mmcblk1p1
# e2fsck /dev/block/mmcblk1p1
# resize2fs /dev/block/mmcblk1p1
After that, your partition will get expanded to whatever size you made it.
It takes a while so be patient. The larger the partition, the longer it will take.
Zenile said:
Hi!
Partitioned my 32GB sdcard, and put CM10.2 on it, but when I check it I have only about 400mb of space or something like that. I had the same amount of space on a 4GB sdcard I used before. Why am I not able to use up the rest of the GB's?! Can someone tell me how to fix it, I don't know if I'm partitioning wrong or doing something wrong, but I want to be able to have lots of extra space for music, apps, etc. Please help! Thanks!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if you got a prebaked image of a bootable cm card from somewhere, then it usually has 4 partitions on it that were set to the sizes the author of the card specified.
/boot
/system
/data
/sdcard
You would need to put the card in a PC, and use a disk partitioning utility to resize the partitions
some of the images include additional flash files that you install to expand the card's partitions for you. (succulent's), but
you have to do it as you install for the first time.
I prefer to build the card empty first, and load the boot files and zips manually.
linux tools like gparted, Parted Magic , booting from a live USB or CD work pretty well.
Windows based ones like Easus Partition master, or Paragon, not so good.
Mini Tool partition wizard (windows/free) sometimes works
this looks to be a decent write up
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=202660
mikeataol said:
...
I prefer to build the card empty first, and load the boot files and zips manually.
linux tools like gparted, Parted Magic , booting from a live USB or CD work pretty well.
Windows based ones like Easus Partition master, or Paragon, not so good.
Mini Tool partition wizard (windows/free) sometimes works
this looks to be a decent write up
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=202660
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The write-up is also posted on XDA at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2098419. It was written back in the days of CM10.1, so to use it for CM10.2 or CM11:
Obtain the boot files: MLO, u-boot.bin, and flashing_boot.img -- as well as the files boot.img and recovery.img, from the /boot partition of the pre-made SD CM image. Make sure that MLO is the first file to copy to the freshly made /boot partition.
Substitute in the appropriate ROM and Gapps zip files corresponding to the particular CM build of interest.
So I got tired of my weird configuration of running the apps in a mounts2sd with a second ext4 partition on my sdcard and technically nothing should prevent us from running safestrap on the sdcard. So I looked around and it took me a while but I found Hashcode's source code and spent some time studying all the voodoo he does, and most of it is fairly straight forward. Small breakdown:
* Extend TWRP with ifdef statement to add new buttons
* sh scripts get called to perform the functionality for those button
* Swap out some links in /dev/block when you switch between slots and stock
* The entire boot partition including scripts, TWRP, etc are stored in boot image
* The boot image is stored in the stock system under /etc/safestrap
Like I said before, most of the functionality is done in borne shell scripts, but there is some hardcoding in TWRP like creating the .img file to /ss. I really don't want to try to recompile TWRP at this time. As such, I want to limit my changes to the borne shell and configuration INI files only. The simplest answer is to remap /ss from internal storage to the sdcard storage. Another option is to have "system" and "cache" in the internal storage and moving "data" to the sdcard. The difficulty here is since TWRP is hardcoded to create the .img file under /ss, I need to move it during the format stage which happens in the script. The danger with the first option I don't know if the phone will boot if the sdcard is removed. safestrap looks for that directory to figure out the mappings in /dev/block. I think if the directory is missing then it will attempt to create it. After that, things might go bad.
Anyway, what are your thoughts?
i wish and hope your still working on this..my phone is so low in internal storage..i cant even use a rom slot other than stock,,ive been useing stock slot ,flashing custom rom in stock slot....anyways hope you continue to figure this out..i know lots of people would appreciate it..thanks
So I've tried multiple ways and have had to step away, think about it some more, and come back to it. Essentially I was not able to get system to boot off of the sdcard. However, the good news is today I was able to have system and cache on internal storage and data on sdcard. So here are the keys to the kingdom that I have found....
The CM11 (and I assume other) ROMs there is a /system/etc/kexec/ramdisk.img file. This file is extracted (gunzip < ramdisk.img | cpio -iu) into the root directory "/" (rootfs). There is a shell script "/sbin/fixboot.sh" that gets executed by /init at the start of the android (on fs). That script essentially mounts /ss to /emstorage and does all the loop storage links to the system.img, cache.img, and data.img files. I was able to mount another /ss2 to my sdcard and point the userdata to /ss2/safestrap/rom-slot?/userdata.img. The limitation is that vfat limits all files to 4 GB max, so the userdata.img cannot be more than 4 GB of storage.
So an option is I can create an updated ramdisk.img file. You would just drop this into your /system/etc/kexec directory on the slot-rom you want to use it. The only file changed in ramdisk.img is /sbin/fixboot.sh. ramdisk.img is part of the CM11 distribution so you would need to replace it each time you perform an update on that rom slot. Other than that, safestrap would by default create userdata.img to be in internal storage.
The next part I'm going to look at is to create a f2fs partition on my sdcard and have my userdata use that f2fs partition. I figure I should good considerable more I/O as f2fs is suppose to be a good amount faster than ext3/4 and we wouldn't be going through a loop device from ext3 to vfat for all I/O. In addition, my data partition would no longer be limited to 4GB due to the file limitation size of vfat.
Thoughts...
So Spyder doesn't have f2fs on it so I've been running ext4. The kernel would need to be setup to be compiled with it. I have a second 6Gb partition formatted with ext 4 with writeback journaling but per my timing tests I don't think it has made a difference. Now I have more than enough space left in both the data and internal partitions. I don't know if it is just a placebo effect but my apps do seem to start slightly faster.
There doesn't seem much interest in this but it was a fun exercise for me. This will be good enough for me as I'll probably upgrade my phone sometime in the future.
Sent from my XT912 using XDA Free mobile app