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Root rooted, but cant mount sd card for backup

D

davo26

Android Enthusiast
hi

ive just rooted a desire for my wife, using unrevoked, which said it was successful. i can boot into recovery, and superuser is in apps.

during the phones final reboot, it seemed to be having probs mounting the sd card, but then timed out and said installing anyway.

i decided to nandroid before putting a new rom on, but it comes up with the follwing message

E: cant mount /dev/block/mmcblk0 (or /dev/block/mmcblk0p1)
(no such file or directory)
cant mount sd card.

any ideas why this should be?

also, im doing this as she is on the 'three' network, the phones locked to orange. will this have unlocked the phone? and if not how can i do this?

thanks

EDIT: fail!!! first thing i should have checked was if there was a sd card in it!! :-D

i assume my sd card on my desire HD will be set up for just that phone, and i couldnt swap it over, stick a desire rom on, instal that rom and back up on my card, then remove back to mine?

or do i need a dedicated card for the desire? and also, should it have been formatted during the root process? will i need to run software again?

thanks
 
also, the reason im doing this is to unlock to a different network. that doesnt seem to have worked. how do i do this?

thanks
 
A custom ROM will not sim unlock your phone. Your hardware is still sim locked. There is an unlock utility here which should do it for you:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=943726 Mine was never locked so have not used it myself but users give good reports. If in doubt read the XDA thread.

It would be better to use a different sd card if you have one so that the desire doesnt try to overwrite any of the HD's files. Rooting will not have formated your card.
 
nicka3200 said:
A custom ROM will not sim unlock your phone. Your hardware is still sim locked. There is an unlock utility here which should do it for you:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=943726 Mine was never locked so have not used it myself but users give good reports. If in doubt read the XDA thread.

It would be better to use a different sd card if you have one so that the desire doesnt try to overwrite any of the HD's files. Rooting will not have formated your card.
Click to expand...

thanks for the link, now unlocked :-)
and point taken about the card, ill source a new one. will it just go in and work fine? or will it need to be rooted again to format it for apps to sd, or that sort of thing?
 
Rooting is something you do to the ROM, not the card. Just pop a card in and it will work.

If you want to use a2sd+ (i.e. with an ext partition) you will need to partition it for that.
 
Hadron said:
Rooting is something you do to the ROM, not the card. Just pop a card in and it will work.

If you want to use a2sd+ (i.e. with an ext partition) you will need to partition it for that.
Click to expand...

how would i partition it? and once thats done, is this the fix that 'tricks' the phone into thinking data is on the phone but its really on the card?

thanks
 
It's part of the fix. The other part is a ROM that includes (or at least allows you to add) the necessary script to make this work.

If you look in the Desire All Things Root Guide sticky post in this forum (red link in my signature) you'll find a "root memory faq". That will explain this in a bit more detail. It will also recommend using GParted for partitioning - there's also guides to using this linked in the same sticky post. Avoid MiniTool Partition Wizard, as that often produces ext partitions that don't work at all or work slowly.
 
Hadron said:
It's part of the fix. The other part is a ROM that includes (or at least allows you to add) the necessary script to make this work.

If you look in the Desire All Things Root Guide sticky post in this forum (red link in my signature) you'll find a "root memory faq". That will explain this in a bit more detail. It will also recommend using GParted for partitioning - there's also guides to using this linked in the same sticky post. Avoid MiniTool Partition Wizard, as that often produces ext partitions that don't work at all or work slowly.
Click to expand...

im slowly getting there, but am struggling with the gparted thing. ive used the vmware route, and installed it. i open isobooter, and gparted software comes up with a countdown to boot, but keeps coming up with this fault.....

A fault has occurred causing a virtual CPU to enter the shutdown state. If this fault had occurred outside of a virtual machine, it would have caused the physical machine to restart. The shutdown state can be reached by incorrectly configuring the virtual machine, a bug in the guest operating system, or a problem in VMware Player.

any ideas what i may be doing wrong?
 
If you are using windows then you could just create a bootable cd, takes a few minutes.

Personally I used 4Ext to do mine, never had any bother with it and 4Ext is a great recovery.
 
That's 4Ext recovery (in place of ClockworkMod or Amon-Ra). It uses a better partitioning tool than the other recoveries. It's easy to do if you are S-Off.
 
Hadron said:
That's 4Ext recovery (in place of ClockworkMod or Amon-Ra). It uses a better partitioning tool than the other recoveries. It's easy to do if you are S-Off.
Click to expand...

ive got 4EXT on my DHD. think it came with a rom as i used to have clockwork, does this sound right? and i assume then that i now have the potential to create a partition on my card for storing apps?

if i do that, i assume ill prob wipe the music/photos from my card, so back it up first?

and going back to my wifes desire, if i instal 4EXT instead of clockwork on hers then, so long as shes s-off, i neednt bother with all that complicated gparted malarkey?? if its that simple why doesnt everyybody do that instead of all these complicated step by steps with gparted and bootable cds etc etc :-D

thanks a lot
 
If you have 4Ext on your DHD you could even just use that to partition the Desire's card too :)

Yes, it will wipe the card so back up first.

If wanted, the easy way to install 4Ext on an S-Off phone is via the 4Ext app (there's a link to the free one in the 4Ext thread at xda-developers Desire Android Development forum).

As for why GParted, only a minority have 4Ext (which is a recent arrival), and not everyone is S-Off and so many people don't have the option of installing it. GParted anyone can use, no matter what's on their phone.

(Confession: as a linux user I have GParted anyway, so have never had to follow the guides for making bootable cds. Though I've made virtual machines for various things so would do it that way if I had to).
 
ive just had a look to see if its intuitive, and im not really sure, so thought id check first.

ive backed up the card. i go into 4EXT and choose to partitiion the card. it says start from scratch or save my FAT32. i chose the latter as it seemed as though it may leave data intact, altho as ive backed up then that wouldnt matter anyway.
it said it would leave 488Mb free or something. i thought that was ok for a hidden partition so pressed ok. it then asked how big i wanted first partition........ thats when i left it and thought id ask.

ive got an 8Gb card with around 5Gb used up. what partitions should i be aiming for. is it basically a 7.5Gb 1st partition and a 0.5 hidden. what selections should i be making? should i have gone for the 'start from scratch' option too?

thanks
 
If you just want to put apps there, 512MB (ie 0.5 GB) should be enough for an ext partition. If you have ambitions to run one of those ROMs ported from later HTC devices 1GB would be better.

There's nothing particularly hidden about it - just that the standard android menu isn't looking for it (Windows can't see it because Windows doesn't understand linux filesystems).

Now as for using 4Ext to partition, I've done it once but can't remember the menu structure. I'd try the option you did. You want the first partition to be the fat32 (7.5 GB), second ext4 (0.5 GB), or as near as you can get. No third partition, no swap. You can always try again from scratch if there's a problem. I may be able to find 4ext documentation later, but can't at the moment.

I say "as near as you can" because a "8GB" card doesn't actually have 8GB - actually more like 7.5 GB. It's not due to formatting, but the difference between counting in binary (as computers do) and decimal (as card makers do). So check what it says about partition sizes before going ahead, and make sure the ext is big enough - I'm assuming for an operation like this it will ask you to review and confirm before doing it (as I say, I've only done it once with 4Ext so don't remember the details well).
 
Just like Hadron it's been a while.

Just booted into 4Ext to have a look.

Boot the device into Recovery,
go to Tools and Partition SD card,
depending on your SD card size, speed and the amount of apps your are planning to install choose 512 MB or more and leave swap at 0 MB.

If you can afford to lose the space go for a 1Gb partition
 
thanks chaps

ive just experimented on mine first, so using 4EXT on my DHD.

still a little unsure so tried different settings then went back until i was happier.

firstly, my original setting of keeping FAT32 intact said i had 488Mb to play with for partition. i carried on and tried choosing 512 and sure enough, said there wasnt enough space. i did an 'alignment check' which said it wasnt perfectly aligned and to consider starting from scratch. thought i may as well, so went down this route.

it asked me for 1st partition, i chose 1Gb. 2nd partition i chose skip. swap i chose skip. asked if i wanted my partition to be EXT3 or 4, i chose 4. no idea what it means, but i did it as you recommended 4.

it then showed me my card would be 6.5Gb FAT32 and 1Gb extension. seemed right so i went ahead. checked alignment which said perfectly aligned. great stuff. i now have a blank sd card so ill connect to pc and copy over all the folders i backed up.

couple of questions for my own knowledge if you dont mind.
will my jellytime rom now start installing data and apps etc to this extension without me doing anything, or would i need to reinstal it so it picks up the partitions and knows to do it from scratch?

whats the difference between ext 3 and 4?

what would the point of more extensions or partitions be?

whats the swap mean?

i assume i could now just take the sd from my wifes desire, put it in my phone, do exactly the same and she would have the same as me. and again, would i need to reinstal her mildwild rom for it to start saving space by using the partition, or will it do it naturally from then on?

thanks a lot for this :-)
 
For your rom to start using your new partition for apps you usually have to tell it to do so.

After installing the ROM, open up terminal and type

su
a2sd install
(Y)es to moving Dalvik cache to sd-ext
(N)o to moving app-data to sd-ext
(Y) to reboot

These seem to be the recommended settings for most roms. Your phone will reboot and you will see lots of stuff on reboot about files moving. From then on your apps should be automatically installed to the Ext 4 partition.

I don't think there would be any point in putting any more partitions on the SD card.

Difference between Ext 3 and Ext 4 can be found here What is the difference between ext3 & ext4 from a generic user's prespective - Ask Ubuntu but it's a bit too geeky for me. 4 was what was recommended to me so that's what I went with.

Swap is virtual memory, is needed for the Ext 4 partition and has to be placed on the SD card, basically it's very slow to read from and by setting it to 0 makes the phone ignore it and use the phones physical memory instead.

If any of the above is wrong I am happy to be corrected. I learn every day
 
Whether the ROM will just move stuff by itself or not depends on the script (/system/etc/init.d/10apps2sd, from memory). It might just do it, or you might need to tell it - some scripts can be controlled by commands from a terminal emulator. The "overview" page of titanium backup will show you whether the "a2sd storage" is being used.

ext4 is a newer filesystem than ext3. Can't even remember the technical difference at the moment - I think it should be slightly faster.

There are just one or two ROMs that use 2 extra partitions. Almost all use just a single one, so creating more than one is just wasting space.

"swapping" is the process of copying stuff temporarily from RAM to storage device, allowing you to keep more apps sort-of-active. It's known as "virtual memory" in computing jargon. However, it's a bad idea on a phone - it obviously slows the phone, and is a quick way of wearing out the card - so Android doesn't usually support it. Hence a swap partition would also just be a waste of space.

Yes, you could use your phone to partition your wife's card. I've looked at the a2sd script in a fairly recent MildWild ROM (MW-8), and I reckon that one will move everything by itself automatically.
 
Bazcabs said:
For your rom to start using your new partition for apps you usually have to tell it to do so.

After installing the ROM, open up terminal and type

su
a2sd install
(Y)es to moving Dalvik cache to sd-ext
(N)o to moving app-data to sd-ext
(Y) to reboot

These seem to be the recommended settings for most roms. Your phone will reboot and you will see lots of stuff on reboot about files moving. From then on your apps should be automatically installed to the Ext 4 partition.

I don't think there would be any point in putting any more partitions on the SD card.

Difference between Ext 3 and Ext 4 can be found here What is the difference between ext3 & ext4 from a generic user's prespective - Ask Ubuntu but it's a bit too geeky for me. 4 was what was recommended to me so that's what I went with.

Swap is virtual memory, is needed for the Ext 4 partition and has to be placed on the SD card, basically it's very slow to read from and by setting it to 0 makes the phone ignore it and use the phones physical memory instead.

If any of the above is wrong I am happy to be corrected. I learn every day
Click to expand...

great stuff, thanks chaps

ive never used terminal before, and dont understand code, but i thougt id have a go.
i typed su and it said superuser access allowed.
next line tho, it said something about 'not found' so i closed it. any ideas why that might be?

EDIT: full line is "sh: a2sd: not found"
 
davo26 said:
great stuff, thanks chaps

ive never used terminal before, and dont understand code, but i thougt id have a go.
i typed su and it said superuser access allowed.
next line tho, it said something about 'not found' so i closed it. any ideas why that might be?

EDIT: full line is "sh: a2sd: not found"
Click to expand...

It is probably because Mildwild has a different A2SD script which is automatically activated so will not respond to those command lines. You can check that the partition is working & apps are being moved there by looking at the front page of the Titanium back-up app.
 
sorry, i didnt make myself too clear......ive been experimenting on my desire HD first before i attempt it on my wifes, just in case i end up in the doghouse :-)

so ive used terminal emulator on the jellytime rom on a DHD to see if i can get the partition to be used.
i assume the commands would be the same tho?

thanks
 
^this.

The "a2sd" terminal commands are a feature some a2sd scripts, including those that come with some ROMs. The DarkTremor script was the first to do this. But many others don't work that way. From my reading of the script Mildwild uses I don't think you have to do anything more than provide a partition.
 
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