Swap questions - Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

so just read up on swap and had a couple more questions. i understand that it changes the way your phone handles the ram different apps use but still not understanding the specifics. if someone could clear that up it would be wonderful also will this affect battery life at all? and last question will this work on the kernel that comes with das bamf remix 1.6.3? ( i think my phone info says dirty by adrynalyne #1 ) or do i need to use the one suggested in the instructions --> http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1106420 here?

It turns a set amount of your sd card memory into ram essentially, and the less frequently accessed files are written to the sdcard swap partition instead of the ram, essentially freeing up the ram for the more frequently read and written data. I didnt notice any effect on battery life, and i guess the only way it would...was if it drew more power to write to sd...i believe you need to use a kernel with swap enabled like the one by imoseyon

Thanks a ton! that perfectly answered my question as for the kernel i figured as much. does anyone know if the kernel i mentioned supports swap?

Swap is created on internal space, the emmc not the SD card.
sent from a sweet paper weight.

Pretty sure I read from Adrynalyne that his kernels all had swap enabled even though he doesn't believe it works.
Mike

For windows users, swap is like your page file (just better managed). I see very little ever use swap on android though.

ibsk8 said:
Swap is created on internal space, the emmc not the SD card.
sent from a sweet paper weight.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First off love your signature and after reading some more it is definitely on emmc. which is fine cuz the thunderbolt has like what 16gb of it?

dak_181 said:
First off love your signature and after reading some more it is definitely on emmc. which is fine cuz the thunderbolt has like what 16gb of it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are also whispers going about that doing this "could" stress the emmc too much and cause your phone to an hero itself. The emmc is also possibly the leading culprit in the GB reboot of doom. Too lazy to point to source but seen this about the forums.

Truthfully I don't understand why people are putting their phones through this. EMMC is limited to how many times you can write to it. Just like a SSD drive. The first thing people do with SSD's is to either disable the swap file (page file) or move it to another drive. Putting a swap file on your EMMC is just killing the life of your EMMC even sooner. People say that you'll never kill your EMMC chip within the lifetime of your phone. But the fact is, no one knows how many writes your EMMC chip will take before degradation occurs. It's all up to the user though. Just wish people would do some research and fully understand the technology within their phones.

Carnage9270 said:
Truthfully I don't understand why people are putting their phones through this. EMMC is limited to how many times you can write to it. Just like a SSD drive. The first thing people do with SSD's is to either disable the swap file (page file) or move it to another drive. Putting a swap file on your EMMC is just killing the life of your EMMC even sooner. People say that you'll never kill your EMMC chip within the lifetime of your phone. But the fact is, no one knows how many writes your EMMC chip will take before degradation occurs. It's all up to the user though. Just wish people would do some research and fully understand the technology within their phones.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1....Adreylane himself declared that he would not create swap on the EEMC. If he does not recommend it, I am not doing it.
I would like to, however, figure how people have so much RAM remaining on their phones safely. I only get about 120/600 free 98% of the times without having to constantly close out tasks. People in the dev forum are reporting they have had 300-400 free on Froyo. We all know GB takes more but I am on Froyo still and only have seen my aforementioned numbers.

id heard of some problems on emmc but didnt realize it was such a big deal. thanks for clearing that up before i tried it out. and im having the same issue im only getting between 100-200 free mb of ram without a task killer. is there something were doing wrong?

Related

Unlocked Ext-Rom and reallocated 1/2 of it to system memory

This goes out to the DEV's and or anyone with some insight to this question.
I was wondering if the Extrom was unlocked, could it be possible to reduce its size and allocate the extra memory to the system memory via a reg or file hack.
im thinking that since it is part of the actual onboard memory, and with the pagepool utilites that have been developed, it might be possible. that extra 6mb or so coming from the extrom added to the existing system ram would, or should really be a big performance enhancement, The extrom is basically just a waste of space on my phone right now.
so im gonna work on first unlocking the extrom and then look into the above mentioned idea.
if anyone has some info that would help or know why this physically cant be done, let me know k. I dont want to be kicking a dead horse (or mogul) for nothing,
thanks for time
you must modify flashdrv.dll to consume the extrom space
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=360461
i have been unable to do this for titan
Furthermore it would be storage space, NOT ram.
if the Extrom is actually a ramdrive. A RAM disk is a software abstraction that treats a segment of random access memory (RAM) as secondary storage, a role typically filled by hard drives. Software ramdisks use the normal RAM in main memory as if it were a partition on a hard drive, thus which bypasses the need for the bus, because the partition is actually the Ram just separated, and it is just a writing of a software program that does it/ ie: the pagepool utility and a pagepool is basically a RAM drive. Since we know there are no harddrives in the phone and i believe there is just 1 stick of memory, from what i remember when i watched a utube video of someone taking apart the titan. What im trying to say is that if it is just 1 actual stik of memory partitioned into 3 sections, well then i would pretty much be in business. i know how to manually edit partition addresses and correct the mbr to reflect the right size and location of them. i bet the Extrom is in between the storage mem and the system mem. just taketh from 1 and give to the other( the robinhood effect)
so its a matter of getting past the permission issue which prevents me from checking these things out. thanks DCD for the tip with the flashdrv.dll file, thats the kind of info i need, im gonna look further into this and keep u posted, ill let u know what i find out in a couple of days.
it would be great if it turns out we can resize the storage mem and add it to the system mem.
thanks for your time
ive been looking for something like this.
and it would be insanly awesome if someone managed this.
kinda like readyboost for vista
exept useful
i got a good lead from DCD as to where to start, wish me luck
bunvilla said:
if the Extrom is actually a ramdrive. A RAM disk is a software abstraction that treats a segment of random access memory (RAM) as secondary storage, a role typically filled by hard drives. Software ramdisks use the normal RAM in main memory as if it were a partition on a hard drive, thus which bypasses the need for the bus, because the partition is actually the Ram just separated, and it is just a writing of a software program that does it/ ie: the pagepool utility and a pagepool is basically a RAM drive. Since we know there are no harddrives in the phone and i believe there is just 1 stick of memory, from what i remember when i watched a utube video of someone taking apart the titan. What im trying to say is that if it is just 1 actual stik of memory partitioned into 3 sections, well then i would pretty much be in business. i know how to manually edit partition addresses and correct the mbr to reflect the right size and location of them. i bet the Extrom is in between the storage mem and the system mem. just taketh from 1 and give to the other( the robinhood effect)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the extrom is written across flashrom, not RAM.
then maybe ill look and see if i can use it like a swap file. i might have to get creative. i'll be looking into this more extensive later and see what we can do with what we got, and maybe we might be able to come up with something. i have some free time at work later to look it over.
But u r right as rom will hold data when there is no power going thru it unlike ram, which holds no data if there is no power.
AFAIK WM doesnt have the ability to utilize a swap file, otherwise i would gladly give up some ROM memory to swap (i always have at least 80mb free)
that just might be the case, BUT im thinkin that there are some definite possibilities as to what we might be able to do if we take a thorough look at the situation, im talking to someone who might open up there titan for me to get a peek at the inside. Anyways im at work right now, but if there is something that can be done, by gosh well figure it out
You're hopefulness is admirable, but misplaced. The flash section on the titan (and most other HTC devices) has simply been formatted into multiple partitions, one of which is extended rom. You can't hope to gain anything but an extra 10 megs in the storage area, and we have PLENTY there already. Please put your reversing/hacking skill to use in other projects we need to accomplish.
well ive been around here long enough to know that when Shadowmite speaks,
u better listen!
i hear u loud and clear
Alright im not going to create a thread for this BUT, Shadowmite, what do u think of the possibility of creating a multi-boot out of the titan ( running both wm5 and wm6 on the phone) i have on my pc xp-vista-and hackintosh. when i start my computer i have "system commander " a 3rd party app provide me the option of booting into 1 of the 3 OS'es. they r on completely seperate partitions and independent of each other.
anyways i got time to kill while im at work so ill look into it, checked out your website, pretty kool, ill leave the RAM alone k, gotta go
catch u l8r
lol, I'm wrong sometimes. For instance when I said the titan had no built in gps. Granted I was working off of pictures others uploaded and trusted that they knew what to snap pics of.
DualBooting, oh boy. That question has always been a hot topic on devices, and in the titan's case it's "moderately" possible. We have enough flash memory you could potentially partition off another 50 or so megs to another OS version and flash it onto it. However we're talking needing a custom bootloader written that could understand the ID of the extra parition as well as setup and boot it when whatever keystroke you have setup is pressed. I would say this is a college computer science students project which would take near an entire semester of on the side tinkering with it. It's doable, but pretty complicated. If you really wanted to work on this talk to Olipro and see if he can give some pointers or a database file for IDA of an SPL. And start reversing.

A little silly question I have.

Ok I have a very silly question. Does flashing too much harm the nand ?im flashing a hell lot of roms and kernels. Asking it because to go from sgs rom to nexus s port I have to flash the kernel each time and im playing with it. Also I like trying cm nightly builds. From what I've learned kernels are flashed to same nand and the nand has wear levelling capability.
I an very far from usa and have the vibrant.so don't want to destroy it beyond print or ill have a 500$ brick.
Any enlightment on this would be appreciated. Thanks
Sent from my SGH-T959 using Tapatalk
I think nand chips like most solid state memory support writes several hundred thousand times. So you should be good.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Any writes performed on the device decrease it's lifespan. Whether it's done by flashing, installing apps, loading various media on it, etc. You shouldn't need to worry too much about it. Even a serial flasher's phone will likely brick (for other reasons) before the SD card gives out, I'd think.
Solid state flash indeed has a limited number of write cycles. However, it is unlikely that you'll encounter this within the normal lifetime your phone. Several hundred thousand write cycles should be possible before it expires. SD cards also include circuitry to manage "wear-leveling". This spreads writes over the whole of the storage media to try to avoid writing to various frequently written locations too often which could cause premature failure.
Thanks guys.....ya I was thinking the same but since 2 gb is partitioned for the system ,i started thinking what if I messed that 2gb partition.but I guess wear levelling will use whole nand chip to manage wear.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using Tapatalk

[Q] Firerats+Data2ext?

So I've had my 3D for almost a month now, I upgraded from the HeroCDMA, and while I was on the Hero I wrote a guide to install Firerats and Data2ext simultaneously in order to increase internal storage by creating a partition on an sd card, as well as control the size of the /system, /data, and /cache partition sizes on the phone itself. Just wondering if it would do any good for our phone(or any other phone, for that matter) or if it's a waste of time since we already have plenty of storage. On my Hero, I was able to have a 4GB partition on my sd card be read by the phone as internal storage, install well over 100 apps/games, and have them all work flawlessly since I also increased the /cache size using Firerats in conjunction with Data2ext. Anyways, I haven't seen anything on the matter in any of the 3D forums, so I assume it either won't work or isn't worth the extra effort
Just in case anyone wants to look at it, or thinks it might have some relevancy, here's my thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1672429
What do you think??
Wow. It's been awhile since somone brought up this subject. A few months ago a guy named darktremor made this software called d2tapps. It does what you described in your post. However I'm not sure if it works with ics. Sorry I couldn't be much help.
Jsparta26 said:
Wow. It's been awhile since somone brought up this subject. A few months ago a guy named darktremor made this software called d2tapps. It does what you described in your post. However I'm not sure if it works with ics. Sorry I couldn't be much help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm...I don't think it matters much what version of android it is, at least, I know that it worked for both GB and ICS on the Hero. Oh well. I don't really need it anyways, just was curious if my guide could be of any use to other devices.
goliath714 said:
Just in case anyone wants to look at it, or thinks it might have some relevancy, here's my thread:
What do you think??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe I don't understand your solution well enough, but how is it different from link2SD that a lot of us use already? That app allows many of the files for other apps to be moved to a second partition on the SD card.
ramjet73
I stand corrected. He made the software back in 2011. I started using it when I was on gb.
Oh man I to used firerat with my hero back in the day.
Method1911 3DLTE
Firerat is still useful. Just not right now. Soon though.

Does filling up internal storage decrease performance?

Does filling a phone with only internal storage slow it down? Even if you don't fill it?
I'm asking because I put 10gb of music on my HTC One, and I was just curious as to whether it would effect it in any way.
Thanks for any responses
Well.. in my opinion, since the Internal Storage should be divided into partitions, the user data should go into a different partition, so performance should not be affected.. however in general terms, I'm not sure how the technology works in detail, but if we apply the same principles as a normal hard drive, looking for data, browsing along more files, should bring unnoticeable delay.. but I'm not sure, just giving my honest opinion
Yeah, I only ask because I know that completely filling up the internal storage will cause some performance problems.
MidnightDevil said:
Well.. in my opinion, since the Internal Storage should be divided into partitions, the user data should go into a different partition, so performance should not be affected.. however in general terms, I'm not sure how the technology works in detail, but if we apply the same principles as a normal hard drive, looking for data, browsing along more files, should bring unnoticeable delay.. but I'm not sure, just giving my honest opinion
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I dont think it slows down due to hard disk. It can be slow due to some apps that you are using in you phone. It can also happens if you are using internet on you Mobile.
ssmita76 said:
I dont think it slows down due to hard disk. It can be slow due to some apps that you are using in you phone. It can also happens if you are using internet on you Mobile.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't said it slows down "due to hard disk". I said if we apply the same concept of mechanisms hard drives use, it would Which is not the case.
I think it does... I tried.
Pretty sure it does, with my old phones (g1, original droid and wildfire) when they hit the limit they were practically bricks (which would light up 5 years after they should)
If (and that's an if) I remember correct gmail stops synchronizing once you go below 20 mb
... my two shiny pennies
ButtSwag said:
Does filling a phone with only internal storage slow it down? Even if you don't fill it?
I'm asking because I put 10gb of music on my HTC One, and I was just curious as to whether it would effect it in any way.
Thanks for any responses
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well.....does it slow it down? Test it and see if the device performs better or worse with the music on it.
I put the music on my phone as soon as I got it practically, so I wouldn't be able to tell.
From the sound of it, you guys completely filled your phones? I mean just half full or something
ButtSwag said:
I put the music on my phone as soon as I got it practically, so I wouldn't be able to tell.
From the sound of it, you guys completely filled your phones? I mean just half full or something
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I usually try to keep internal memory as free as possible by moving and placing files to SDCARD or SDCARD partition.
Guitarman2010 said:
I usually try to keep internal memory as free as possible by moving and placing files to SDCARD or SDCARD partition.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The HTC One doesn't have an sd card only internal

Writing Android to EMMC

Placeholder thread for my future guide on how to install android on an EMMC. I have acquired a 256gb EMMC chip. Its arriving soon. I will be experimenting with it and sorting out and identifying the issues that might come along.
If you are interested, feel free to provide input. My end goal is to run android, linux on the NAND natively in order to avoid the bottle neck an SD card might provide.
I have two ideas:
One is to replace HOS with android on the nand while running HOS via emummc/emunand. This is so android utilize the read/write speeds a nand chip can provide.
The other is to partition the EMMC to run both HOS and Android natively. Since this will severely reduce the amount of space available for HOS. Going this route would probably require a bigger EMMC chip. I purchased a 256gb chip just to try this. I don't think you would need much more than 124gb. Especially if you will be saving all your ROMs and games to an SD anyways.
I’m going to attempt the second idea first since thats what I would prefer. Although the first may be more attainable for most since it will be easier and not require another emmc chip.
Placeholder
While I'm really interested how this turns out I'm asking myself if the speed difference vs a good micro sd card is that big.. Switch has UHS-1 support right?
Of course I know in theory emmc is faster than micro sd card but in practice it may not make that much of a difference. I asked myself the same question back when I got my odroid hc2 single board computer. It has both a connector to add a emmc module and a micro sd card slot. I went with sd card. I read that in this case it comes down to the random read/write speed and at least in my case that didn't differ that much on sd card vs emmc.
Still, go for it, I wanna see how it turns out
I am mainly concerned with data integrity. An OS can perform 1000s of read write operations. Would rather run everything off of the EMMC to avoid burning out my SD card prematurely.
Ha, that is exactly what I asked Bylaws several weeks ago.
I mean I am not banned but I either use CFW (EmuEMMC - SD card), L4T (Sd card), Lakka (Sd card) or android (Sd card)
EMMC is just sitting there. It wouldn’t be that difficult and you would have faster speeds, the EMMC is very fast, and you would get to use the SD card slot as an actual Sd card slot! If you find a way, please share.
But I get a strike for creating a placeholder thread. Great.
I wonder if that possible to be a EMMC 128GB used for everything like:
32GB for Android
32GB for Linux
64GB for Nintendo Switch console
so i can change between the OS on Hekate
It might. Thats what I’m hoping to do. My console is banned so i’m not at risk, but once I’ve sorted out the process. I’ll be putting disclaimers out there.
This whole process provides a huge ban risk so if you buy an emmc chip. Do so at your own risk.
Wait Tito are you currently working on achieving this??? Awesome!
~~Tito~~ said:
It might. Thats what I’m hoping to do. My console is banned so i’m not at risk, but once I’ve sorted out the process. I’ll be putting disclaimers out there.
This whole process provides a huge ban risk so if you buy an emmc chip. Do so at your own risk.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea my modded switch is banned as well (I have a secondary legit switch) So im all over this once u figure it out!
If anyone who's interested could find a source for the 128gb EMMC module. I'd be more than happy to share it. Mine is still in transit and it was pretty expensive when I bought it.
~~Tito~~ said:
If anyone who's interested could find a source for the 128gb EMMC module. I'd be more than happy to share it. Mine is still in transit and it was pretty expensive when I bought it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
SanDisk 256 GB
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/329...8.0&pvid=0b88beab-8f0b-4aa2-8500-2c994f54752d
Samsung 256 GB
(i forget the name of the chip but you'll find it ^^)​
The problem here is that the Switch's NAND has hidden partitions that lock the NAND chip to the hardware. You will need to figure out a way to copy these partitions off your old NAND chip and write it to the new NAND chip. It can and has been done, however partitioning for Linux/Android/HOS has not.
I think you'll find this useful: hxxp://pascoe.pw/2018/09/switchnand.html (replace hxxp with http)
If you pay attention at the end of the write-up, you'll see information for resizing the HOS partition. Meaning you could theoretically partition the NAND for all three.
dudemo said:
The problem here is that the Switch's NAND has hidden partitions that lock the NAND chip to the hardware. You will need to figure out a way to copy these partitions off your old NAND chip and write it to the new NAND chip. It can and has been done, however partitioning for Linux/Android/HOS has not.
I think you'll find this useful: hxxp://pascoe.pw/2018/09/switchnand.html (replace hxxp with http)
If you pay attention at the end of the write-up, you'll see information for resizing the HOS partition. Meaning you could theoretically partition the NAND for all three.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the info! I’m hoping that all that is needed is to write some images to a few properly appropriated partitions and some configuration here and there.
L4T, and android call to different partitions and sector counts. So right now the biggest hurdle would be to change how each os finds its corresponding partitions.
I know the hekate ini setup can probably direct where the os boots, but then the os itself might not have a clue. Especially since everything so far has been configured to run off the SD.
I’m playing around with how to modify each boot.scr to point to a different partition. Some others on gbatemp are familiar, but I haven’t dug too deep yet.
NonHosT said:
SanDisk 256 GB
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/329...8.0&pvid=0b88beab-8f0b-4aa2-8500-2c994f54752d
Samsung 256 GB
(i forget the name of the chip but you'll find it ^^)​
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the link. Since we would need the board that connects the EMMC to the switch. I'd preferably only want to promote the full unit(The board and the new EMMC already soldered to it.). Some on here might be technically savvy, but it might be too daunting of a task to also have to solder on a chip to a small board(This is the case for me lol). Especially if they elect to use their own EMMC board as the donor board. I hope that eventually a seller on alibaba sells those boards, but I haven't looked. I just wanted to buy a premed unit.
For those that might already have the equipment and skill to put this together. It's good to know that parts can still be sourced. Some might even offer their services to others. I've seen that being mentioned here and there on gbatemp. So its not out of the question.
I bought mine as a full unit from a seller on bonanza.com. I don't know if the price is really worth it though. Here's the link if any are interested.
~~Tito~~ said:
I am mainly concerned with data integrity. An OS can perform 1000s of read write operations. Would rather run everything off of the EMMC to avoid burning out my SD card prematurely.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think it depends on how the os is configured, for my sbc I use armbian (debian base) running from sd card. It's optimised to reduce wear on the sd card. But idk how it is on android. I guess there's good reason why android runs of off emmc rather than sd cards on the majority of devices (except speed).
I didn't know that there's a board for the emmc you can "just" clip on, this makes it interesting again ...But the set you linked is rather pricy It's crazy if you think about it. In china you can get a 128gb emmc module for 20 usd
If there'll be such set available with 64gb (I guess that should be enough?) for like 50 usb and some sort of script for partitioning the emmc that could be run off the sd card then I'm all in :laugh:
Finally got it! I’ll be posting a write up soon.
This is perfect for my needs! I revived my dock bricked Switch by replacing the USB-DP controller chip, so I have nothing to do with it now since I had already transferred everything to my working console, so I want to use it exclusively as an Android device for games and apps lol I can't do much of anything to help but good luck!
EDIT: Oh, this is an important question. Would I still require RCM mode? Or will powering on the Switch boot directly to Android with this method? I want to avoid using payloads for regular use. I assume not since the console's hardware boots straight from EMMC
Selim873 said:
This is perfect for my needs! I revived my dock bricked Switch by replacing the USB-DP controller chip, so I have nothing to do with it now since I had already transferred everything to my working console, so I want to use it exclusively as an Android device for games and apps lol I can't do much of anything to help but good luck!
EDIT: Oh, this is an important question. Would I still require RCM mode? Or will powering on the Switch boot directly to Android with this method? I want to avoid using payloads for regular use. I assume not since the console's hardware boots straight from EMMC
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You will most likely still need to boot from a payload in order for this to work. Unless hekate gets rewritten to support booting from the EMMC chip itself. Not sure if you can set it up as an SD and boot drive.
Selim873 said:
This is perfect for my needs! I revived my dock bricked Switch by replacing the USB-DP controller chip, so I have nothing to do with it now since I had already transferred everything to my working console, so I want to use it exclusively as an Android device for games and apps lol I can't do much of anything to help but good luck!
EDIT: Oh, this is an important question. Would I still require RCM mode? Or will powering on the Switch boot directly to Android with this method? I want to avoid using payloads for regular use. I assume not since the console's hardware boots straight from EMMC
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Injecting a payload will be required. Booting directly is impossible unless you somehow get Nintendo to sign a copy of hekate with their private key or install a modchip.

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